Jason Rosenfeld

Jason Rosenfeld has been a member of the faculty at MMC since fall 2003. Dr. Rosenfeld received his B.A. from Duke University and his M.A. and Ph.D. from the Institute of Fine Arts, New York University, with a dissertation titled New Languages of Nature in Victorian England: The Pre-Raphaelite Landscape, Natural History and Modern Architecture in the 1850s. He has previously taught at Assumption College in Worcester, Massachusetts, New York University, and Queens College, City University of New York. Academic interests include contemporary art and issues in figuration and landscape, nineteenth-century European art, British art, specifically Victorian and the Pre-Raphaelites, art and architecture in New York City, and modern architecture.

He is also Senior Writer and Editor-at-Large at The Brooklyn Rail, and has been a contributor of reviews, essays, and interviews since June 2016. For The Brooklyn Rail New Social Environment Series, he has conducted Zoom interviews with Cecily Brown, Matvey Levenstein, Njideka Akunyili Crosby, Julie Curtiss, Martin Puryear, Shahzia Sikander, Ursula von Rydingsvard, Andy Goldsworthy, Wayne Thiebaud,  Peter Saul, Tarwuk, Sally Saul, Eddie Martinez, and Stan Douglas. He has also interviewed Jenny Saville, Njideka Akunyili Crosby, Walton Ford, Cecily Brown, Barry McGee, and Sanya Kantarovsky for the print and online editions.

His book on the British-born, New York-based painter, Cecily Brown, was published by Phaidon Press in November 2020.

His interview with Cecily Brown is in the catalogue to the exhibition “Radical Figures: Painting in the New Millennium,” held at the Whitechapel Gallery, London, 6 February - 30 August 2020.

He wrote a catalogue titled “Thresholds of Perceptibility: The Color Field Paintings of Leon Berkowitz” for an exhibition at Hollis Taggart Gallery in October-November, 2019.

He wrote the catalogue for an exhibition of Stephen Hannock’s recent paintings, “The Oxbow, from Thomas Cole to Alfred Hitchcock,” seen at Marlborough Fine Art Ltd. in London in June and July of 2018.

His most recent curatorial project was “Ben Wilson: From Social Realism to Abstraction,” an exhibition on the work of the American abstract painter, Wilson (1913-2001) at the George Segal Gallery, Montclair State University, the first comprehensive show of the work of this undiscovered artist.

He also contributed an essay titled “Insta-scapes” for an exhibition of contemporary landscape painting at the Marlborough Chelsea Gallery in the summer of 2016, the catalogue for Bill Scott’s show at Hollis Taggart Galleries in 2016, and the exhibition River Crossings, held at the historic homes of Thomas Cole (Cedar Grove in Catskill, NY), and Frederic Edwin Church (Olana in Hudson, NY), and featuring contemporary art in these spaces for the first time. The exhibition was co-curated with the painter Stephen Hannock. It has been featured in the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, and CBS Sunday Morning, and ran from May 3 - November 1, 2015. The accompanying catalog is published by The Artist Book Foundation.

Recent research interests have revolved around the life and career of the Victorian painter Sir John Everett Millais (1829-1896) and his monograph on that artist for Phaidon Press Ltd. was published in 2012. He co-curated the major exhibition on Millais at Tate Britain, London, the National Gallery of British Art, with Alison Smith, Senior Curator of Paintings, which traveled to the Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam, followed by venues in Fukuoka and Tokyo, Japan. The exhibition was seen by in excess of 660,000 visitors. His most recent co-curated exhibition is “Pre-Raphaelites: Victorian Avant-Garde,” seen by 242,000 at Tate Britain from September 11, 2012 to January 13, 2013, the second most heavily attended exhibition in that institution’s history. The show drew 251,000 visitors at the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C. (February 17 – May 19, 2013), and has most recently been seen at the State Pushkin Museum of Fine Arts, Moscow, Russia (June 11 – October 13, 2013) and the Mori Arts Center Gallery in Tokyo, Japan (January 25 – April 6, 2014). Its final venue was the Palazzo Chiablese in Torino, Italy (April 19 - July 13, 2014). Here is an introduction to one of the key works in the show – Millais’s Isabella (1848-9). He was a consultant on the exhibition The Pre-Raphaelite Legacy: British Art and Design held at the Metropolitan Museum of Art from May 20 - October 26, 2014. 

He has published many articles and reviews on British art and architecture and contemporary art, writes criticism for The Brooklyn Rail, and was a frequent reviewer for Art in America. He was a co-curator of the exhibition “The Post-Pre-Raphaelite Print” at the Wallach Art Gallery, Columbia University, New York, in 1995, and contributed to the “Pre-Raphaelite and Other Masters: The Andrew Lloyd Webber Collection” exhibition at the Royal Academy of Arts, London, in 2003. He also contributed an essay to the catalogue of Marcel Dzama’s exhibition at the David Zwirner Gallery, New York, in 2005. In addition, he has been the lead contributor on a monograph on the contemporary American artist, Stephen Hannock, published by Hudson Hills Press in the summer of 2009 and curated an exhibition of Hannock’s new work at Marlborough Gallery, New York (April 25 – June 2, 2012), a version of which traveled to London (February 4 - March 1, 2014). He has also written the catalogue for South African artist Lionel Smit’s exhibition at Rook & Raven Gallery, London (March 21 - April 30, 2014).