Sean Nesselrode Moncada

Associate Professor
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Sean Nesselrode Moncada
BA, Swarthmore College
MA, New York University
PHD, New York University

Sean Nesselrode Moncada (he/him) is an historian of Latin American and Latinx art, architecture and visual culture. His research focuses on visual and material modernisms, their uneven implementation across the hemisphere and their contested social and ecological dimensions. In his courses, he invites students to consider how images proliferate and behave in the world, encouraging an expanded view of what constitutes artistic production and who merits inclusion in our received histories.

Nesselrode Moncada is author of Refined Material: Petroculture and Modernity (University of California Press, 2023), which examines the material, spatial and theoretical development of Venezuelan modernisms through the lens of petroleum extraction and refinement. He is currently at work on an edited anthology of the poetry of the dissident artist collective El Techo de la Ballena; a project that deals with the relationship between informalism, archaeology and materiality in 1960s Venezuela; and another that considers ecologies of bodily performance in Venezuelan conceptual and experimental media art of the 1970s–80s.

He has published on subjects including the relationship between art and design in the work of Gego, the politics of midcentury geometric abstraction in South America and the visual legacies of settler colonialism in contemporary art. His writings and reviews have appeared in numerous journals including Architectural Theory Review, Caiana: Revista de Historia del Arte y Cultura Visual del Centro Argentino de Investigadores de Arte, Hemisphere: Visual Cultures of the Americas and Latin American and Latinx Visual Culture.

Academic areas of interest

Modern and contemporary art and visual culture of the Americas; Environment, ecology and extractivism; Global art history and its discontents; Border crossings and diasporas; Materiality and materialisms; Decolonization

Courses

Fall 2023 Courses

THAD H101-01 - THAD I: GLOBAL MODERNISMS
Level Undergraduate
Unit Theory + History of Art + Design
Subject Theory & History of Art & Design
Period Fall 2023
Credits 3
Format Lecture
Mode In-Person
Start date
End date

THAD H101-01

THAD I: GLOBAL MODERNISMS

Level Undergraduate
Unit Theory + History of Art + Design
Subject Theory & History of Art & Design
Period Fall 2023
Credits 3
Format Lecture
Mode In-Person
Start and End 2023-09-06 to 2023-12-13
Times: W | 9:40 AM - 11:10 AM; TTH | 11:20 AM - 12:20 PM Instructor(s): Sean Nesselrode Moncada Location(s): Washington Place, Room 310; Auditorium, Room 132 Enrolled / Capacity: 20 Status: Closed

SECTION DESCRIPTION

This is a required course for all first year and transfer students to introduce them to global modern and contemporary art, architecture and design in the period between 1750 and the present. The course addresses modernism as a global project, presenting several case studies from across the world that unfold to show how multiple kinds of modernism developed in different times and distant places. By presenting alternate, sometimes contradictory stories about modern and contemporary art and design, along with a set of critical terms specific to these times and places, the class aims to foster a rich, complex understanding of the many narratives that works of art and design can tell. With this grounding, students will be well positioned to pursue their interests in specialized courses in subsequent semesters. 
 
Registration process: First-year students are registered into sections by the Liberal Arts Division.
Transfer and sophomore and above students should register into the evening section offered in the fall. 
 
For schedule conflicts during lecture times, please contact the Academic Programs Coordinator in the Liberal Arts Division office. For issues with registration, contact the Registrar's office for assistance. 
 

Major Requirement | BFA

THAD H101-02 - THAD I: GLOBAL MODERNISMS
Level Undergraduate
Unit Theory + History of Art + Design
Subject Theory & History of Art & Design
Period Fall 2023
Credits 3
Format Lecture
Mode In-Person
Start date
End date

THAD H101-02

THAD I: GLOBAL MODERNISMS

Level Undergraduate
Unit Theory + History of Art + Design
Subject Theory & History of Art & Design
Period Fall 2023
Credits 3
Format Lecture
Mode In-Person
Start and End 2023-09-06 to 2023-12-13
Times: TTH | 11:20 AM - 12:20 PM; W | 11:20 AM - 12:50 PM Instructor(s): Sean Nesselrode Moncada Location(s): Auditorium, Room 132; Washington Place, Room 310 Enrolled / Capacity: 20 Status: Closed

SECTION DESCRIPTION

This is a required course for all first year and transfer students to introduce them to global modern and contemporary art, architecture and design in the period between 1750 and the present. The course addresses modernism as a global project, presenting several case studies from across the world that unfold to show how multiple kinds of modernism developed in different times and distant places. By presenting alternate, sometimes contradictory stories about modern and contemporary art and design, along with a set of critical terms specific to these times and places, the class aims to foster a rich, complex understanding of the many narratives that works of art and design can tell. With this grounding, students will be well positioned to pursue their interests in specialized courses in subsequent semesters. 
 
