Tenley Bick
Associate Professor
Director of Undergraduate Studies
Global Modern and Contemporary Art; Contemporary Arts of Africa
PhD University of California, Los Angeles
3020 William Johnston Building
Dr. Tenley Bick is an art historian of global modern and contemporary art, with special interests in post-WWII and contemporary European (especially Italian) and African art (continental and diasporic), with a focus on social art history and cultural geopolitics. Her research and teaching are dedicated to the investigation of modern and contemporary art history as a global field, and to the examination of art and social context on a local and global level. Topics of research and teaching include artistic internationalism and its cultural politics after World War II, postcolonial modernisms, diasporic cinemas, historiography and global politics, and artistic labor and process, among others. Her work on Italian art focuses on Arte Povera, internationalism, and politics in the 1960s and 1970s, as well as contemporary art and postcoloniality.
She is the author of Michelangelo Pistoletto: Figuration and Cultural Politics (Yale University Press, 2025), the first English-language monograph on the contemporary Italian artist, who is best known for his association with Arte Povera. Her book situates Pistoletto’s work within the politicized cultural contexts of post-WWII Italy and Europe, and against the broader geopolitical horizon for art of the 1960s. Focusing especially on the artist’s investigation of conventional figuration as a critical model for postwar creative practice, Bick offers a counter-narrative to dominant histories of postwar art in and out of Italy, and theorizes a new language of figuration for the broader field of art history.
Dr. Bick is currently working on a second book-length project on contemporary art that addresses the history and legacies of Italian colonialism in Africa (1890–1947/60). She is also the founder and curator of the peer-reviewed bilingual digital project Costellazione (Constellation; IT/ENG), a series of live interviews with contemporary Italian artists (or artists who have lived and worked extensively in Italy) on their work.
She is the editor of a special issue of Palinsesti, a peer-reviewed art history journal about Italian art from 1960 to present. The issue, “’Italianicity is not Italy’: Questioning Contemporary Italian Art History,” is dedicated to postcolonial and decolonial approaches to contemporary Italian art history.
Dr. Bick has been awarded major grants and fellowships from Magazzino Italian Art Foundation (New York, 2019–20), where she was the first American Scholar in Residence, FSU (First Year Assistant Professor Grant), and the Institute for International Education (IIE). Her scholarship and professional activities have also been supported by the University of California, Los Angeles, Florida State University, the Bibliotheca Hertziana – Max Planck Institute for Art History, and the Italian Art Society.
Her work has been published in a range of scholarly journals dedicated to Africanist and global contemporary art history, and to verbal and visual inquiry, including African Arts, Forum Italicum, International Yearbook of Futurism Studies, Palinsesti, Portable Gray, Third Text, and Word & Image. Her recent publications on art of the African diaspora, postwar and contemporary Italian art, countercultural aesthetics, and Italian colonialism have appeared in the edited volumes The Routledge Companion to African Diaspora Art History (ed. Chambers, 2024); Migrants Shaping Europe, Past and Present: Multi-lingual Literatures, Arts and Cultures (eds. Joos and Solterer; Manchester University Press, 2022); and Global Revolutionary Aesthetics and Politics after Paris ’68 (eds. Cloonan, Faulk, Munro, and Weber; Lantham, MD: Lexington Books, 2021). She has written for major exhibition catalogs on contemporary art in Italy and the United States. Her translation work (Italian to English) has also been published, appearing in the catalogue for the internationally traveling exhibition, Ends of the Earth: Land Art to 1974 (eds. Kwon and Kaiser, organized for the Los Angeles Museum of Contemporary Art). She holds an M.A. and Ph.D. in Art History from UCLA and a B.A. with Honors in Art History from Stanford University. Prior to joining the faculty at FSU, she was Visiting Assistant Professor of Art History at Washington College.
Dr. Bick was President of the Italian Art Society from 2023 to 2025.
