BIO
Dr. Kimiko Matsumura is a historian of modern and contemporary art. She specializes in the intersections of art and science, primarily focusing on natural history display and other scientific illustration practices from 1800 to the present. Her current project examines the relationship between nature dioramas and contemporary art as a means to understand institutional power and shifting conceptions of nature after 1945.
In addition to this work, Dr. Matsumura is interested in institutional critique and race and representation, presenting and publishing on stereotype and identity in the age of globalization. Conferences include the College Art Association annual conference, and recent work appears in Asian Diasporic Visual Cultures and the Americas.
Professional Experience
Co-Curator, Seeing and Knowing: The Natural History Drawings of Robert Bruce Horsfall, Jane Voorhees Zimmerli Art Museum, New Brunswick, NJ (2019)
Publications
“We Who Are Enemy:” Incarceration Redress in the Paintings of Roger Shimomura.” Asian Diasporic Visual Cultures and the Americas 5, no. 1-2 (April 2019): 129-154.
Selected Presentations
- “Drawing on and Writing Over: Reimagining Anthropological Display with Chris Pappan,” for session American Museums: From Temples of Art to Sites of Social Justice Session II. Southeastern College Art Conference, October 18, 2019
- “Diorama Nation: Glass, Vision, and Patriotism in the Hall of North American Mammals,” for session Collecting Culture from WWII to the 1960s. College Art Association Annual Conference, February 16, 2019
- “Reflecting on Natural History: Robert Smithson, Glass, and the Reinterpretation of the Diorama,” for session American Conceptual Art and the Political Imagination, from Cold War to Globalization, College Art Association Annual Conference, February 18, 2017
- “Morimura’s ‘Ruined Picture’: Medium, Fragmentation, and Identity in Yasumasa Morimura’s Portrait (futago),” for session The World in the Frame: Photography’s Inclusions and Exclusions, Southeastern College Art Conference, October 20, 2016
Awards
- UTC Art Award for Equity and Inclusion, Southeastern College Art Conference, 2019
- Andrew W. Mellon Dissertation Completion Fellowship, School of Graduate Studies, Rutgers University, 2018-2019
Professional Memberships
Southeast College Art Conference (2016-Present)
College Art Association (2017-Present)