Raffaele Bedarida
Associate Professor of Art History
Raffaele Bedarida is an art historian and curator specializing in transnational modernism and politics. Since he joined The Cooper Union full-time faculty in 2016, he has coordinated the History and Theory of Art program. Bedarida holds a Ph.D. from the Art History Department of the CUNY Graduate Center, New York as well as M.A. and B.A. degrees in Art History from the Università degli Studi di Siena, Italy. His research has focused on cultural diplomacy, migration, and exchange between Italy and the United States. He has also worked on exhibition history, censorship, and propaganda under Fascism and during the Cold War, from Futurism to Arte Povera. Since 2008, when he founded and curated the residency program Harlem Studio Fellowship in New York, Bedarida has actively promoted programs of international exchange for emerging artists. In addition to his academic and curatorial activities, Bedarida has regularly lectured on modern and contemporary art topics at the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum and MoMA.
His research has been supported by the Center for Italian Modern Art, the Terra Foundation for American Art, the Max Planck Institute of Art History, and the Italian Ministry of Research and University (MIUR). He was invited as Visiting Professor at the following universities: Università Statale, Milan; Università La Sapienza, Rome; Università degli Studi, Genoa.
Bedarida has authored three monographs: Bepi Romagnoni: Il Nuovo Racconto (Milan: Silvana, 2005); Corrado Cagli: la pittura, l'esilio, l'America (Rome: Donzelli, 2018; English edition: CPL Editions, in press); Exhibiting Italian Art in the US. Futurism to Arte Povera (London-New York: Routledge, 2022). He has also edited many volumes, among which: Methodologies of Exchange: Twentieth Century Italian Art at MoMA, 1949, with Davide Colombo and Silvia Bignami, special issue of Italian Modern Art, January 2020; Gianfranco Baruchello: Painters Ain't Butterflies (Macerata: Quodlibet, 2021); Curating Fascism: Exhibitions and Memory from the Fall of Mussolini to Today, with Sharon Hecker (London-New York: Bloomsbury, 2022).
His academic articles and essays have been published extensively in periodicals, such as Oxford Art Journal, International Yearbook of Futurism Studies, Italian Modern Art, and Artforum; in exhibition catalogues, among which, Afro: The American Years (Milan: Electa, 2012), Fortunato Depero Futurista (Madrid: Juan March Foundation, 2014), New York New York: La riscoperta dell'America (Milan: Electa, 2017); and in edited volumes, including Postwar Italian Art History Today (London-New York: Bloomsbury, 2018), Frederick Kiesler: Face to Face with the Avant-garde, (Basel: Birkäuser, 2019), Republics and Empires (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2021), Reassessing Unique Forms of Continuity in Space and Their Material History (Sao Paulo: Universidade de Sao Paulo, 2021).
Recent Publications:
Co-editor with Davide Colombo and Silvia Bignami, Methodologies of Exchange: MoMA’s Twentieth-Century Italian Art (1949), special issue of the journal, Italian Modern Art, n. 3 (January 2020), winner of a Terra Foundation grant.
“Out of the Rubble: Cagli, Fontana, and the Construction of Memory in Postwar Italy,” in ed. Alessandro Cassin, Exile and Creativity (New York: Centro Primo Levi Editions, 2020), pp. 263-298.
“Per una Storia Orale dell’Arte in Italia ai Tempi del Covid. Radici Storiche e Questioni di Metodo,” in 900 Transnazionale, 5 (2021), pp. 56-67.
“Eterna Primavera: Catherine Viviano, Irene Brin and Italian Art’s Conquest of Hollywood,” article in eds. Melissa Dabakis and Paul Kaplan, Republics and Empires: Italian and American Art in Transnational Perspective, 1840-1970, (Manchester, UK: Manchester University Press, 2021), pp. 204-222.
“Out of the Chart: Boccioni-centrism and Alfred Barr’s Struggle with Italian Modernism,” article published in English and in Portuguese translation, in ed. Ana Gonçalves Magalhaes and Rosalind McKever, Boccioni in Brazil. Reassessing "Unique forms of continuity in space" and Its Material History (Sao Paulo: Universidade de Sao Paulo, 2021).
Editor, Enrico Crispolti and Gianfranco Baruchello: Painters Ain’t Butterflies (Macerata: Quodlibet, 2021).
Co-editor with Sharon Hecker, Curating Fascism: Exhibitions and Memory from the Fall of Mussolini to Today (London, New York: Bloomsbury, 2022).
Author, Exhibiting Italian Art in the US, Futurism to Arte Povera: Like a Giant Screen, monograph (London, New York: Routledge, 2022).
Upcoming Publications:
Author, Corrado Cagli: Exile, Painting, America 1938-1947, monograph (New York: Primo Levi Center Editions, in press).
