TINA RIVERS RYAN

Photo: Ryan Arthurs

Tina Rivers Ryan is internationally renowned as one of the leading experts on contemporary art and art history. Throughout her career, she has worked with many of the world's most important art institutions; most recently, she served as Editor in Chief of Artforum, helming the global editorial operations of this industry-leading contemporary art publication. Prior to joining Artforum, she held curatorial positions at the Buffalo AKG Art Museum (where she was a curator from 2017 to 2024) and The Metropolitan Museum of Art (where she was a curatorial researcher from 2014 to 2017).

Dr. Ryan holds five degrees in art history, including a BA from Harvard and PhD from Columbia. Although broadly trained in Western art, her particular expertise is in the field of media art, including video, digital, and internet art.

Her honors as a curator, critic, and editor include:
- Association of Art Museum Curators Award for Excellence (2022)
- Andy Warhol Foundation Arts Writers Grant (2022)
- Artnet Innovators List (2022)
- Observer Business of Art Power List (2024)

Critic

Since 2013, Dr. Ryan has actively worked as an art critic, writing primarily for Artforum. Her essays also have appeared in Art in America, Art Review, The Brooklyn Rail, Spike, Broadcast, Even, and Document, among other publications, as well as in publications from many leading museums, including the Walker Art Center in Minneapolis, Dia in New York, the Tate Modern in London, and Pirelli HangarBicocca in Milan. She is particularly known for highlighting current topics in media art, from the politics of glitch to NFTs. As a recognized expert on digital art, she has been interviewed for articles from publications including The New York Times, the Boston Globe, The Guardian, The Atlantic, ARTnews, Artnet, Cultured, Apollo, and Aperture.

Curator

As Curator at the Buffalo AKG Art Museum in Buffalo, New York, Dr. Ryan was responsible for organizing exhibitions and facilitating acquisitions of modern and contemporary art. Between 2017 and 2024, she curated or contributed to ten exhibitions, including Electric Op (which traveled to the Musée d'art de Nantes in France), Peer to Peer (the first US museum survey of artists engaged with blockchain technologies), and (with Paul Vanouse) Difference Machines: Technology and Identity in Contemporary Art (winner of the 2022 Award for Excellence from AAMC). Previously, she was a Curatorial Assistant in the Department of Modern and Contemporary Art at The Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York and held internships at MoMA PS1, the New Museum, and the ICA Boston, among other institutions.

Educator and Public Speaker

An experienced educator, Dr. Ryan has taught undergraduate, graduate, and adult learner courses at Columbia University, New York University, the Pratt Institute, The Museum of Modern Art, and the University at Buffalo. She also has been invited to give guest talks and seminars at dozens of universities internationally, ranging from Harvard to the University of St. Andrews to Heinrich Heine University in Düsseldorf. She drew on her experience as an educator to co-host the top-ranked podcast Art History Happy Hour (which ran from 2014-2016 under the name "State of the Arts"). As a professional public speaker, she has offered accessible, entertaining lectures on art to tens of thousands of people over the internet and in more than fifty cities internationally. For private bookings for virtual and in-person corporate and social events, please use the Contact page.

Historian

Dr. Ryan's writing has appeared in academic journals (such as Art Journal and Framework: The Journal of Cinema and Media), as well as in anthologies from university presses. She also has presented her work at conferences from Los Angeles to Karlsruhe. From 2020 to 2024 she served on the Editorial Board of Media-N, the Journal of the New Media Caucus. Her current book project, “McLuhan’s Bulbs: Light Art and the Dawn of New Media,” examines the light art of the 1960s as a fulcrum between the discourses of “medium" and “media” in postwar art. Her research generally foregrounds the relationship between technology and the body, informed by her own experience of disability.