Stephen Eisenman

Stephen F. Eisenman was born in New York City and educated at SUNY Albany, Williams College and Princeton University where he received his Ph.D. From 1984-1998 he taught at Occidental College in Los Angeles, and since then at Northwestern where he is Professor of Art History and Chair (elect) of the NU Faculty Senate. He is the author of The Temptation of Saint Redon(1989), Gauguin's Skirt (1997) and The Abu Ghraib Effect (2007) and other books, and is the principle author and editor of Nineteenth Century Art: A Critical History (fourth edition 2010). Eisenman has curated numerous exhibitions in the United States and Europe, including Paul Gauguin – Artist of Myth and Dream (2007), Design in the Age of Darwin (2008), and The Ecology of Impressionism (2010). He is also active in campus, community and state-wide politics. His articles and op-eds concerning torture and prison reform have appeared in Monthly Review and the Chicago Sun-Times. His work with the grass-roots organization Tamms Year Ten, led to the closing in January 2013 of Illinois' notorious Tamms C-Max prison. Eisenman's two most recent books The Cry of Nature – Art and the Making of Animal Rights (London: Reaktion Books) and The Ghosts of Our Meat -- Sue Coe (New York: DAP) were published in Fall 2013. He is currently organizing an exhibition at Northwestern's Block Museum for 2016: William Blake in the Age of Aquarius.