Contact
Research and Teaching Areas
- Global modern and contemporary art
- Italian modernism and contemporary art (late 19th century to present; Futurism, Arte povera, Transavanguardia…)
- Modern and contemporary African art and cinemas
- Exchanges between Italy and Africa (Italian colonialism, African diasporas in Italy, postcolonial Italy, transnational Italian studies, Mediterranean studies)
- Artistic internationalism and cultural geopolitics after World War II
- Art of the 1960s and 1970s
- Artistic labor and process
Advisees
Estefanía Vallejo Santiago (co-chair)
Completed Dissertations
Julia Kershaw: “Build Your Own Living Space: Architecture and the Politicized Body in the Work of Lygia Clark.”
Cindy Evans: “Political Playgrounds: The Effekt Group’s activist art in Postwar West Germany and Yugoslavia.”
List of FSU Art History dissertations
Graduate Seminars
• Minimalism
• Pop Art (international focus)
• Postwar Italian Art
• The Global Sixties
• Futures and Futurisms
• Art History Through Artists’ Texts (modern and contemporary focus)
• Contemporary Art and Theory after 1980
• Contemporary Art and Artistic Labor
Undergraduate Courses
• Art After 1940
• Global Contemporary Art
• Contemporary Arts of Africa and Its Diasporas
• Intro to Modern and Contemporary Art
• Museum Object
• Art History Methods & Media (undergraduate seminar)
• Contemporary Art and Artistic Labor (undergraduate seminar)
Training
At Risk, Kognito (Fall 2020)
Research Mentor Academy: Humanities, FSU (Summer 2022). Completed FSU mentor training workshop series to learn how to implement evidence-based mentor practices based on the Entering Mentoring series by the Center of the Improvement of Mentored Experiences in Research (CIMER).
Selected Publications
Book
Bick, Tenley. Michelangelo Pistoletto: Figuration and Cultural Politics (Yale University Press, 2025).
Journal Issues Edited
Bick, Tenley, ed. “’Italianicity is not Italy’: Questioning Contemporary Italian Art History”/ “‘L’Italianità non è l’Italia’: riesaminando la storia dell’arte contemporanea italiana.” Palinsesti, n. 12 (2025).
Digital Project
Founder and curator, Costellazione (Constellation), on contemporary Italian art. Project site: www.costell-azione.com. October 2020–.
Adrian R. Duran, “Costellazione,” review of Costellazione, by Tenley Bick (curator), Italica 99, no. 3 (2022): 428–430.
Journal Articles & Book Chapters
Bick, Tenley. “Introduction.” Palinsesti, no. 12 (2025): I–VIII.
Bick, Tenley. “Photography between Desire and Disillusionment: West African Studio Portraiture, Diaspora, and Italy in the Work of Silvia Rosi.” Palinsesti, no. 12 (2025): 67–110.
Bick, Tenley. “A History of Black Diaspora Artists in Italy.” In The Routledge Companion to African Diaspora Art History, edited by Eddie Chambers (London and New York: Routledge): 174–189.
Bick, Tenley. “‘Un sentimento di libertà’: Toward a Transnational Italian Art History.” Forum Italicum 57, no. 2, Critical Issues in Transnational Italian Studies, edited by Giulia Riccò, Serena Bassi, and Loredana Polezzi (August 2023): 431–442.
Bick, Tenley. “Postcolonial Retrofuturism: Alessandro Ceresoli’s Linea Tagliero Prototypes.” International Yearbook of Futurism Studies 13, Neo-Futurism, eds. Günter Berghaus, Dalila Colucci and Tim Klähn (2023): 315–345.
Bick, Tenley. “Porta di Lampedusa, porta d’Europa: Contemporary Monumentality, Entropy, and Migration at the Gateway to Europe.” In Migrants Shaping Europe, Past and Present: Multilingual Literatures, Arts and Cultures, edited by Helen Solterer and Vincent Joos, 151–192 (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2022).
Bick, Tenley. “Where There’s Everything: Pistoletto, the Gruppo d’Arte ‘l’Arlecchino,’ and Localist Internationalism in Presenze.” Word & Image) 38, no.2 (June 2022): 132–164.
Curran, Alvin and Tenley Bick. “Spontaneous funghi: Musica Elettronica Viva and Lo Zoo in Turin, 1968. An interview with Alvin Curran.” Portable Gray 5, no. 1 (Spring 2022): 118–139.
