Artist Biography

Susanna W. Gold, Ph.D., is an independent curator, scholar, and educator based in Bryn Mawr, PA. She curated “The Expanded Caribbean: Contemporary Photography at the Crossroads” (2017) at Drexel University’s Leonard Pearlstein Gallery; “We Speak: Black Art in Philadelphia, 1920s-1970s” (2015-16) at Woodmere Art Museum; “Charles Searles: In Motion” (2013) at the Stella Elkins Tyler Gallery; and “Who We Art: Selections from the Contemporary African American Collection of Lewis Tanner Moore” (2009) at the TylerAtrium Gallery, and edited the accompanying catalogs for each of these exhibitions. She also curates private, commercial, and community-based exhibitions and events, and works with private, corporate, and institutional clients to help build their collections.

Dr. Gold served as Assistant Professor for nearly a decade at the Tyler School of Art, Temple University, and has also taught at the Barnes Foundation and her alma mater, the University of Pennsylvania. Honors and awards associated with her work include a fellowship at the New York Public Library’s Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture; a Mellon Regional Faculty Research Fellowship for the Penn Humanities Forum, University of Pennsylvania; a Pennsylvania Partners in the Arts/Greater Philadelphia Cultural Alliance project grant; and a Knight Arts Challenge Grant from the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation with a matching grant from H.F. (Gerry) Lenfest. She has presented papers and delivered lectures at professional conferences and museums internationally, and her published work has appeared in many scholarly and popular serials. She has recently published the book, The Unfinished Exhibition: Visualizing Myth, Memory, and the Shadow of the Civil War in Centennial America (Routledge, 2016).

‍

Education

2004
University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, PA
Ph.D., History of Art, American Art

1998
University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, NC
MA, Art History, American Art

1992
University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, NC
BA, Art History, Comparative Literature minor

1991
College of William & Mary, Williamsburg, VA
Art History Study Abroad, Florence, Italy

‍

Awards & Honors

2015
Pennsylvania Partners in the Arts/Greater Philadelphia Cultural Alliance project grant, Philadelphia, PA

2014 - 2015
New York Public Library Research Fellowship, Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, New York, NY

2013
Knight Arts Challenge Grant, John S. and James L. Knight Foundation, Philadelphia, PA

2012 - 2013
Temple University Commission on the Arts Cross-Disciplinary Arts Project Grant, Philadelphia, PA

2007 - 2008
Mellon Regional Faculty Research Fellowship, Penn Humanities Forum, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, PA

2007
Winterthur Research Fellowship

2006
Andrew W. Mellon Foundation Fellowship, The Library Company of Philadelphia and the Historical Society of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, PA

‍

Bibliography

2012
Rowland, Fred “1876 and 1976: The Interview,” Temple University Library, March 28, 2012

2010
Salisbury, Stephan “Historic bust of Richard Allen returns to Phila.,” The Philadelphia Inquirer, June 11, 2010, front page

Ransom, Jan “Bishop's marble bust survived long journey back to Philadelphia,” Philadelphia Daily News, June 11, 2010, p. 11

“The Unveiling of the Bishop Richard Allen Monument,” KYW News Radio Philadelphia, June 17 & 18, 2010

“Bishop Richard Allen Monument,” History Making Productions documentary film, Philadelphia, PA, February 2010

2007
Salisbury, Stephan “To fund Clinic, a 2d Eakins sold: Cello Player buyer, cost not revealed,” The Philadelphia Inquirer, Feb. 1. 2007, front page

2006
“Thomas Eakins,” Creatively Speaking, WRTI, December 19, 2006

‍

Selected Publications

2017
The Expanded Caribbean: Contemporary Photography at the Crossroads, exhibition catalog, Leonard Pearlstein Gallery, Drexel University

2016
The Unfinished Exhibition: Visualizing Myth, Memory, and the Shadow of the Civil War in Centennial America, Routledge

2015
We Speak: Black Artists in Philadelphia, 1920s-1970s, exhibition catalog, Woodmere Art Museum
Introduction and co-editor

2013
Charles Searles: In Motion and Charles Searles: The Mask of Abstraction, exhibition catalog, Tyler School of Art, Temple University, and La Salle University Art Museum
Introduction and co-editor

2012
“Modern Spirit,” review essay, “Henry Ossawa Tanner: Modern Spirit,” Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, Modernism/modernity 19:3 (September 2012): 601-605

