Robert Bailey is Associate Professor of Art History and Acting Associate Director of the School of Visual Arts at the University of Oklahoma. He received his Ph.D. in the History of Art and Architecture from the University of Pittsburgh.
Bailey teaches the history of modern and contemporary art as well as the historiography and methodology of art history. His research focuses on how artists and art historians politicize relations of theory and practice in changing societies and environments.
The author of Art & Language International: Conceptual Art between Art Worlds, Bailey also edited and introduced Terry Smith’s One and Five Ideas: On Conceptual Art and Conceptualism. He is currently completing two book projects, one focused on the history of conceptual thinking in art and art history after modernism and another on art-historical fieldwork methods.
Through collaborations with the photographer Todd Stewart, he has exhibited creative writing about the environmental and social histories of the southwestern United States at NEST Center for the Arts at University of Colorado Boulder, Oklahoma Contemporary, Southern Utah Museum of Art, and Fred Jones Jr. Museum of Art.
Bailey is a core team member of the Black Artists of Oklahoma Project, a multiplatform collaborative effort based at the University of Oklahoma that celebrates the history of African American and other African diaspora art from Oklahoma through research, exhibitions, publications, and related programming. With Kalenda Eaton, Pete Froslie, and Olivia Murphy, he is planning a digital edition supported by an NHPRC-Mellon Planning Grant for 2024-2026.
Email: robertbailey@ou.edu
