Faculty and Staff

Keith Holz

Professor, Art History
PhD, Northwestern University
Office: 21(A) Garwood Hall
Phone: (309) 298-2563
Email: DK-Holz@wiu.edu

About the Art Historian

Keith Holz came to WIU in 2004. As professor of art history he teaches courses on Modern Art (ARTH394), Contemporary Art (ARTH496), History of Modern Design (ARTH387), Art History Survey 1400-1900 (ARTH283), and Introduction to Art (ARTH180). Previously he has participated in team-taught courses in the Centennial Honors College and offered courses on History of Photography, 19 th Century Art, as well as seminars on Holocaust Representation in Contemporary Art and Visual Culture, and Art and Visual Culture in Nazi Germany. He has led the WIU Study Abroad courses "Berlin: Contemporary Art and Museum Culture in the New Metropolis" (2008 & 2010) and "Contemporary Art in Exhibition: Kassel, Münster, Venice" (2017).

Holz has authored two books, Modern German Art for Thirties Paris, Prague and London: Resistance and Acquiescence in a Democratic Public Sphere. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2004; and with Wolfgang Schopf, The Exilic Eye: Josef Breitenbach and the Free German Culture in Paris (1933-1941) German / English. Berlin: Aufbau Verlag, 2001. Currently he is writing a book on Oskar Kokoschka in the thirties and forties with the working title Placing Kokoschka, Kokoschka and Place.

In addition to presenting at annual conferences of the College Art Association and the Association of Art Historians (UK), Holz has received numerous invitations to present his scholarship. He has lectured at the following institutions: the Institute for Advanced Studies, Munich (2010), German Historical Institute, Moscow (2010), Central Institute for Art History, Munich (2011), John F. Kennedy Institute—Free University of Berlin (2012), Indiana University Museum of Art, Bloomington (2012), Institute for Art History, Prague (2013), Council for European Studies, Amsterdam (2013), Tate Gallery, London (2013), Masaryk University, Brno (2017), The Courtauld Institute, London (2018), Regional Art Gallery, Liberec, Czech Republic (2019), the Academy of Applied Arts, Vienna (2020), and also served as a visiting professor at the University of Cologne (Summer 2015).

Holz has been the recipient of fellowships from the Getty Research Institute, the U.S. Fulbright Commission, and the German Academic Exchange Service (DAAD), among others. He also has served as a reviewer of art history research grant proposals for foundations and government agencies.

Since 1992 he has been a member of the College Art Association (CAA). He is a member of the CAA-affiliated society the Historians of German, Scandinavian and Central European Art (HGSCEA), and on its board from 2010 to 2016.

Selected recent publications:

"Witness to Global Realignments and Human Suffering: Oskar Kokoschka in Post-War London." In: Sites of Interchange: Modernism, Politics, and Culture in Britain and Germany, 1919-1951." Lucy Wasensteiner (ed.) Series: "German Visual Culture," Volume 8. Christian Weikop (series ed.) New York and Frankfurt: Peter Lang Publishing, 2021, 283-302.

"Oskar Kokoschkas Amerika Kampagne, and "Oskar Kokoschka's American Campaign." In: Oskar Kokoschka: New Perspectives. Régine Bonnefoit and Bernadette Reinhold (eds.) Berlin: deGruyter Verlag, 2021, 168-186, 187-203. (print and e-book editions)

"Handicrafts under duress: interwar representations in word and image of German Bohemian glass workers." In: Nové realismy na československé výtvarné scéně 1918–1945. / New Realisms in the Czechoslovakian visual arts scene, 1918-1945. Ivo Haban and Anna Habanová, eds., Stephan von Pohl (trans.) Liberec: Regional Art Gallery funded by the Czech Science Foundation, Czech Republic, Czech ed., 2020, English ed., 2021, 130-147.

“Not only biographies and careers: a brief institutional history of German and Austrian exiled artist groups." In: INSIDERS / OUTSIDERS: Refugees from Nazi Europe and their Contribution to British Culture. Monica Bohm-Duchen (ed.) London: Lund Humphries, 2019, 214-235.

“Why defend Degenerate Art?" In: Degenerate Art -- 80 Years: Context and Repercussions in Brazil. Helouise Lima Costa (ed.) Saõ Paulo: University of Saõ Paulo Press and Museum of Contemporary Art (MASP), print and e-book editions, 2019, 47-65.

"Questions of German-Bohemian Art and New Objectivity." Opuscula historiae atrium, vol. 67, no. 2. Masaryk University, Brno, Czechia, 2018, 16-25.

“The United States tour of 20th Century (Banned) German Art / Ausstellungstournee 20th Century (Banned) German Art durch die USA." In: London 1938: mit Kandinsky, Liebermann und Nolde gegen Hitler." exh. cat. Martin Faass and Lucy Wasensteiner (eds.). Berlin: Villa Max Liebermann and London: Wiener Library. Zürich: Nimbus Verlag, 2018, 214-233.

"International travel with Neue Sachlichkeit painting and its nationalist baggage." In: Stephanie Barron (ed.), Neue Sachlichkeit: Modern German Art in the Weimar Republic, 1919-1933. Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris, Palazzo Grassi, Venice, 2015, 90-103.

"Oskar Kokoschka in Czechoslovakia: The private life of a public artist," [working title] Oskar Kokoschka and the Prague Cultural Scene. Exh. cat. Agnes Tieze (ed.). Kunstforum Ostdeutsche Galerie, Regensburg 2014, 16-25.

"not my most beautiful but my best paintings ... Kokoschka’s list for London," Echoes of Exile: Moscow Archives and the Arts in Paris 1933-1945. Ines Reynard-Rothermund (ed.). Boston and Berlin: Walter deGruyter Verlag, 2014, 85-104, 177-78.

"'Brushwork thick and easy' or a 'beauty-parlor mask for murder'? Reckoning with the Great German Art Exhibitions in the Western democracies," RIHA Journal 0055 (Munich, 28 September 2012), URL:http://www.riha-journal.org/articles/2012/2012-jul-sep/holz-reckoning

"Recasting exiled artists groups as transnational diasporic communities," in Netzwerke des Exils: Künstlerische Verflectungen, Austausch und Patronage nach 1933. Burcu Dogramaci and Karen Wimmer (eds). Berlin: Gebrüder Mann Verlag, 2011, 280-95.

"The politics of mobility and mutilation in Kokoschka's exile years (1934-1949)."Zentralbibliothek, Zürich & Fondation à la Mémoire de Oskar Kokoschka – Fondation Oskar Kokoschka, Vevey, Switzerland. In: Kokoschka: Neu Gesehen. Petersberg: Michael Imhof Verlag, 2010, 77-92.

"Max Silberberg's commitment to modern art and Jewish culture in interwar Breslau." Jewish Artists and Central-Eastern Europe: Art Centers-- Identity – Heritage From the 19th Century to the Second World War. Polish Society of Oriental Art. Jerzy Malinowski,

Renata Piatowska, and Tamara Sztyma-Knasiecka (eds.). Warsaw: DiG Publishers, 2010, 319-24.