Registration process: First-year students are registered into sections by the Liberal Arts Division.
Transfer and sophomore and above students should register into the evening section offered in the fall. 
 
For schedule conflicts during lecture times, please contact the Academic Programs Coordinator in the Liberal Arts Division office. For issues with registration, contact the Registrar's office for assistance. 
 

Major Requirement | BFA

THAD H217-01 - NEO-VANGUARDS
Level Undergraduate
Unit Theory + History of Art + Design
Subject Theory & History of Art & Design
Period Fall 2023
Credits 3
Format Lecture
Mode In-Person
Start date
End date

THAD H217-01

NEO-VANGUARDS

Level Undergraduate
Unit Theory + History of Art + Design
Subject Theory & History of Art & Design
Period Fall 2023
Credits 3
Format Lecture
Mode In-Person
Start and End 2023-09-06 to 2023-12-13
Times: T | 1:10 PM - 4:10 PM Instructor(s): Sean Nesselrode Moncada Location(s): Washington Place, Room 302 Enrolled / Capacity: 25 Status: Open

SECTION DESCRIPTION

The neo-avant-garde, neo-vanguardias, the expanded field, la escena de avanzada: the 1950s-70s saw the explosion of new theories and practices that challenged the boundaries of art and the relationship between art and society. This course takes a hemispheric approach to the major trends of this volatile period, in which artists across the Americas reckoned with the fallout of the Second World War by seeking to rebuild, reinvent, or reject the legacy of the pre-war or historical avant-gardes. Key movements that will be considered include various strains of geometric, gestural, and kinetic abstraction; assemblage, bricolage, and the legacy of the readymade; the ascendance of Pop; Minimalism and Post-Minimalist sculpture; and the turn to happenings, performance, and conceptual art. How did such a divergent array of tendencies erupt seemingly at once, and how did they seek to intervene in everyday life? We will consider the contested definition of the avant-garde, its legitimacy and limits in the postwar Americas, and whether there can still be an avant-garde today. Weekly readings will include artist writings and manifestos, contemporary criticism, and theories of the avant-garde. Students will be expected to engage in active and informed discussion, deliver weekly presentations, and write a final paper.

Open to Sophomore, Junior, Senior or Graduate Students.

Elective

Spring 2024 Courses

THAD H351-01 - CARIBBEAN ONTOLOGIES
Level Undergraduate
Unit Theory + History of Art + Design
Subject Theory & History of Art & Design
Period Spring 2024
Credits 3
Format Seminar
Mode In-Person
Start date
End date

THAD H351-01

CARIBBEAN ONTOLOGIES

Level Undergraduate
Unit Theory + History of Art + Design
Subject Theory & History of Art & Design
Period Spring 2024
Credits 3
Format Seminar
Mode In-Person
Start and End 2024-02-15 to 2024-05-24
Times: T | 1:10 PM - 4:10 PM Instructor(s): Sean Nesselrode Moncada Location(s): College Building, Room 410 Enrolled / Capacity: 15 Status: Closed

SECTION DESCRIPTION

Cuban writer Antonio Benítez-Rojo famously qualified the Caribbean as a region defined by "chaos"—chaos as an historical, material, and ontological condition. Famously difficult to define, the Caribbean exists as an archipelago both literally, in its geographic composition of several chains of islands and a continental basin; and metaphorically, as distinct but complex ontology that has been shaped by histories of colonization, genocide, enslavement, hybridity, liberation, revolution, and ecological crisis. Taking chaos as a theoretical framework, this seminar examines Caribbean ontologies through the region's visual and material cultures, from before the Conquest to the present day. It will proceed thematically, engaging with a wide variety of artistic, literary, cinematic, musical, and historical material. Topics of discussion will include socioecological theories of transculturation and opacity, Black and Indigenous strategies of survival and resistance, the allure and the threat of tropicality, the contested history of Revolution, religious and spiritual syncretism, and the presence of water as both boundary and connective tissue. We will consider how chaos, transculturation, and opacity offer productive vocabularies and decolonial methodologies—and whether there even is a singular "Caribbean" at all.

Open to Sophomore, Junior, Senior or Graduate Students.

Elective

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Sean Nesselrode Moncada
BA, Swarthmore College
MA, New York University
PHD, New York University