Dissertation: Tying the Knot: Charles Ray, Tom Friedman, Analia Saban, and Modernism in Sculpture after 1960
 

Advisor: Gordon Hughes

Betsy Stepina Zinn specializes in modern and contemporary art, focusing on sculpture after 1960. Her dissertation explores a modernist sensibility in the work of Charles Ray, Tom Friedman, and Analia Saban. Her writing has been presented at the Museum of Modern Art, New York; Boston University; and Indiana University. She has received fellowships from Project Row Houses, Houston (2013–14), and the Menil Collection, Houston (2017–18). In spring 2022, she co-taught the class “Writing Art History” with Gordon Hughes as part of a Brown Foundation Award.

Before pursuing graduate work, Betsy spent eight years in the Publications Department of the Art Institute of Chicago (2002–10), editing exhibition and permanent collection catalogues. She continues to work as a freelance editor for various institutions, specializing in catalogues raisonnés. She was manuscript editor of both Jasper Johns Catalogue Raisonné of Painting and Sculpture, a five-volume publication by Roberta Bernstein (Wildenstein Plattner Institute, 2017), and Jasper Johns Catalogue Raisonné of Drawing, published in six volumes by the Menil Collection in 2018. She is currently managing editor of Ellsworth Kelly: Catalogue Raisonné of Paintings, Reliefs, and Sculpture, by Yve-Alain Bois (Volume 2, Cahiers d’Art, 2021; future volumes forthcoming).