Leora Maltz-Leca

Professor
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BA, Yale University
MA, Brown University
MA, Harvard University
PHD, Harvard University

Leora Maltz-Leca teaches and writes about contemporary art. She is particularly interested in how artists from the postcolonies and the global south are reshaping late modernism by refusing its most cherished assumptions, its hierarchies and its dogmas.

At RISD Maltz-Leca teaches large lecture courses on global modernism and contemporary art and leads focused seminars on materiality, process, race, critical theory and the artist’s lecture. Her MFA seminar, The Gradual Contemporary, brings a range of artists, art historians, and critics to RISD to share with students their divergent takes on the contemporary.

Maltz-Leca has written—especially on contemporary African art—for publications such as Artforum, Frieze, African Arts, Art South Africa, ArteEast as well as Art Bulletin, where she is a member of the journal’s editorial board. Before turning to art history, she worked in corporate law and in the international sales and design sectors of the fashion industry. For some recent writing, see her remembrance of David Goldblatt and a short consideration of Pascale Marthine Tayou’s chocolate abstractions.

Maltz-Leca holds undergraduate degrees in painting and in philosophy, a background that continues to shape her interest in the stakes of studio materials and processes: both the pragmatics of making and unmaking, and the metaphorics of artistic process as a form of mental processing. Her book on William Kentridge, Process as Metaphor & Other Doubtful Enterprises (University of California Press, 2018), explores how the South African artist renders the physical processes of the studio—cutting, pasting and projecting light—as metaphors for the way we think and live. Her second book (also an upcoming exhibition) titled Material Politics: Matter and Meaning In and Out of the Postcolonies continues to explore the politics embedded in material choices, addressing how a range of contemporary artists plumb the histories and associations of specific substances to materialize the political through their formal.

Maltz-Leca’s curatorial and public projects have been funded by the Ford Foundation (2018), the VIA Foundation (2018), and the Robert Lehmann Foundation (2017). Her writing has been supported by a 2016 CAA Millard Mess publication award, a 2011 Creative Capital/Andy Warhol Foundation Arts Writer’s book award, a 2011/12 Getty Postdoctoral Fellowship and a 2010 Library of Congress Swann fellowship for animation.

In 2017 Maltz-Leca founded the Redwood Contemporary Arts Initiative at Newport’s Redwood Library & Athenaeum, the oldest subscription library and the first public Neoclassical building in the US, and the original American multidisciplinary think-space. Renewing the premise that art and text depend on one another—and that what artists read remains central to what they make—the RCAI organizes lectures, symposia and exhibitions, and partners with other Newport organizations, such as Art & Newport. In June 2018, to launch the Material Politics initiative, the RCAI commissioned Newport’s first slavery memorial from Pascale Marthine Tayou. (See Artdailyorg and Artscope for selected 2017 press coverage.)

Recent essays include “The Politics of Collaboration: Drowning the Piano and Other Southern Tales” in the 2016 Routledge volume Collaborative Art in the Twenty-First Century and “The Politics of Excess” for Worldshare, Pascale Martine Tayou’s 2016 exhibition at the Fowler Museum, UCLA. “Grounding Robin Rhode” explored the artist’s ambivalent relationship to ground—both formal and geographic—on the occasion of his 2014 retrospective at the Neuberger Museum, NY, and “Specters of the Original and the Liberties of Repetition,” African Arts (winter 2013) treats the politics of nude female resistance in postcolonial Africa.

Maltz-Leca’s writings on William Kentridge include “Process/Procession: William Kentridge and the Process of ChangeArt Bulletin (March 2013) and “Thinking about the Forest and the Trees: William Kentridge’s Second-Hand Reading” Invisible Culture (2014). She has also written on South African photography: on Guy Tillim for ArteEast, on David Goldblatt, Santu Mofokeng, and Alfred Kumalo for Artforum, on “Lyric Documentary” for Art South Africa, on Malick Sidibé, Marlene Dumas and other artists for Artforum, and on Paul Stopforth for Taxi.

Courses

Fall 2023 Courses

GRAD 148G-01 / PAINT 148G-01 - PROCESSING THE CONTEMPORARY: CONVERSATIONS IN CONTEMPORARY ART
Level Graduate
Unit Theory + History of Art + Design
Subject Graduate Studies Painting
Period Fall 2023
Credits 3
Format Seminar
Mode In-Person
Start date
End date

GRAD 148G-01 / PAINT 148G-01

PROCESSING THE CONTEMPORARY: CONVERSATIONS IN CONTEMPORARY ART

Level Graduate
Unit Theory + History of Art + Design
Subject Graduate Studies Painting
Period Fall 2023
Credits 3
Format Seminar
Mode In-Person
Start and End 2023-09-06 to 2023-12-13
Times: F | 1:10 PM - 4:10 PM Instructor(s): Leora Maltz-Leca Location(s): College Building, Room 346 Enrolled / Capacity: 20 Status: Open

SECTION DESCRIPTION

This course frames contemporary art as a set of conversations, arguments and counterarguments that have been proposed in key exhibitions, works of art, and critical writings produced across multiple continents over the past three decades. We will identify and critique the ideas that have shaped contemporary art, discuss their impetus, and examine their assumptions. Through such conversations, the course presents contemporary art as a form of processing a present and a past in which the artwork is indivisible from the dialogues and conversations that create, define and continue to change it. The title of the class alludes not only to the idea of making and reading contemporary art as cognitive, rhetorical and dialogic activities, but also to the art world as a series of geographically dispersed and temporally promiscuous processes, deeply resistant to modernist systems of order, periodization and mapping. The course combines lectures by the instructor, as well as by visiting critics and art historians, which outline some of the key issues and historical pressures of contemporary art, alongside seminar-type discussions where we process the lectures and select readings as a group.

