Hannah Ryan

Hannah Ryan is Assistant Professor of Modern and Contemporary Art at St. Olaf College, in Northfield, Minnesota. Having completed her Ph.D. in Art History and Visual Studies at Cornell University in 2019, she holds an M.A. in Art History, a B.F.A. in Studio Art, and a B.A. in Humanities from the University of Colorado.

Hannah’s areas of research include modern and contemporary arts of the African diaspora, Transatlantic visual culture, intersectional feminism, and women artists. With a decolonial and feminist perspective, her work engages with issues of race and gender through theories of consumption, labor, recuperation, and care – particularly as they intersect with maternity. Her dissertation, Liquid Gold, traces lactation as labor, and human milk as commodity, in the visual culture of the Transatlantic.

With a professional background in the museum field, Hannah has served in outreach positions at the Johnson Museum of Art (NY), the Norton Museum of Art (FL), and the Smithsonian National Portrait Gallery (Washington DC), and curated exhibitions on Coco Fusco and Ana Mendieta. She is currently curating an exhibition on the abstract works of Chandra McCormick and Keith Calhoun, photographs altered by the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina and recently reprinted.