Darla Migan - Curriculum Vitae
Department of Philosophy
Stony Brook University
Stony Brook, NY 11794
(631) 632-7570
Email: darla.migan@stonybrook.edu
Website: https://darlanyc.com/
EDUCATION
Ph.D. in Philosophy, Vanderbilt University, Nashville, TN, May 2021
Dissertation: Orienting Authentic Judgments: Adrian Piper’s Contributions to Black Aesthetics
Master of Arts in Philosophy, SUNY Stony Brook, Stony Brook, NY, May 2012
Thesis: The Confessions of Augustine’s Flesh
Bachelor of Arts in Politics (Law & Society), Oberlin College, Oberlin, OH, May 2005
PROFESSIONAL EMPLOYMENT
Post-Doctoral Fellow/Lecturer, Stony Brook University, 2025 - Present
Lecturer, The New School for Social Research, 2021 - 2024
Art Critic 2017 - Present
Instructor of Record, Vanderbilt University, 2013 - 2016
Curator 2011 - Present
FELLOWSHIPS & AWARDS
Scholar-in-Residence, Arts Center Residency 2026
Lower Manhattan Cultural Council, Governors Island, New York, NY
PRODIG+ Post-Doctoral Fellowship 2025 - 2027
State University of New York, Stony Brook, NY
The Rabkin Prize 2023
The Dorothea and Leo Rabkin Foundation, Portland, ME
ArtTable Fellowship 2023
The Morgan Library and Museum, New York, NY
Helena Rubinstein Fellowship in Critical Studies 2021 - 2022
The Independent Study Program, Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, NY
The Andy Warhol Foundation Arts Writers Grant 2021
Grantee in Short form Writing, New York, NY
Graduate Research Fellowship 2017 - 2018
John F. Kennedy Institute for North American Studies
Freie Universität, Berlin, Germany
Graduate Teaching Fellowship 2012 - 2017
Vanderbilt University, Nashville, TN
ARTICLES
“The Nameless Hedge: An Imperial Museum at Its End,” Space on Space Magazine, October 2026 (forthcoming)
“Critic-Dealer,” Mutt Art Review, July 2025 July 2025, 26.
“On Lynching and Light,” Brooklyn Rail, June 2025, 50.
“Hugh Hayden Dismantles the Architecture of the American Dream,” Boston Art Review, May 2025.
“Type Cast,” Film, Artforum, March 2025, 23.
“Modern is How My Mother Made Me: The Harlem Renaissance and Transatlantic Modernism” Topical Cream, October 24, 2024.
“Wangechi Mutu’s Intertwined,” Artforum, October 2023, 176.
Abigail DeVille’s Bronx Heavens, Artforum, April 2023, 164.
“The Soft Syncretism of Tau Lewis,” MOMUS, March 15, 2023.
“In His Curatorial Debut, Artist Jared Owens Finds New Possibilities for Justice and Freedom,” Artsy, November 29, 2022.
“ ‘'There's This Illusion That It's an Equalizer': Artist and Director Martine Syms on the Myths of an MFA Education” Artnet News, October 24, 2022.
“An American Modernist Experiment: Darla Migan on Jacob Lawrence at the Phillips Collection, Washington, DC,” Texte Zur Kunst, December 2021, 146.
“What Happened in the Art Market During the Real Roaring ’20s ? History Offers Some Lessons as We Enter Another Decade of Decadence,” Artnet News, Fall 2021.
“Period Rooms Usually Glorify the Aristocracy,” ArtNet News, November 15, 2021.
“Stacy Lynn Waddell’s Mettle,” Brooklyn Rail, October 2021.
“The Nine Best Booths at Art Basel 2021: From a Monumental Nari Ward to Pauline Curnier Jardin’s Theater of Intimacy” Art News, September 25, 2021.
“Review: Operation Varsity Blues at Allouche Gallery,” Sugarcane Magazine, June 2021.
“J Stoner Blackwell & Masamitsu Shigeta at Situations Gallery,” Brooklyn Rail, May 2021.
“Participant Observers: Working Together—The Photographers of the Kamoinge Workshop” Art in America, May/June 2021, 107.
“Marking Time: Art in the Age of Mass Incarceration at MoMA PS.1,” Brooklyn Rail, March 2021, 62.
