Biography
E. C. Feiss (Ellen, she/her) is a writer and art historian. Broadly, her research concerns the relationship of art and its institutions to political economy and movements for social and economic justice. She is interested in how contemporary and late modern aesthetic strategies like abstraction, performance, and collaboration are implicated in the history of capitalism. Her current book manuscript introduces the art and artists financed by US federal poverty programs during the Great Society era, from the abstract painters in anti-poverty’s art schools to works of performance and intermedia set up to occupy parks and streets. Her scholarship reanimates art historical questions about the state–in terms of patronage, propaganda, and policing – for contemporary art in liberal democratic and illiberal national contexts normally associated with private art markets. She also writes broadly about the links between art, labor, and value after 1960. See here for a list of publications.
She earned a PhD in the History of Art at the University of California, Berkeley, an M.A. in the Visual Cultures department, Goldsmiths College, University of London, and a BA from Smith College. Her research has received fellowship awards from the Luce/ACLS, the Institute for Citizens and Scholars, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, and the Library of Congress.