Tess Korobkin

Tess Korobkin is an Assistant Professor of American Art in the Art History and Archaeology Department at the University of Maryland. Her research intersects African American/African Diaspora, Gender, Photography, and Visual Culture, with a focus on the intersection of race, materiality, and public art in the United States.

Education:

• Ph.D. in Art History, Yale University

Korobkin’s work examines how artists in the 1930s and 19th-20th centuries challenged societal norms through sculpture and photography. Her current book project, Challenging Monuments, analyzes Augusta Savage’s unbuilt monuments and Berenice Abbott’s critique of public statues. Her scholarship also explores Hiram Powers’s The Greek Slave as a transatlantic symbol of reproduction, abolition, and racial politics.

Her publications highlight interdisciplinary trends in monument studies, sculptural materiality, and photographic representations of art. She has received fellowships from the Smithsonian American Art Museum and ACLS/Luce Foundation, and her work appears in American Art, Nineteenth Century Art Worldwide, and Art Journal.