Michael Orwicz

Co-Chair, Research Program on Arts & Human Rights

Associate Professor, Art History

Michael R. Orwicz is Associate Professor of Art History. He received his Ph.D. from the University of California, Los Angeles. His research addresses three fields:

Human Rights and Visual Culture:
Dr. Orwicz is a founding member of the Symbolic Reparations Research Project (SRRP), which analyzes the role of art and aesthetic memorialization in symbolic reparations for victims-survivors of human rights violations in the Americas. The SRRP provides best practice recommendations and interpretive guidance on the use of art in conceptualizing and implementing programs for symbolic reparation, in accordance with the norms of international human rights. Dr. Orwicz researches the role of visual culture and media in shaping a contemporary politics of human rights and humanitarianism. His publications include:

• “In Re: Communication 22/2009 L.C. v Peru,” Technical Opinion co-authored with Symbolic Reparations Research Project (SRRP) submitted to United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination Against Women (2015).
• “Guidelines on the Use of Art in Symbolic Reparations,” co-authored with Symbolic Reparations Research Project (SRRP), to be submitted to Inter-American Court of Human Rights (forthcoming 2016).
• “Memory, Testimony and Violence: Documents of Endless War,” in L. Rexer, ed., Jesús Abad Colorado, Photography and Violence in Colombia, Harvard University Press (forthcoming 2017).
• “The Aesthetics of the Human and the Question of the Perpetrator in Symbolic Reparations,” London School of Economics (forthcoming, 2016)
• “Problemas de memorialización: el caso Campo Algodonero v México,” in Y. Sierra, ed., Reparación simbólica a las víctimas de violación de derechos humanos, Universidad Externado de Colombia (forthcoming, 2016)
• “Conflict Photography,” CAAreviews online (2016)
• “The Pathology of Empire,” Boundary2, vol.35, no.1 (2008)

The Social History of Art:
Dr. Orwicz’s second scholarly project concerns the ideological and historical development of social art history in Europe and the US. His publications include:

• “L’oeuvre d’art et son autonomie face à l’histoire: Jan Gerrit Van Gelder,” Histoire sociale de l’art: une anthologie critique, 1930-1990, R.Froissart et al., eds., INHA, Paris (2016).
• “Arnold Hauser,” in M. Kelly, ed., Encyclopedia of Aesthetics, Oxford University Press (2014).
• “Nicos Hadjinicolaou and the Revision of Marxist Art History,” in Y. Hadjinicolaou, ed., ΔΙΑΔΡΟΜΕΣ, Πανεπιστήμιο Ρέθυμνο (2013).
• “Class and Political Agency: Marxist Art History and the New Left in the US,” Kunst und Politik, no. 12 (2010).

Nineteenth-Century France:
Dr. Orwicz also researches visual art and institutional politics in early Third Republic France (1871-1900), focusing on the role of art and visual culture in the formation of regional and national identities. In addition to his edited book, Art Criticism and its Institutions in 19th Century France (Manchester University Press, 1994), his publications include:

• “Paul Gauguin et la dialectique spatio-temporelle de la modernité, in F.Cousiné, ed., L’Impressionism: du Plein-Air au territoire, Actes de Colloque, Presses Université de Rouen (2013).
• “Art, Etat et Ideologies aux XIXe et XXe siècles,” Perspective, La revue de l’INHA no. 2 (2012).
• “Nationalism and Representation, in Theory,” in J. Hargrove & N. McWilliam, eds. Nationalism and French Visual Culture, 1870-1914, Washington D.C.: National Gallery (2004).

Dr. Orwicz has held Fellowships and Visiting Professorships at MIT, University College London, and Yale University. During the 1980s, he was a card-carrying member of L’Association Histoire et Critique des Arts, and editorial board member of its journal Histoire et Critique des Arts. He was also part of the research team Etudes sur le Statue Sociale de l’Artiste, (University of Paris) and a member of the research project L’Art et l’Ecriture at the Centre Nationale de la Recherche Scientifique (CNRS).  He has served on the editorial boards of Cahiers des Arts et des Artistes and the Oxford Art Journal.