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Rhea Anastas
Associate Professor
Late Twentieth- and Twenty-First-Century Modern and Contemporary Visual Art, Conceptual Art, Artist’s Writing
Ph.D. Graduate Center, The City University of New York, M.A. Columbia University, B.A. Columbia University
Rhea Anastas is a scholar of contemporary art and independent curator based in Los Angeles. With eleven artists and filmmakers (including Moyra Davey, Andrea Fraser, Christian Philipp Müller, Jeff Preiss, R. H. Quaytman, Karin Schneider, and Jason Simon), she was a cofounder of Orchard, a cooperative gallery on New York’s Lower East Side with a predetermined three-year lifespan (2005–8). Anastas received her BA (1990) and MA (1995) in art history from Columbia University; she received her PhD (2004) in art history from the Graduate Center of the City University of New York.
Anastas makes exhibitions, researches, and writes on twentieth- and twenty-first-century postwar modern and contemporary visual art, including works in Minimal and Conceptual Art, video, performance, and film. Her interests include the understudied role that artists, especially women and Black artists, have played as self-organizers—that is, as presenters and theorists of their own art or of others’ art. Anastas’s scholarship often involves extensive primary research in artists’ studios and visual-art archives, as well as editorial work with artists’ writings and other primary-source texts.
Among Anastas’s first primary-research and editorial projects is the acclaimed Witness to Her Art: Art and Writings by Adrian Piper, Mona Hatoum, Cady Noland, Jenny Holzer, Kara Walker, Daniela Rossell, and Eau de Cologne (Annandale-on-Hudson: Center for Curatorial Studies, Bard College, 2006). This volume of contemporary feminist art, coedited with critic Michael Brenson, emphasized questions of sexual difference, critical intelligence, distance, and absence in the decisions a group of artists and one gallerist made in producing and exhibiting and publishing their art.
Recently, Anastas has edited Adrian Piper: Performing Objects I Have Been; Selected Audio Recordings and Writings, 1972–96, a comprehensive collection of documents relating to Piper’s performance Some Reflective Surfaces (1975–76), along with other writings spanning Piper’s work from 1975–96 (Amsterdam: If I Can’t Dance, I Don’t Want to Be Part of Your Revolution, 2021).
Over 2018 through 2021, Anastas collaborated with artist Cady Noland on THE CLIP-ON METHOD, a self-published artist’s book (and the first book of any kind) devoted to Noland’s work and writing. Anastas served as curator, coeditor, and copublisher with Noland on this project, which was published in conjunction with an exhibition of the same title at Galerie Buchholz, New York, June 17–September 11, 2021.
From 2022 through April 2026, Anastas worked in Conceptual artist Christine Kozlov’s archive (Christine Kozlov Estate, London) with artist Nora Schultz to co-teach a class and curate the first large-scale survey exhibition of Kozlov’s artwork and collaborations in visual art, performance for video, and artist’s video and film. Two exhibitions at Arts and Letters New York and Raven Row London were the first ever to present Conceptual Art pioneer Kozlov’s activities in experimental art in depth.
Conceptual Art and Christine Kozlov, February 19–April 26, 2026, Raven Row, London.
Jadwiga Maziarska, Assembly, curated with Barbara Piwowarska, June 15–November 2, 2025, Muzeum Susch, Switzerland.
Yuji Agematsu: 2023–2024, curated with Robert Snowden, May 10–August 30, 2025, Judd Foundation, New York.
Christine Kozlov, curated with Nora Schultz, September 26, 2024–February 8, 2025, Arts and Letters, New York.
The Deep West Assembly, Cauleen Smith, curated with Mia Locks, June 14–September 15, 2024, Astrup Fearnley Museum, Oslo, Norway.
Danny McDonald, curated with Robert Snowden, June 8–August 13, 2022, 80 Washington Square East, New York University.
This meeting is being recorded, Andrea Fraser, September 25, 2021–April 3, 2022, Künstlerhaus Stuttgart (KHS), Germany. From May 22 to June 19, 2022, the exhibition toured to the Hammer Museum, Los Angeles, organized by Connie Butler and Ikechukwu Onyewuenyi.
Cauleen Smith: Give It or Leave It, organized with Anthony Elms (second iteration of THE WARPLANDS, see below), September 14–December 23, 2018, ICA Philadelphia.
Edits and Projections, coauthored with Louise Lawler and Robert Snowden, October 18–December 1, 2018, 80 Washington Square East, New York University.
Aztlán to Magulandia: The Journey of Chicano Artist Gilbert “Magu” Lujan, curated with Hal Glicksman (part of Pacific Standard Time LA/LA), September 12–December 16, 2017, University Art Galleries, Claire Trevor School of the Arts, University of California, Irvine.
THE WARPLANDS, Cauleen Smith, January 14–March 25, 2017, University Art Galleries, Claire Trevor School of the Arts, University of California, Irvine.
New Cuts, K8 Hardy, January 10–March 20, 2015, University Art Galleries, Claire Trevor School of the Arts, University of California, Irvine.
Orchard, May 2005–May 2008. Cooperative, artist-run gallery project, 47 Orchard Street, New York, with eleven members http://www.47orchard.org/. Orchard produced more than twenty-five exhibitions.
Jadwiga Maziarska, Assembly, by Rhea Anastas and Barbara Piwowarska (Muzeum Susch and Hatje Cantz, 2025). Includes Anastas’ essay, “‘If you work by yourself’: On Jadwiga Maziarska after the Critical Reception of Agnes Martin and Eva Hesse,” pp. 119–135.
