Frances Cathryn
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06. About
Research
Writing
Curatorial projects
Editing
Guest lectures & teaching
Contact


Frances Cathryn is an art historian who studies the ways American culture shapes a common understanding of the past. Through her curatorial projects, editorial work, and critical writing, Frances contributes to debates in art history concerning place-based memory, the ethics of representation, and the role of material culture in mediating unresolved pasts within the present. Across her work, Frances emphasizes collaborative and public-facing methodologies that reconsider how historical narratives are constructed and circulated within U.S. art and cultural discourse.


Photograph by Michael Valiquette.
01.Research

Frances is a PhD student in the Department of Art History and Archaeology at Columbia University, specializing in 20th- and 21st-century American art. Her research focuses on material culture and the built environment as sites where history and collective memory are produced and contested.

Department profile
02.Writing

Selected publications:
  1. “Plantation Horror,” Art Papers, November 6, 2025
  2. “What makes a family?” Times Union, July 22, 2024
  3. “In the Room,” an exhibition brochure for CPW Kingston, June 6, 2023
  4. “For the People,” Monument Lab Bulletin, February 28, 2022
  5. “Stephanie Syjuco’s Tale of Two Americas,” Frieze magazine, May 2021
  6. “A Past That Is Not Past,” the Brooklyn Rail, November 2020
  7. “Saying Her Name: What monuments to Sojourner Truth can teach us about representing Black lives,” Social Text journal, October 2020
  8. “How Will We Remember This Moment?” Los Angeles Review of Books, April 2020

03.Curatorial projects
Frances’s curatorial projects engage material culture and site-specific histories, foregrounding collaborative and public-facing approaches that critically rethink how collective memory is articulated within contemporary cultural institutions.

Selected exhibitions:
  1. In the Room, the Gallery at Heimbold Visual Arts Center, Sarah Lawrence College, Bronxville, New York, January–February 2025
  2. In the Room, The Center for Photography at Woodstock, Kingston, New York, June–July 2023
  3. The Middle Distance, the Barbara Walters Gallery at Sarah Lawrence College, Bronxville, New York, Jan–April 2025


1/3    Installation view of In the Room at The Gallery at Heimbold Visual Arts Center, 2025. Courtesy McKinzie Trotta.
2/3    Installation view of In the Room at The Gallery at Heimbold Visual Arts Center, 2025. Courtesy McKinzie Trotta.
3/3    Installation view of In the Room at The Gallery at Heimbold Visual Arts Center, 2025. Courtesy McKinzie Trotta.
04.Editing

Selected editorial projects:
  1. “ʻI Speak for the Forest, for the Rivers, for the Ancestors Who Keep Conversing Through the Mambe’: Aimema Úai paints Murui-Muina continuity,” by Angélica Cuevas-Guarnizo, Forging journal, November 26, 2025.
  2. “Gagizhibaajiwan, or Living With Paradox,” by Lois Taylor Biggs, Forging journal, April 30, 2024.
  3. “Speaking With Your Cat: An Artist and Researcher Talk Artificial Intelligence, Community, and Cultural Expression,” by S.A. Chavarría & Scott Benesiinaabandan, Forging journal, January 26, 2024.
  4. “Radical Indigenous Contemporaneity in ʻKe Aloha O Ka Haku,’” by Dr. Leilehua Lanzilotti, Forging journal, January 8, 2024
  5. “Asking for Permission/Listening for Consent,” by Anthony Romero, Forging journal, December 18, 2023.

06.Guest lectures & teaching

  1. Sites of Struggle: Critical Memory & Black Landscapes, a roundtable conversation, February 25, 2025, Sarah Lawrence College
  2. Research Protocols and Investigations in Colonial Archives, September 20, 2024, Bard College
  3. Coloniality in Mass Media: ARH 201 Visual Communications, April 15, 2022, Providence College
  4. Writing & Editing for Research: MSMS-GA 3991, Museum Studies Research Seminar, April 5, 2022, New York University
  5. Denying Historical Surveillance, January 25, 2022, Rhode Island School of Design
  6. Memory & Trauma: MSMS-GA 1500 History & Theory of Museums, December 1, 2021, New York University


05.Contact

Email
Instagram

francescathryn@gmail.com
@francescathryn
For a copy of my current CV, PDFs of papers or talks, or for questions and collaborations, email me or follow me on social media. I am also open to commissions. If you are interested in mentoring, editorial advice, or a studio visit, please reach out.