Ellen G. Landau
exl3@case.edu
Andrew W. Mellon Professor of the Humanities
Ph.D. University of Delaware, 1981
M.A. George Washington University
B.A. Cornell University
Ellen G. Landau is Andrew W. Mellon Professor of the Humanities at Case Western Reserve University. She has taught in the Cleveland Museum of Art/ CWRU Joint Program in Art History since 1982, with courses specializing in 20th century American and European art and theory, particularly Abstract Expressionism.
Dr. Landau earned her undergraduate degree from Cornell University (1969), her M.A. from The George Washington University (1974), and her Ph.D. from the University of Delaware (1981). The many honors and fellowships received by Dr. Landau include fellowships awarded by the Rockefeller Foundation, the Smithsonian Institution, and the American Council of Learned Societies, among others. Most recently she was named the 2003-2004 Agnes Gund and Daniel Shapiro Member in the School of Historical Studies at the Institute for Advanced Study, Princeton NJ.
In addition to publishing Jackson Pollock (Harry N. Abrams, NY and Thames & Hudson, London, 1989), Dr. Landau has written numerous articles and essays for American and European art journals and exhibition catalogues, and has participated in national and international symposia in her area of expertise. In 1995 she published Lee Krasner: A Catalogue Raisonné (Abrams) under the auspices of the Pollock-Krasner Foundation and the Robert Miller Gallery, New York. Dr. Landau was co-curator of a Krasner/Pollock joint retrospective held at the Kunstmuseum Bern in 1989-90, the first Krasner and Pollock show produced in Europe.
Dr. Landau's current projects include a methodological study of Abstract Expressionist criticism, Reading Abstract Expressionism: Context and Critique to be published in 2005 by Yale University Press and Mexican and American Modernism in process. The latter will comprise a set of case studies of the developmental impact of early experiences in Mexico and/or with Mexican art on the careers of Pollock, Philip Guston, Isamu Noguchi and Robert Motherwell.
Dr. Landau is currently acting as curator for Pollock Matters, an exhibition that focuses on the artistic and personal interrelationships of Jackson Pollock and Lee Krasner with painter Mercedes Matter and the noted photographer and graphic designer Herbert Matter (see www.pollockexhibit.com). It will feature a cache of newly found paintings by Pollock from the latter's estate and will travel internationally in 2006-2008. Dr. Landau is primary author for a book of that title to be published by Harry N. Abrams, NY to accompany the show.