The Theater of Refusal: Black Art and Mainstream Criticism, edited by Rhea Anastas, Charles Gaines, Jamillah James, and Eric Golo Stone (The Brick, Los Angeles; Dancing Foxes Press, Brooklyn, New York; and Künstlerhaus Stuttgart, Germany, 2024). Contributions by Adrian Piper and Rhea Anastas, with an additional contribution by Fred Moten; Charles Gaines and Fred Moten; Charles Gaines and Catherine Lord; and statements by six artists. Includes Anastas’ “Afterword,” pp. 171–75. This book contains the thirty-year-anniversary republication of the 1993 book: Charles Gaines and Catherine Lord, The Theater of Refusal: Black Art and Mainstream Criticism. Fine Arts Gallery, University of California Irvine.
THE CLIP-ON METHOD, by Cady Noland, edited by Cady Noland and Rhea Anastas (New York: Cady Noland and Rhea Anastas, 2021). Two-volume artist’s book designed by Noland, with typesetting, layout, and print production by Will Holder; published and distributed by the editors and Robert Snowden.
Adrian Piper: Performing Objects I Have Been; Selected Audio Recordings and Writings, 1972–96, edited by Rhea Anastas (Amsterdam: If I Can’t Dance, I Don’t Want to Be Part of Your Revolution, 2021). Contributions by Rhea Anastas, Charles Gaines, Catherine Lord, Fred Moten, with an additional contribution by RoseLee Goldberg and an afterword by Frédérique Bergholtz and Susan Gibb.
We make the image in real time: a viewing log, by Rhea Anastas (New York: Dancing Foxes Press and Pratt Photography, 2019). Pounds Per Image series, no. 1.
Andrea Fraser: Collected Interviews, 1990–2018, edited by Rhea Anastas, Alejandro Cesarco, and Andrea Fraser (New York, London, and Los Angeles: A.R.T. Press, Koenig Books, and the Hammer Museum, 2019). Published in conjunction with the exhibition Hammer Projects: Andrea Fraser, Hammer Museum, Los Angeles, May 18–September 15, 2019, organized by Connie Butler.
Double Bind, by Rhea Anastas and Leigh Ledare (New York: A.R.T. Press, 2015). Long-form dialogue.
Witness to Her Art: Art and Writings by Adrian Piper, Mona Hatoum, Cady Noland, Jenny Holzer, Kara Walker, Daniela Rossell, and Eau de Cologne, edited by Rhea Anastas and Michael Brenson (Annandale-on-Hudson, NY: Center for Curatorial Studies, Bard College, 2006).
Dan Graham: Works 1965–2000, edited by Rhea Anastas, Marianne Brouwer, and Richter Verlag (Düsseldorf: Richter Verlag, 2001).
“The Hard Road: Craft and The Carvings.” In Matt Browning, All Woodcarvings Remain Slow Motion Mobiles, ed. Tom Engels, Kunstverein München, Munich, Germany (publication in a folder format), 2026.
“Observations from the Process of Conceptual Art and Christine Kozlov,” in Conceptual Art and Christine Kozlov, Raven Row, London, 2026 (Exhibition Guide, pamphlet), no pagination.
“Sea of Letters.” In Michelle Cotton and Eva Birkenstock, eds. Richard Hawkins Potentialities, Kunsthalle Wien, Vienna; Kestner Gesellschaft, Hannover; Verlag der Buchhandlung Walther und Franz König, Cologne, 2025, pp. 93–99.
“Notes on Christine Kozlov.” In Notes on Christine Kozlov, Arts and Letters, New York, 2024 (pamphlet), pp. 7–13.
“Rhea Anastas in Conversation with Cauleen Smith.” In Cauleen Smith: Give It or Leave It (Philadelphia: Institute of Contemporary Art, University of Pennsylvania, 2019), 34–49. Catalog published after the close of a project and cycle of films with Cauleen Smith and Anthony Elms, initiated with the 2017 UAG exhibition THE WARPLANDS, Cauleen Smith, which traveled to the ICA Philadelphia in 2018 as Cauleen Smith: Give It or Leave It (see Exhibitions, above).
“Property and Community in the Recent Work.” In Louise Lawler: Receptions, ed. Roxana Marcoci (Museum of Modern Art, New York, 2017), 32–39.
“When Attitude Becomes Norm: Rhea Anastas on ‘Revolution in the Making.’” Artforum 54, no. 9 (May 2016): 107–110. An Artforum Slant column.
“Language is the social dress.” In Josephine Pryde, The Enjoyment of Photography (Zurich: JRP Ringier and Kunsthalle Bern, 2015).
“The Artist Is a Currency,” by Rhea Anastas, Gregg Bordowitz, Andrea Fraser, Jutta Koether, and Glenn Ligon. In Reading/Feeling, ed. Tanja Baudoin, Frédérique Bergholtz, and Vivian Ziherl (Amsterdam: If I Can’t Dance, I Don’t Want to Be Part of Your Revolution, 2013). Reprint of 2006 roundtable for Grey Room no. 24 and documenta 12.
“Scene of Production.” Artforum 52, no. 3 (November 2013): 235–36, 310. On Andrea Fraser’s Untitled, 2003.
“Individual and Unreal: Agnes Martin’s Writings in 1973.” In Agnes Martin, ed. Lynne Cooke, Karen Kelly, and Barbara Schröder (New Haven and New York: Yale University Press and the Dia Art Foundation, 2011), 132–52.
“Minimal Difference: The John Daniels Gallery and the First Works of Dan Graham.” In Dan Graham: Beyond, ed. Bennett Simpson and Chrissie Iles (Los Angeles and Cambridge, MA: Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles, and MIT Press, 2009), 110–26.
