About
Hannah Cohen is a historian of art and architecture, whose work broadly examines the construction of cultural and institutional value in modern and contemporary art. Her research is engaged in fields of art history, architectural history, museum studies, media studies, and the history of technology, with an overarching interest in the labor politics of cultural production.
She is currently at work on her first book project, tentatively titled “The Construct: Engineering Art’s Limits, 1898-Present.” This project, based on her dissertation research, asks how to take stock of the technical practitioners, technical systems, and technical knowledge that invisibly proliferates the world of = contemporary art forces new scholarly understandings of what contemporary art is, how it is evolving, and how museum and gallery spaces are, in their architectures, evolving along with it. Fabricators, construction workers, contractors, designers, and engineers, to say nothing of the tools and systems they use and devise, command considerable agency within the world of art, but go largely unseen with it.
This project addresses the technical and political complexities of their collective contributions, taking seriously the challenges and stakes of coming to (or, at the very least, trying to) see these figures at all. In addition to this larger book project, Hannah is also currently working on a new article about the history and politics of joint ownership. Drawing on research conducted while Chester Dale Interdisciplinary Fellow at the Metropolitan Museum of Art (2022-2023), this research charts a history of institutional maneuvers – from outright joint acquisitions to joint stewardship agreements (with indigenous persons and communities) – that complicate traditional notions of how museums arbitrate property.
Hannah holds a PhD in Art, Film, and Visual Studies from Harvard University (2022). She received her B.A. from Princeton University in 2011.
Fields of Study
- Modern art
- Contemporary Art
- Architectural History and Theory
- Museum Studies
- Media theory
- Labor and materiality