“Legacy Russell’s Glitch-y Cybersomatics: A Fourth Wave Feminist Manifesto,” Spike Magazine, November 18, 2020.
“Akeem Smith’s No Gyal Can Test,” Brooklyn Rail, November 2020.
“Art Dealers are Notorious for Obscuring Prices. But as the Market Shifts Online, Many Are Finally Embracing Price Transparency,” Artnet News, October 19, 2020.
“Brown’s A Color, Black is Not: ecofeminism(s)’s Anti-Intersectional Feminism and the Use and Abuse of Diversity” Brooklyn Rail, July/August 2020.
“Things on Walls at New Discretions,” Brooklyn Rail, May 2020.
“Julie Mehretu’s Seismic Cartographies,” Cultured Magazine, February 2019.
“Looking But Not Seeing, Faith Ringgold at Weiss Berlin Gallery,” Texte Zur Kunst, September 2018, 170.
INVITED CONFERENCES
“Speculative Documentary and Parasocial Surveillance: Seeking Mavis Beacon”
Fifth Annual Symposium of the International Society for Philosophy in Film, London, August 20-22, 2026
“Black Care Makers of the Global Commons: ‘Wages Against Housework’ Revisited”
Ninth Annual International Conference of the Society for Italian Philosophy June-19-21, 2026
“On Dana Schutz's Open Casket: The Hermeneutics of Abstraction, Mimetic Gestures, and the Networked Politics of (Artworld) Representation, (Revised with Tutor Dr. Yve-Alain Bois), Critical Studies Symposium,
Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, NY, June 22, 2022
“On Dana Schutz’s Open Casket: The Hermeneutics of Abstraction, Mimetic Gestures, Memes, and the Networked Politics of (Artworld) Representation,” (Respondent: Dr. James Haile, III) American Society for Aesthetics, Phoenix, Arizona, Oct 9-12, 2019
“Net Artist Jon Rafman’s Ethnography of Virtual World Reality”
Annual Meeting, 76th Annual Meeting, American Society for Aesthetics
Toronto, Canada, October 10-13, 2018
“Orienting Imagination: Sensus Communis, Self-Deceit, and Racism”
Kant and Racism: Workshop with Lucy Allais, Ludwig-Maximilians Universität, Munich June 20, 2018
“Cosmopolitanism, Cultural Difference, and Kant’s Categorical Imperative”
Lecture and Class Discussion at the John F. Kennedy School, Berlin, Germany, April 26, 2018
“Priming Freedom: Kultur and Moral Character in Kant’s Lectures on Pedagogy”
Wits Philosophy Research Seminar, Department of Philosophy, University of the Witwatersrand
Johannesburg, South Africa, October 10, 2016
“Adrian Piper’s Thwarted Projects, Dashed Hopes, A Moment of Embarrassment (2012):
Anti-Black Racism as Mistakes in Kantian Aesthetic Reflective Judgment”
Kanthropology: Kant’s Anthropology and its Legacy, 2016 Graduate Conference (CRMEP)
Kingston University, London, May 19-20, 2016
“On Thinking Distortions between Anthropology and Teleology:
Reification of Racialism and the Regressive Character of Critical Social Theory of Society”
Ninth Annual Critical Theory Conference, John Felice Rome Center, Loyola University Chicago
Rome, May 5-7, 2016
“Race in the Turn from De-structuring Ontology to Overcoming Metaphysics: Heidegger’s Authenticity and Be-ing Historical Thinking in the Artwork of Kara Walker” Modern European Philosophy and its Politics, Joint Conference for the Society for European Philosophy/Forum of European Philosophy
Centre for Research in Modern European Philosophy Kingston University, London, September 5_6, 2013.
