Maurice Berger

Maurice Berger
Maurice Berger, September 2011 (photo: Donna DeSalvo)
Born	1956 New York City
Residence	New York City
Citizenship	United States
Nationality	United States
Fields	Cultural History Critical Race Theory Art History Cultural Criticism
Institutions	University of Maryland, Baltimore County Jewish Museum, New York New York Times
Alma mater	Hunter College Graduate Center of the City University of New York
Doctoral advisor	Yve-Alain Bois Linda Nochlin
Other academic advisors	Rosalind Krauss
Influences	W.E.B. Du Bois James Baldwin Toni Morrison Roland Barthes Rosalind Krauss
Notable awards	*Best Exhibition in University Museum, 2010, Best Exhibition in US, 2008, Association of Art Museum Curators; *Best Thematic Exhibition in New York, 2008, International Association of Art Critics; *Nominee, Emmy Award, National Academy of Television Arts and Sciences, New York Chapter *Choice Outstanding Academic Title 2010, Art and Architecture, American Library Association *Arts Writers Grant, 2014 Creative Capital/Warhol Foundation;

Maurice Berger (1956) is an American cultural historian, curator, and art critic.

Maurice Berger is a cultural historian, art critic, and curator. He is Research Professor and Chief Curator at the Center for Art, Design and Visual Culture, University of Maryland, Baltimore County. Berger's essay series, Race Stories, "a continuing exploration of the relationship of race to photographic portrayals of race," appears monthly on the Lens Blog of the New York Times.

A student of the pioneering theoretical art historian, Rosalind E. Krauss, Berger completed a B.A. at Hunter College and Ph.D. in art history and critical theory at the City University of New York. He then turned his attention to race. One of the few white kids in his low-income housing project on Manhattan's Lower East Side, Berger grew up hyper-sensitized to race. Due to his experiences, he looked beyond the world of "critical theory" to address the relevance of visual culture, and especially images of race, to everyday life.

Berger engages the issues of racism, whiteness, and contemporary race relations and their connection to visual culture in the United States. He is one of the first art historians to meld the methodologies and practices of cultural and art history with those of race studies and critical race theory, work begun by Berger in the mid-1980s as an assistant professor of art and gallery director at Hunter College His earliest effort in this area—co-organized with the anthropologist Johnnetta B. Cole at Hunter College in 1987—was an interdisciplinary project (that included a book, art exhibition, and film program) entitled "Race and Representation." His widely anthologized study on institutional racism--"Are Art Museums Racist?"—appeared in Art in America three years later, and helped spur a national debate on the exclusionary practices of American art museums. In the early-1990s, Berger extended his work on visual culture and race to include sustained study of the work of African-American artists, performers, filmmakers, producers, and cultural figures, culminating both in solo exhibitions ("Adrian Piper: A Retrospective" and "Fred Wilson Objects and Installations"), multimedia projects (including compilation videos and elaborate context stations for art exhibitions), and essays (on subjects as diverse as black artists and the limitations of mainstream art criticism, the racial implications of art historical and curatorial efforts to evaluate "outsider" art, the stereotypical representation of Jewish masculinity on American television, and the Jewish identity of the African-American entertainer Sammy Davis, Jr.).