Peter R. Kalb
Associate Professor, Cynthia L. and Theodore S. Berenson Chair of Contemporary Art, Brandeis University
Fellow 2026–27
- Current Project
- Apollo’s Gift: An Art History of the Moon Landing
- Project Discipline
- History of Art and Architecture
- Fellowship Title
- Henry Luce Fellowship
About Fellow
Peter R. Kalb holds the Cynthia L. and Theodore S. Berenson Chair of Contemporary Art History in the Fine Arts Department at Brandeis University, where he also serves in the Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies Department. Kalb is the author of Art Since 1980: Charting the Contemporary that examines political and aesthetic trends in today’s art world and draws on over twenty years of teaching and research. His current book project, Apollo’s Gift: An Art History of the Moon Landing, explores responses by artists working around the world to humanity’s transformation into a space-faring species.
Kalb’s interest in moon art began with childhood trips to the Neil Armstrong Museum in Wapakoneta, Ohio, and his initial work on the subject appears in two monographic articles on Tom Sachs’s Space Program and a number of lectures and conference papers. His more terrestrial-based work explores uses of the analog to grapple with our digital, virtual, and televisual lives. The global nature of Kalb’s research has also led to a project investigating the potential of an art history of the Chinese Belt and Road Initiative to access a map of cultural production different from what we have found following histories of western industrialism and neo-liberal globalism.
Selected Publications
- Kalb, Peter. “Traveling among Data Mountains and Streams: Recent work of Sui Jianguo,” in Joe Lin-Hill et al eds., Dimensions Indefinitely Variable: Sui Jianguo 1974–2024. Qingdao: TAG Museum of Art 2026. (Forthcoming)
- Kalb, Peter. “Remaining in Sight: Andrea Bowers’s Art Lessons from Activists,” in Catha Paquette, Karen Kleinfelder, and Christopher Mills eds., In and Out of View: Art and the Dynamics of Circulation, Suppression, and Censorship. New York: Bloomsbury 2022: 175-190.
- Kalb, Peter. “Tom Sachs’s American Bricolage and the revised logic of space travel,” Sculpture Journal 26.3 (2018): 349–371.
- Kalb, Peter. Art Since 1980: Charting the Contemporary. Upper Saddle River, NJ: Pearson 2014.
- Kalb, Peter. High Drama: The New York Cityscapes of Georgia O’Keeffe and Margaret Bourke-White. New York: Midmarch Arts Press 2003.