“The Limits of Pure Aesthetic Reflective Judgment: Judgments of the Sublime for Occasioning Reflection on Moral Feeling,” IV Research Workshop of Identity, Memory, and Experience
Carlos III University, Madrid, June 20-22, 2012
“Remarks on Dr. Megan Craig’s “Wittgenstein: Color and Sense” (Draft)”
Wittgenstein: Jokes Pain & Color, A half-day conference and discussion, SBU Manhattan, New York,
October 28, 2011
“Co-opting Individuality, Aestheticizing Responsibility: A Poetics of Starbucks”
GRIDLOCK: 2011 Stony Brook University Department of Cultural Analysis and Theory Conference
A.C. Institute, New York, October 15, 2011
“The Event of Religious Conversion as Counter-Conducts Overwhelming to Pastoral Power:
The Secrets of Submission and Salvation in Augustine’s Confessions” Radical Foucault Conference
The Centre for Cultural Studies Research, University of East London, London, September
8-9, 2011
CURATED EXHIBITIONS
FOUND HER! FOUND HER! @ D A R L A | A group presentation of six artists marking the founding of the United States of America during the summer of the 250-year-old nation-state’s birthday. As the global super majority Black and Indigenous femmes continue to both reproduce the labor structure and lead the struggles against the patriarchal war machine’s race toward endless accumulation. Elsewhere Fair, Philadelphia, PA June 4-6, 2026
位 航 ANDY H. WEI @ D AR L A | 位 航 Andy H. Wei accidentally spent years living in Qingdao, when a visit to celebrate Chinese New Year in January 2020 turned into the mandatory quarantine in the international port city. An impromptu studio set up in his father’s tearoom solarium reflects feelings of being both existentially apart from home, yet closer to origins on the Yellow Sea coast. New Art Dealers Alliance, New York, NY May 7-11, 2025
WELCOME HOME @ VARIABLE TERMS | In the artist’s debut solo presentation Kevin Sparkowich reflects on the obsolescence of the imperial hero. After serving in the Middle East (CENTCOM) Sparkowich benefitted from the post-9/11 GI Bill to passionately take up the formal study of art. TD Bank North Curated Spotlight Section at New Art Dealers Alliance, Miami, FL December 3-7, 2024
KINETIC LULLABY @ VARIABLE TERMS | A group exhibition of eight artists working across the mediums of sound, printed word, painting, sculpture, and lens-based practices daring to dream through coding mythological powers that acknowledge tortuous labors and spiritual holism. New York Studio School’s DUMBO Gallery Brooklyn, NY, June 9-July 16, 2022
JUST LIE TO ME @ VARIABLE TERMS | Sebastien Pierre’s experimental solo exhibition features six hand-cut collaged prints by a professional graphic artist (off the clock). A screen-printed iteration of the eponymously titled collage work on archival paper continues to be shared in an IRL public-facing community exhibition in participation with the Black Art Sessions’ online group exhibition STRAIGHTLICK, May 2021-ongoing
LOOKS LIKE THAT @ CCS Bard | Co-curated Marieluise Hessel Collection exhibition including selection of artworks by Ida Applebroog, Tracey Baran, Lucas Blalock, Mark Bradford, Miguel Calderón, Eric Fischl, Nikki S. Lee, Rebecca Morgan, Pope.L, Daniela Rossell, Tunga, and Fred Wilson. Single-authored gallery essay for first-semester exhibition. Hessel Museum of Art, Bard College, Annandale-on-Hudson, NY, December 6-14, 2018
STILL LIFE? @ SBU | Fifth Annual State University of New York at Stonybrook (Philosophy & Art Conference Co-Curator of art exhibition and academic colloquia; fundraising, call for papers/artwork, review committee, selection of papers/artworks, panel scheduling, production, installation, and co-editing catalog. A.C. Institute
New York, NY, April 2012
MUSEUM & GALLERY PUBLICATIONS
“Cosmologyscape: Encoding Dreams for Collective Liberation” Wagner Foundation Art
Gallery, February 2026
“Madrigal: A Visual Tonic” Essay on Sanford Biggers, A Percent-for Commission at List Visual Arts Center
Massachusetts Institute of Technology, March 2025.
“To Dwell in Eons Unfurled” Catalogue Essay on Abigail DeVille’s In the Fullness of Time
Bowdoin College Museum of Art, 2024.
“Rindon Johnson’s Skin and Stain: Uneven Depths in A Study Below Surfaces” Catalogue Essay
Worldbuilding: Gaming and Art in the Digital Age, Julia Stoschek Foundation, Düsseldorf, Germany, June 2024.