Bick, Tenley. “Ghosts for the Present: Countercultural Aesthetics and Postcoloniality for Contemporary Italy. The Work of Wu Ming 2 and Fare Ala,” in Global Revolutionary Aesthetics and Politics after Paris ‘68, edited by Martin Munro, William J. Cloonan, Barry J. Faulk, and Christian P. Weber, 45–77 (Lanham, MD: Lexington Books, 2021).
Bick, Tenley. “What Goes Around Comes Around: Myth and Male Trauma in Somali Diasporic Cinema,” Third Text 33, no. 2 (2019): 153–177.
Bick, Tenley. “Suspensions of Self-Perception: On Vision and Subjectivity in Contemporary Art.” In Theorizing Visual Studies: Writing Through the Discipline, edited by James Elkins and Kristi McGuire, with Maureen Burns, Alicia Chester, and Joel Kuennen. New York: Routledge, 2012.
Bick, Tenley. “Horror Histories: Apartheid and the Abject Body in the Work of Jane Alexander,” African Arts 43, no. 4 (Winter 2010): 30–41.
Catalog Essays
Bick, Tenley. “Armatures of a Different Value, of Boundless Feeling: The Art of Buzz Spector.” In Buzz Spector: verso/recto (St. Louis: Bruno David Gallery, forthcoming 2025). Exh. cat.
Bick, Tenley. “Make It Shine (Extraordinary Things Are Possible Between Beings): The Art of Marinella Senatore” / “Make It Shine (Cose straordinarie sono possibili tra persone): l’Arte di Marinella Senatore.” In Marinella Senatore: Make It Shine, 7–23, Italian translation by Howard Rodger MacLean (Turin: Mazzoleni Gallery, 2022).
Bick, Tenley. “Bochner’s Italian Picture.” In Bochner Boetti Fontana,40–47 (Cold Spring, NY: Magazzino Italian Art, 2021). Exh. cat. for Bochner Boetti Fontana, curated by Mel Bochner with Magazzino Italian Art (Magazzino Italian Art, Cold Spring, NY, October 2, 2020–April 5, 2021).
Exhibition & Film Reviews, Newsletter Articles
Bick, Tenley. Film Review “Oltre i bordi (Beyond the Frame), by Simone Brioni and Matteo Sandrini (5e6 Film, 2023),” Italian American Review 14, no. 2 (Summer 2024): 202–206.
Bick, Tenley. “Towards a Transnational Italian Art History: A User’s Guide.” Italian Art Society Newsletter 33, no. 2, The Global Future of Italian Art History, ed. Livia Lupi (Spring 2022): 11–13.
Bick, Tenley. “Kounellis, Migration, and Graffiti: Note on Arte Povera in Miami.” New Art Examiner 36, no. 3 (Jan/Feb/Mar 2022), 36–40. Exhibition review, Arte Povera / Postwar Italian Art from the Margulies Collection (October 20, 2021 – April 30, 2022), cur. Katherine Hinds, The Margulies Collection at the Warehouse, Miami, FL.
Bick, Tenley. “Other Hues of Blue: A Pandemic-Era Biennial in Atlanta.” New Art Examiner 35, no.3 (January/February/March 2021): 33–37. Exhibition review of the 2021 Atlanta Biennial, Of Care and Destruction, curated by Jordan Amirkhani, Atlanta Contemporary, Atlanta, GA.
Bick, Tenley. “‘My world now is black in color’: Pandemic-Era Programming, Anti-Racist Activism, and Contemporary Art in Italy,” CAA International News (August 11, 2020).
Exhibitions
Un sentimento di libertà | A Feeling of Freedom: New Italians in the Works of Luigi Christopher Veggetti Kanku. Museum of Fine Arts, Florida State University, January 18–May 6, 2023.
Translations
Celant, Germano. Interview by Miwon Kwon and Philipp Kaiser. Translated from the original Italian by Tenley Bick. In Ends of the Earth: Land Art to 1974, edited by M. Kwon and P. Kaiser, 123–27. Los Angeles: Museum of Contemporary Art, 2012. Previously unpublished contribution. Catalogue published in association with the internationally traveling exhibition of the same title.
In the Media
Hagger, Alastair. “The African Art Renaissance: Surge in Interest and Impact on Global Market,” CNBC Africa (November 29, 2023).