Rate My Professor Adrian Duran

Duran is a specialist in Modern and Contemporary Art, particularly Italian Modernism. His research focuses on mid-20th century painting and sculpture in Italy in relation to Cold War politics as expressed in art objects and critical discourse, issues of influence in international abstraction during the 1940s and 1950s, and art criticism addressing regionalism and language in Southern contemporary art alongside intersections of contemporary photography and New Media practices. He teaches courses including Survey of Western Art II, Modern Art I, Modern Art II, Contemporary Art, Art in Theory and Practice Since 1900, and Special Topics in Art History: Art Criticism. Key publications include his book Painting, Politics, and the New Front of Cold War Italy (Routledge, 2013), the first English-language monograph on Il Fronte Nuovo delle Arti. He has contributed reviews such as “Paint Made Flesh” and “The Record: Contemporary Art and Vinyl” in caa.reviews, “Inner Ear Vision” in Flash Art International (2019), and “Ottocento: da Canova al Quarto Stato” in Nineteenth-Century Art Worldwide. Duran has delivered invited lectures, including “Notes on Making: Art, Labor, and Language in Postwar Rome,” and presented papers on topics like Abstract Expressionism’s Italian reception and postwar Italian art at conferences such as the Nineteenth Century Studies Association and the Biblioteca Hertziana.