“Cut Over Cross at the Black End Side” Catalogue Essay on Charisse Pearlina Weston
Studio Museum in Harlem, March 2024.
“Whither and Whence Modernity” Essay on Ian Mwesiga: Beyond the Edge of the World, FLAG, February 2024.
“The Posture of Beholding” in Fangor After Guggenheim, FANGOR Foundation, Warsaw, Poland, February 2024.
“Seeing Me Seeing You” Essay on Ligia Lewis’ 'study now steady,' Center for Art Research and Alliances, January 2024.
“Art as a Life of Faith” Essay in GROTTO Absolvent*innenausstellung, Städelschule, Frankfurt, Germany, July 2023.
“Politics as Usual,” Essay on Elzie Williams III, M23 Gallery, July 1- July 16, 2023.
“Soundings in the Spiral,” Essay on Jota Mombaça’s The Sinking Ship Prosperity, KADIST SF, February, 2023.
“A Soft Grid by Julia-Haft Candell,” Essay, Candice Madey Gallery, October 27-December 10, 2022.
“Pretty and Strange Man: Reflections on Docks by Moritz Krauth,” Essay, Artothek Koeln, July 14, 2022-August 27, 2022.
“Home Grown Ground,” Essay on Ian Mwesiga’s Breakfast on the Road, 2021, Flag Art Foundation, May11, 2022.
“A Poetics of the Glaze,” Essay on 2022 Knight Arts + Tech Fellow Ryan Kuo, ShiftSpace, March 2, 2022.
“To Make Bare the Shadow,” Essay on Diana Shpungin’s Always Begin at the End, Smack Mellon, February 2022.
“Entrails: The Guts of Jordan Strafer’s Video Art Aesthetics,” Essay on NO BAG, Participant Inc., January 2021.
“And in that Sense Annihilated,” Essay on Marley Freeman, Karma Gallery, October 2020.
“PFIMBI YEMA SHOKO: Pidgin Sighting Report #2315A-T15A,” Essay on Pyda (Liona) Nyariri’s
Every One Hundred Feet, The World Changes, Braunschweig, Germany, October 23- November 14, 2019.
“Thick Roots, Cool Rims,” Essay on Alex Becerra’s Waldeinsamkeit, Weiss Berlin/Printed Matter, June 2019.
Jacques (Pink and Purple Paintings for my Dad), Spencer Lewis, Harper’s, June 30, 2022.
A Coloured Story, Idowu Oluwaseun, GNYP Gallery Berlin, March 17, 2022.
The Girls by RIDIKKULUZ, Chela Mitchell Gallery/Medium Exchange Gallery, October 22, 2021.
Scott Kahn, Announcement of representation, Almine Rech Gallery, July 2021.
Last Call and Chinatown Paintings, Izzy Barber, James Fuentes Gallery, June 2020.
Night Pictures, Danny Gordon, James Fuentes Gallery, June 2020.
INVITED TALKS
Moderator, “Worlds as Medium” with artists Nouf Aliowaysir, Amelia Winger Bearskin, and Ryan Kuo
DEMO 2025, New Museum, June 4, 2025.
Readings and Conversation on censorship moderated by Ebony L. Haynes with Zoë Hopkins and Habiba Hopson Topical Cream Magazine, Amant Foundation, January 22, 2025.
Discussant, “Black Abstraction | Black Existentialism Roundtable,” Discussion with Dr. Lewis R. Gordon
Dr. Erich Kessel, Dr. Denise Murrell Institute of Fine Arts and Grey Gallery/New York University, April 16, 2024.
Panelist, The Poetics of Criticism, Leslie Lohman Gallery, December 16, 2022.
Discussion with Jota Mombaça on gallery exhibition The Sinking Ship Prosperity, Current 1Kadist
San Francisco, November 14, 2022.
Interview, Fred Wilson: The Archives, Pace Gallery, New York, NY, September-October 2022.
Discussion with Moritz Krauth, on gallery exhibition Docks, Artothek Koeln (online), August 8, 2022.
Moderator, The White West IV: Whose Universal? Haus der Kultern der Welt, Berlin Biennial 12
Akademie der Künste, Hanseatenweg, Berlin, Germany, July 2-3, 2022.
