Dr. Tina Rivers Ryan is a curator specializing in art from the 1960s to the present day, with a focus on the uses of new media technologies.
​She holds five degrees in art history, including a BA from Harvard and PhD from Columbia.

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Curator

In May 2017, Dr. Ryan joined the Albright-Knox Art Gallery in Buffalo, New York as Assistant Curator, where her projects include Introducing Tony Conrad: A Retrospective (opening March 2018) and Window to Wall: Art from Architecture. Previously, she was a Curatorial Assistant in the Department of Modern and Contemporary Art at The Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, where she worked on a half-dozen shows, including the major retrospective Lygia Pape: A Multitude of Forms and the postwar survey Delirious: Art at the Limits of Reason, 1950-1980. Before joining The Met, she held internships at MoMA PS1, the New Museum, and the ICA Boston, among other institutions. Her writing has been commissioned for catalog essays and research projects by museums including The Met, the Walker Art Center, the Albright-Knox, and the Tate.

Critic

Since 2013, Dr. Ryan has worked as an art critic, writing primarily for Artforum and focusing on the field of new media. The artists whose shows she has reviewed include Pipilotti Rist, Simon Denny, Ed Atkins, Jon Rafman, Cory Arcangel, and Stan Douglas. Other texts, including interviews, obituaries, and essays, have appeared in Art in America, Even, and Document.

Historian

Dr. Ryan's research 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 has presented her work at the annual conferences of the College Art Association and Modernist Studies Association; at professional conferences in Canada and Germany; and at graduate student conferences from Los Angeles to Toronto. In the 2016-17 academic year, she gave invited lectures at the University of Notre Dame, NYU, and the University of St. Andrews. ​Her first 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.

Educator and Public Speaker

An experienced educator, Dr. Ryan has taught courses on contemporary art at Columbia University, the Pratt Institute, and the Museum of Modern Art. As a professional public speaker, she has offered lectures on art to adults in more than thirty cities across the country. She also lectures at corporate and social events. For private bookings, please contact her agent, Cassidy & Fishman.