Shelley Rice

Shelley Rice is an Arts Professor at New York University's Tisch School of the Arts, Department of Art History, and the Institute of Fine Arts. Her academic background includes a BA from SUNY Stony Brook, an MA from NYU, and Ph.D. work at Princeton University. An internationally recognized critic and historian, she has lectured globally on photography and multi-media art. Her research focuses on feminist art practices, postcolonial visual culture, and the intersection of photography with cultural history.

Key roles include curating exhibitions like Inverted Odysseys (1999, winner of the International Art Critics’ Award) and The View from Left Field (2013). She has held visiting professorships at Zurich University and the Ecole Normale Supérieure in Paris. Currently, she hosts the radiophonic talk show The Meeting Point for the Jeu de Paume Museum in Paris.

Rice's awards include a Guggenheim Fellowship (1992), Fulbright Fellowships (1988, 1999), and the French Chevalier des Arts et des Lettres (2010). Her publications span monographs like Xing Danwen (2015) and essays in Art in America, Aperture, and Tate Papers.

Her work bridges art criticism, curatorial practice, and academic scholarship, emphasizing marginalized voices in art history. She has advised numerous exhibitions and co-authored catalogues on artists such as Vik Muniz and Candida Höfer. Recent grants include a Rockefeller Foundation residency and NEA/NEH funding for projects on global photographic practices.