This is a co-requisite course. Students must register for PAINT-148G/GRAD-148G and GRAD-248G.

Please contact the instructor for permission to register; registration is not available in Workday. Preference is given to Graduate Students.


Elective

GRAD 148G-01 / PAINT 148G-01 - PROCESSING THE CONTEMPORARY: CONVERSATIONS IN CONTEMPORARY ART
Level Graduate
Unit Theory + History of Art + Design
Subject Graduate Studies Painting
Period Fall 2023
Credits 3
Format Seminar
Mode In-Person
Start date
End date

GRAD 148G-01 / PAINT 148G-01

PROCESSING THE CONTEMPORARY: CONVERSATIONS IN CONTEMPORARY ART

Level Graduate
Unit Theory + History of Art + Design
Subject Graduate Studies Painting
Period Fall 2023
Credits 3
Format Seminar
Mode In-Person
Start and End 2023-09-06 to 2023-12-13
Times: F | 1:10 PM - 4:10 PM Instructor(s): Leora Maltz-Leca Location(s): College Building, Room 346 Enrolled / Capacity: 20 Status: Open

SECTION DESCRIPTION

This course frames contemporary art as a set of conversations, arguments and counterarguments that have been proposed in key exhibitions, works of art, and critical writings produced across multiple continents over the past three decades. We will identify and critique the ideas that have shaped contemporary art, discuss their impetus, and examine their assumptions. Through such conversations, the course presents contemporary art as a form of processing a present and a past in which the artwork is indivisible from the dialogues and conversations that create, define and continue to change it. The title of the class alludes not only to the idea of making and reading contemporary art as cognitive, rhetorical and dialogic activities, but also to the art world as a series of geographically dispersed and temporally promiscuous processes, deeply resistant to modernist systems of order, periodization and mapping. The course combines lectures by the instructor, as well as by visiting critics and art historians, which outline some of the key issues and historical pressures of contemporary art, alongside seminar-type discussions where we process the lectures and select readings as a group.

This is a co-requisite course. Students must register for PAINT-148G/GRAD-148G and GRAD-248G.

Please contact the instructor for permission to register; registration is not available in Workday. Preference is given to Graduate Students.


Elective

GRAD 248G-01 - ART CRITICISM WORKSHOP
Level Graduate
Unit Theory + History of Art + Design
Subject Graduate Studies
Period Fall 2023
Credits 3
Format Workshop
Mode In-Person
Start date
End date

GRAD 248G-01

ART CRITICISM WORKSHOP

Level Graduate
Unit Theory + History of Art + Design
Subject Graduate Studies
Period Fall 2023
Credits 3
Format Workshop
Mode In-Person
Start and End 2023-09-06 to 2023-12-13
Times: F | 9:40 AM - 12:40 PM Instructor(s): Leora Maltz-Leca Location(s): College Building, Room 346 Enrolled / Capacity: 20 Status: Open

SECTION DESCRIPTION

This “practicum” workshop in criticism and critique comprises a series of studios with visiting critics, curators, art historians and artists attached to the Graduate Studies course “Conversations in Contemporary Art” (GRAD-148G/PAINT-148G). We will discuss key readings and debates in contemporary art by testing them on individual works of art, as well as the logistics of art criticism as the interface  between ideas and their material resistance. Students in Fine Arts and Liberal arts will have a chance to discuss or write on theirs and others’ work and to practice various kinds of art criticism. In previous years, visiting critics have included curators Rujeko Hockley and Jane Panetta, Lynn Cooke, Chrissie Iles, Claire Bishop and others. For details of past guests click here.

This is a co-requisite course. Students must register for PAINT-148G/GRAD-148G and GRAD-248G.

Please contact the instructor for permission to register; registration is not available in Workday. Preference is given to Graduate students.


Elective

Spring 2024 Courses

GAC 798G-01 - PROSPECTUS SEMINAR
Level Graduate
Unit Liberal Arts
Subject Global Arts And Cultures
Period Spring 2024
Credits 3
Format Seminar
Mode In-Person
Start date
End date

GAC 798G-01

PROSPECTUS SEMINAR

Level Graduate
Unit Liberal Arts
Subject Global Arts And Cultures
Period Spring 2024
Credits 3
Format Seminar
Mode In-Person
Start and End 2024-02-15 to 2024-05-24
Times: F | 9:40 AM - 12:40 PM Instructor(s): Leora Maltz-Leca Location(s): College Building, Room 301 Enrolled / Capacity: 15 Status: Open

SECTION DESCRIPTION

Provides guidance through the process of devising, writing and revising the prospectus that will govern their Master's Thesis. Students will develop the prospectus through in-depth research into a topic of their choice, regular submission of written work, feedback from peers and faculty, and revision of written work. Readings and discussion will provide additional structure to the course. At the end of the semester, students will submit the prospectus to the First and Second Readers of the MA Committee. Acceptance of the prospectus is a requirement for continuing to GAC-799G: Thesis.

Enrollment is limited to Global Arts and Cultures Students.

Major Requirement | MA Global Arts and Cultures

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BA, Yale University
MA, Brown University
MA, Harvard University
PHD, Harvard University