Michael Leja

Michael Leja is a distinguished scholar in Arts and Culture whose work centers on American art history. He earned a B.A. in History of Art from Swarthmore College in 1974, an M.A. in History from Tufts University in 1979, and M.A. and Ph.D. degrees in Fine Arts from Harvard University in 1983 and 1988, respectively. Early in his career, he served as curator at the Rose Art Museum, Brandeis University (1979–1981), and as programmer of experimental film at the Institute of Contemporary Art, Boston (1976–1978). He was assistant professor (1988–1994) and associate professor (1994–1995) in the Department of Art History at Northwestern University. From 1995 to 2000, Leja held the position of associate professor of art history in the Program in History, Theory, and Criticism of Art and Architecture, Department of Architecture at MIT, where he also directed the program from 1999 to 2000. Subsequent roles include Sewell C. Biggs Endowed Chair in American Art History and department chair at the University of Delaware (2000–2005), followed by professorship in the Department of the History of Art at the University of Pennsylvania from 2005, with leadership positions as director of Visual Studies (2011–2014), graduate group chair (2015–2018), department chair (2019–2022), and James and Nan Wagner Farquhar Professor of History of Art (2017–2024), now emeritus.

Leja's research examines visual arts in media such as painting, sculpture, film, photography, prints, and illustrations from the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, primarily in the United States, analyzing them alongside contemporaneous cultural, social, political, and intellectual contexts, with emphasis on subjectivity, skepticism, and audience interactions. His major books are Reframing Abstract Expressionism: Subjectivity and Painting in the 1940s (Yale University Press, 1993), Looking Askance: Skepticism and American Art from Eakins to Duchamp (University of California Press, 2004), and A Flood of Pictures: The Formation of a Picture Culture in the United States (2025); he co-authored Art of the United States, 1750–2000: Primary Sources (Terra Foundation for American Art and University of Chicago Press, 2020). Notable awards include the Charles C. Eldredge Prize from the Smithsonian American Art Museum (1996) for Reframing Abstract Expressionism, Modernist Studies Association Book Prize (2005) for Looking Askance, Guggenheim Fellowship (2008), fellowships from the National Endowment for the Humanities, American Council of Learned Societies, and Clark Art Institute, and the College Art Association Distinguished Teaching of Art History Award (2025). Leja's contributions have significantly impacted scholarship on American modernism and visual culture.

Professional Email: mleja@upenn.edu