“The Death of Cleopatra/The Birth of Freedom: Edmonia Lewis at the New World’s Fair,” in Life Stories from the Creole City: Between Catastrophe and Carnival, Biography: An Interdisciplinary Quarterly 35:2 (spring 2012): 318-341

Wood, Peter. H., "Near Andersonville: Winslow Homer’s Civil War," book review, caa.reviews (May 2012)

2011
“1876 Centennial Exhibition,” entry, Grove Encyclopedia of American Art, Oxford University Press (January 2011)

2009
Elkins, Stella, "Who We Are: Selections from the African American Art Collection of Lewis Tanner Moore," exhibition catalog, Tyler Galleries, Tyler School of Art, Temple University, Philadelphia, PA (December 2009)

2008
“‘Fighting the Battle over Again’: The Battle of Gettysburg at the 1876 Centennial Exhibition,” Civil War History 54:3 (September 2008): 277-310

2007
Zurier, Rebecca, "Picturing the City: Urban Vision and the Ashcan School," book review, Reviews in American History 35:4 (December 2007)

2006
“Recovering Identity: Nineteenth-Century African American Portraiture,” American Quarterly 58:4 (December 2006): 1167-1189

2003
Giberti, Bruno, "Designing the Centennial: A History of the 1876 International Exhibition in Philadelphia," book review, Pennsylvania Magazine of History and Biography CXXVII:2 (April 2003): 246-248

2002
“A Measured Freedom: National Unity and Racial Containment in Winslow Homer’s The Cotton Pickers, 1876,” Mississippi Quarterly: The Journal of Southern Cultures LV:2 (spring 2002): 163-184

‍

Professional Experience

2016
Juror, 2016 Members Exhibition, Community Arts Center, Wallingford, PA

2015
Peer Panelist, Philadelphia Cultural Fund

Instructor, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, PA

2014 - 2015
Research Fellow, Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, New York Public Library, New York, NY

2007 - 2014
Programming Committee, Visual Culture Caucus of the American Studies Association

2005 - 2014
Visiting Assistant Professor, Temple University, Tyler School of Art, Philadelphia, PA

2011
Advisory Panel, Pennsylvania Partners in the Arts, Pennsylvania Council on the Arts, Greater Philadelphia Cultural Alliance

2010
“Percent for Art” Juror, Philadelphia Office of Arts, Culture and the Creative Economy

1999 - 2005
Instructor, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, PA

Manuscript reviewer:

• American Philosophical Society Press
• Journal of Curatorial Studies
• Visual Resources: An International Journal of Documentation
• Nineteenth-Century Art Worldwide
• Pennsylvania Magazine of History and Biography

‍

Lectures and Talks

2017
“Insistence within Invisibility: African Americans and the 1876 Centennial Exhibition,” Haverford College, Haverford, PA

2016
“Past is Present,” panel discussion leader, Philadelphia Open Studio Tours, Center for Emerging Visual Artists, Philadelphia, PA

2015
“The Curators Introduction to We Speak: Black Artists in Philadelphia, 1920s-1970s," Woodmere Art Museum, Philadelphia, PA

“Building a Multiracial American Past,” Association of Critical Race Art History, session chair and respondent, College Art Association, New York, NY

2014
“Fine and Popular: The Commerce of Art in Antebellum Philadelphia,” session respondent, Society of Historians of the Early American Republic Annual Conference, Philadelphia, PA

“From Richard to Rocky: Philadelphia’s Public Sculpture,” Tyler School of Art, Temple University, Philadelphia, PA; and Mother Bethel African Methodist Episcopal Church, Founder’s Day, Philadelphia, PA

2013
“Curatorial Pedagogy,” Berman Museum of Art, Ursinus College, Collegeville, PA

“Visualizing Gettysburg,” Washington County Museum of Fine Arts, Hagerstown, MD

“Call & Response: Intersections of Visual Art, Music, Dance and Theater,” Symposium Organizer and Moderator, Tyler School of Art, Temple University, April 2013. Broadcast on Temple University Television

“Exhibiting Race,” Understanding World Art lecture series, the Barnes Foundation, Philadelphia, PA

“Albert Barnes and the Harlem Renaissance,” Understanding World Art lecture series, the Barnes Foundation, Philadelphia, PA

“Women in American Art” Graduate Student Symposium, Respondent and Faculty Advisor, Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, Philadelphia, PA

2012
“Centennial Celebrations in the City: Philadelphia, Historical Memory, and America’s Biggest Birthday Parties,” Exploring the City lecture series, Paley Library, Temple University. Broadcast on Temple University Television, University Lecture Series