“Hogmawg: Making Home Together,” Lecture and Discussion on Aminah Brenda Lynn Robinson
with Dr. Terrance Dean Columbus Museum of Art (online) June 26, 2022.
Invited Discussant, Love and Rage: A Roundtable on bell hooks, November Magazine (online), March 2022.
Invited Critic, Doctor’s Hours for Visual & Multidisciplinary Artists
New York Foundation for the Arts (online), November 22, 2021.
Discussion with RIDIKKULUZ on gallery exhibition The Girls
Chela Mitchell Gallery/Mediums of Exchange Gallery, New York, NY, November 5, 2021.
“Restoration-as-Repair” Liste Discourse Project, Joinery, Liste Art Fair Basel, June-September 2021.
Invited Critic, In Conclusion: A Review of Reviews, Ep. 27 Montez Press Radio (online), July 31, 2021.
Guest Lecturer, “How to Become an International Art Critic in a Few Short Years”
Organized by Monika Baer and Graham Hamilton, Städelschule (online) July 15, 2021.
Invited Critic, Third-year BFA Exhibition, organized by Shane Aslan Selzer and Jordan Corine Cruz
Parsons School of Design (online), April 16, 2021.
Invited Critic, Film Programme, organized by Gerard Byrne and Jordan Martin, Städelschule, (online), April 14, 2021.
Invited Critic, Conversation with Bill Dietz on Maryanne Amacher, “Remote Links #6: Darla Migan on "Untitled note,”
in Remote Links: A Celebration of the Life and Work of Maryanne Amacher, The Maryanne Amacher Foundation
New York Public Library for The Performing Arts/Blank Forms Editions/Fundação de Serralves, January 2021.
Guest Lecturer, On Brown’s A Color Black is Not, Die Angewandte, Vienna (online), Dec 17, 2020.
Discussion with Jordan Strafer of the exhibition NO BAG, Participant Inc., (online) December 13, 2020.
Co-Moderator, Once More with Feeling…, New Wight Biennial with Luce de Lire, UCLA (online), October 17, 2020.
Discussion with manuel arturo abreu, Adrian Piper’s Thwarted Projects, Dashed Hopes, A Moment of Embarrassment (2012), Time-Based Art Festival, Portland Institute of Contemporary Art (online), September 18, 2020
Discussion with Curtis Santiago, Can’t I Alter, The Drawing Center (online), September 16, 2020
Facilitator, Arts Workers Anti-Racism Learning Group, Lecture and Discussion (online)
Session 1: Cheryl I. Harris’s “Whiteness as Property,” Harvard Law Review (1993), June 24, 2020
Session 2: Cheryl I. Harris’s “Whiteness as Property: A Twenty-Year Appraisal,” (2014) August 27, 2020.
“On Color” A Lecture with Amy Sillman and Darla Migan
The Cheapest University/After 8 Books Auditorium du Carreau du Temple, Paris, France, July 8, 2017.
PROFESSSIONAL ACTIVITIES
Jurist, Airspace Residency, presented in partnership with Artists Alliance Inc, April 2024.
Jurist, Workspace Residency Program, Penumbra Foundation, April 2023.
Jurist, Aminah Robinson 2023 Writer Scholar Researcher in Residence
Columbus Museum of Art, December 2022.
Selected Participant, “Rethinking Ideology” International Summer School Critical Theory
Humboldt Universität, Berlin, Germany, July 15-20, 2018.
Fellow, “The Cosmopolitan Nationalism of W.E.B. Du Bois” with Dr. Anthony K. Appiah,
The Institute for Critical Social Inquiry, The New School for Social Research
New York, NY, June 11-17, 2017.
Mellon Certificate in Humanities Education, Seminar and Practicum on college-level teaching
Vanderbilt University Center for Teaching, Nashville, TN, May 2016.
School of Criticism and Theory, “Scenes of Translation” with Dr. Souleymane Bachir Diagne
Cornell University, Ithaca, NY, June-July 2015.
Seminar Co-Chair, “Race, Gender and Kinship” on Thomas Piketty’s Capital in the Twenty-First Century
Robert Penn Warren Center for the Humanities, Vanderbilt University, Nashville, TN,
Fall 2014.
LANGUAGES
German and French (reading proficiency)