Professor Tamar Garb

Tamar Garb is Durning Lawrence Professor in the History of Art. She graduated from the Michaelis School of Fine Art, University of Cape Town with a BA (Art) in 1978. In 1980 she was awarded an MA in Art Education from the Institute of Education, University of London and in 1982 she graduated with a MA in Art History from the Courtauld Institute of Art. While working part time in secondary and further education, she completed her PhD at the Courtauld Institute which was awarded in 1991. She was appointed as Lecturer at the Courtauld in 1988 and at UCL in 1989 and was promoted to reader in 1995 and professor in 2001.

She has published widely on questions of gender and sexuality in Modern and Contemporary Art as well as on photography  from Africa, the work of women artists and feminist aesthetics. Her curatorial practice includes  ‘Gauguin: Maker of Myth’, Tate 2011, ‘Figures & Fictions: Contemporary South African Photography’, V&A, 2011, ‘Distance & Desire: Encounters with the African Archive’, Walther Coll. 2014, ‘Conversations in Letters & Lines: William Kentridge and Vivienne Koorland, Fruitmarket,,2016, ‘Made Routes: Berni Searle and Vivienne Koorland’, Richard Saltoun Gallery, 2019 and ‘Beyond the Binary: Santu Mofokeng and David Goldblatt’, Walther Coll. 2023. 

Research

Tamar Garb's research interests have focused on questions of gender and sexuality, the woman artist and the body in nineteenth and early twentieth century French art and she has published extensively in this field. Key publications include Sisters of the Brush: Women's Artistic Culture in Late Nineteenth Century Paris (Yale University Press, 1994); Bodies of Modernity: Figure and Flesh in Fin de Siecle France, (Thames & Hudson, 1998) and The Painted Face, Portraits of Women in France 1814 -1914 (Yale University Press, 2007). Her latest publication in this area is The Body in Time: Figures of Feminity in Late Nineteenth-Century France (University of Washington Press, 2008). 

She has also published on questions of race and representation and in 1995 she collaborated with Linda Nochlin on a volume of essays entitled The Jew in the Text; Modernity and the Construction of Identity (T&H). In 2010 she acted as External Exhibition consultant on Gauguin: Maker of Myth for the Tate and as Consultant Editor on the accompanying catalogue.

In addition, Tamar has written about contemporary artists including Nancy Spero, Christian Boltanski, Massimo Vitali and Mona Hatoum. In 2007 she curated an exhibition 'Reisemalheurs' situating the paintings of the New York based, South African artist, Vivienne Koorland in the Freud Museum, London.

Her interests have turned recently to post apartheid culture and art as well as the history of photographic practices in South Africa.  In 2008 she curated an exhibition on Landscape and Language in South African Art entitled Land Marks/Home Lands; Contemporary Art from South Africa at Haunch of Venison Gallery in London. In April 2011, her exhibition Figures and Fictions: Contemporary South African Photography opened at the Victoria & Albert Museum, London. For coverage of the show and films made on location in South Africa, see V & A Vimeo page. The show was nominated for a Lucie award in Curating.

In 2014 Tamar curated Distance and Desire: Encounters with the African Archive for the Walther Collection, Ulm and New York. 

She curated William Kentridge and Vivienne Koorland: Conversations in Letters and Lines at the Fruitmarket Gallery Edinburgh, 2015/16 (video on Vimeo) and Made Routes: Vivienne Koorland and Bernie Searle, Richard Saltoun Gallery, London, 2019.

Feminist politics in the context of global and international developments in theory and practice remain pressing concerns as do questions of gender and sexuality in historic and contemporary areas. 

Specialisms

Contemporary Art from Africa
Art and Sexuality/Gender in the Modern Period
South African Photography

Publications

• Sisters of the Brush: Women's Artistic Culture in late Nineteenth Century Paris, Yale University Press, London, 1994 
• Bodies of Modernity: Figure and Flesh in Fin-de-Siècle France, Thames & Hudson, London, 1998. 
• The Painted Face: Portraits of Women in France, 1814-1914, Yale University Press, 2007. 
• Figures and Fictions: Contemporary South African Photography, V&A and Steidl, 2011. 
• Distance and Desire: Encounters with the African Archive, The Walther Collection and Steidl, 2013. 
• Beyond the Binary: Santu Mofokeng and David Goldblatt, Walther Collection, Ulm, 2023. 

Full publications list on UCL Profiles.

Teaching and Supervision

2024-25

• ‘Art and Society in France’ (Second Year) 
• MA Core Course

2025-26

• South African Photography: From Colonialism to the Contemporary’ (Third Year)
• Race/Place: Exotic/Erotic:, Difference and Desire in Modern and Contemporary Art (MA)

Tamar would welcome applications from new research students working on nineteenth century French art and culture,  contemporary art and photography, especially in relation to  questions of race and sexuality and nineteenth and twentieth century art in general, African photography and lens based practices, contemporary/modern art from Africa. Students working in the fields of portraiture, the body, gender and representation are also welcome.

Current PhD Students:

• Akin Oladimeji: Contemporary performance art in Nigeria and beyond
• Darya Aloufy: Now You See Me: Women Photographing Women in Palestine and Israel
• Kalvin Schmidt-Rimpler Dinh, Symbols and Cymbals: Tracing Afro-Surreal Expressionism, c.1940-80
• Renée Mussai, The Black Body in the Archive: Victorian Photography, Race and the Poetics of Difference. A Curatorial & Art Historical Enquiry