2011
“Preserving the Past through Visual Images,” The Legacy of the Civil War: An Interdisciplinary Conference, Session Chair and Moderator, History & Political Science Dept., Chestnut Hill College, Philadelphia, PA

“Philadelphia’s Legacy: Abstraction and Color,” Woodmere Art Museum, Philadelphia, PA

“‘For the first time in its history’: The Richard Allen Monument at the 1876 Centennial Exhibition,” Art-at-Lunch Lecture Series, Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, Philadelphia, PA, November 2010; and National Alumni Association, Payne Theological Seminary Founder's Day

“Remembering the War with Brush and Chisel,” Washington County Museum of Fine Arts, Hagerstown, MD

“The Unveiling of the Richard Allen Monument,” First Episcopal District of the African Methodist Episcopal Church, Philadelphia, PA

2008
“Xanthus Smith’s Kearsarge and Alabama, 1876,” Civil War Round Table, Union League Club of Philadelphia, Philadelphia, PA

“‘The Color of My Father’: Racial Composition and Its Expression in American Visual Media,” Origins, Penn Humanities Forum, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, PA

2007
“‘If this war is to be forgotten, ...what shall men remember?’: The African American Presence at the 1876 Centennial Exhibition,” América Aquí: Transhemispheric Visions and Community Connection, American Studies Association Annual Conference, Philadelphia, PA

“The Modern West: American Landscapes, 1890-1950,” Temple-on-the-Road Alumni Lecture Series, Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Los Angeles, CA

“Emancipation and Reconciliation: The Contest of Memory in Post-Civil War America,” Art History Lecture Series, Temple University, Philadelphia, PA

“From Taboo to Icon: the Black Body in Modern and Contemporary Art,” panel moderator, African Impressions/Contemporary Art Symposia Series, Temple University, Philadelphia, PA

“The Impediment of History: Building a National Memory at the 1876 Centennial Exhibition,”
Many Things Forgotten: Collective Memory and the Rise of Americanism on Unstable Subjects: Practicing History in Unsettled Times, American Historical Association Annual Conference, Atlanta, GA

2006
“The 1876 Centennial Exhibition,” Guest lecturer, Temple University History Department, undergraduate seminar

2005
“Fighting the Battle over Again”: Peter F. Rothermel’s The Battle of Gettysburg at the 1876 Centennial Exhibition,” Global Artistic Manifestations of the North-South Divide, College Art Association Annual Conference, Atlanta, GA

2004
“Mr. Prejudice by Horace Pippin,” Art of the Universal and the Controversial Art History Course, Philadelphia Museum of Art, Philadelphia, PA

2000
“Martin Johnson Heade: Semblance and Opposition in Sunrise – Harbor at Rio 1864,” Art-at-Lunch Lecture Series, Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, Philadelphia, PA

‍

Blog Posts

2013
“Charles Searles Enlivens Philadelphia Universities,” Archives of American Art blog, September 16, 2013

“Charles Searles: In Motion at the Tyler School of Art enters final week,” KnightArts blog, June 7, 2013

2010
“Bringing the River to the City,” Tyler Student Life blog, October 12, 2010

“A Meeting of the Waters for PAFA and Tyler,” Tyler Student Life blog, September 29, 2010

Exhibitions

Curated

2017
The Expanded Caribbean: Contemporary Photography at the Crossroads, Leonard Pearlstein Gallery, Drexel University, Philadelphia, PA

cont•tex•ture: 1. the act of interweaving or assembling parts
to form a connected whole. 2. a structure of interconnected parts. Recent work by Brian David Dennis and Keith R. Breitfeller, STUDIO, Wayne, PA

2016
The Written Image, Bryn Mawr, PA

2015 -2016
We Speak: Black Artists in Philadelphia, 1920s-1870s, Woodmere Art Museum, Philadelphia, PA
Guest Curator

2013
Charles Searles: In Motion, Tyler School of Art, Temple University, Philadelphia, PA
Managing Curator

2009
Who We Are: Selections from the African American Art Collection of Lewis Tanner Moore, Stella Elkins Tyler Gallery, Tyler School of Art, Temple University, Elkins Park, PA
Managing Curator

2006
Exhibition Planning Roundtable Consultant, “Seeing the City: Sloan’s New York,” Delaware Art Museum, Wilmington, DE

1997-1998
Tradition and Transformation: Contemporary Inuit Art from Nunavut, Ackland Art Museum, University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, NC
Co-curator