Alena Williams

Born in Denver, CO/USA.

Alena Williams studied art history at Harvard University (Bachelor of Arts), art history and archeology at Columbia University in New York and obtained a Master of Arts in 2004 and a Master of Philosophy in 2006. As a PhD candidate Williams is working on »Movement in Vision: German Aesthetics and Modern Culture, 1915-1930«, concerning kinetic experiments of the modernist avant-garde in Weimar Germany and exploring the relationship between expressionist abstraction, Neue Sachlichkeit tendencies, and the representation of movement in drawings, sculpture and film.

From 2003 to 2007 Williams was a teaching assistant in the Department of Art History and Archeology, Columbia University.

As an art historian and curator she has published and lectured throughout the United States and Germany.

Upcoming and recent projects include: »Nancy Holt: Sightlines«, editor and contributor with contributions by Matthew Coolidge, Pamela Lee, Lucy Lippard, James Meyer, and Ines Schaber (forthcoming 2010); »Nancy Holt: Sightlines«, curator of the exhibition at the Miriam and Ira D. Wallach Gallery, Columbia University, New York (fall 2010). »TIMESHIFT – The World in Twenty-Five Years/25 Jahre Festival für Kunst, Technologie und Gesellschaft«, contributor, Stuttgart, Hatje Cantz (2004). »Permanence Through Change: The Variable Media Approach«, contributor, Guggenheim Museum and the Daniel Langlois Foundation for Art, Science and Technology, New York and Montreal (2003).

She received the German Chancellor Scholarship of the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation (2004-2005) and the Frederic Zeller Memorial Fellowship from Columbia University (2005-2006).