Vita
T’ai Smith has been an Assistant Professor of Twentieth-Century Art at University of British Columbia since 2012. Having studied visual arts / art history at Barnard College, Columbia University as well as visual and cultural studies / art history at University of Rochester, Smith received a graduate scholarship from the DAAD for Ph.D. research at Humboldt Universität Berlin. She gained her doctorate at University of Rochester in 2006 for her dissertation enti-tled “Weaving Work at the Bauhaus: The Gender and Engendering of a Medium, 1919-1937”. Before joining the University of British Columbia, Smith taught at Parsons The New School for Design and Maryland Institute College of Art. Apart from her academic appointments, she was Managing Editor of Grey Room, published by MIT Press, from 2004 to 2008. Smith has published several articles on modern and con-temporary art and design in periodicals such as Art Journal, Journal of Modern Craft or Texte zur Kunst. Since 2010, she has been an advisory board member of InVisible Culture. Addi-tionally, Smith continuously writes catalogue essays for the Museum of Modern Art in New York. Smith currently traces two book projects: “Bauhaus Weaving Theory: From Feminine Craft to Mode of Design”, a study on textile theory and its development in the mid-twentieth century, which will be published in 2014. Her second research project, provisionally entitled “Textile Media and Philosophy”, focuses on the use of textile structures and methods as metaphors in dis-courses such as art history, media studies or philosophy.
Stand: 2014
Publikationen
Monographien
Writing on Weaving: a Bauhaus Craft, a Bauhaus Medium. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2014.
Artikel
“Why Textiles Matter as Art (or Whatever) as Never Before”. In: Textiles. Open Letter (exhibition catalogue). Vienna: Generali Foundation forthcoming 2014.
“Textile”. In: Michael Kelly (ed.): Encyclopedia of Aesthetics. Oxford: Oxford University Press forthcoming 2014.
“Architectonic: Thought on the Loom”. In: Journal of Modern Craft 4/3, 2011, pp. 269-294.
“A Collective and Its Individuals: The Bauhaus and Its Women”. In: Connie Butler, Alexandra Schwarz (eds.): Modern Women. Women Artists at the Museum of Modern Art. New York: Museum of Modern Art 2010, pp. 158-173.
“The Identity of Design as Intellectual Property”. In: Jeffrey Saletnik, Robin Schul-denfrei (eds.): Bauhaus Construct: Fashioning Identity, Discourse, and Modernism. London/ New York: Routledge 2009, pp. 226-244.
“Unknown Weaver: Wall Hanging 1923”. In: Barry Bergdoll, Leah Dickerman (eds.): Bauhaus 1919-1933: Workshops for Modernity (exhibition catalogue). New York: Museum of Modern Art 1009, pp. 206-209.
“Anonymous Textiles, Patented Domains: The Birth (and Death) of an Author”. In: Art Journal 67/2, 2008, pp. 54-73.
“Limits of the Tactile and the Optical: Bauhaus Fabric in the Frame of Photography”. In: Grey Room 25, 2006, pp. 6-31.