Dr. Kiersten Thamm is an art historian based in Berlin.
Kiersten researches the manufacturing, use and interpretation of art, design, and architecture in Europe and the US after 1851, focusing on the politics and politicization of modern materials.
Her speaking, publishing, and curatorial practice help people discover how materials impact people and places as much as people and places impact materials.
She currently works as head of communications and engagement for the arts nonprofit Navigating.art.
Popular Publications
Misunderstanding Familiar Objects in an Imagined Future: A Critical Method for Discovery
On_Culture | Familiarity and habit lead but also limit human understanding of how objects impact people and places. An artificial plant is just an artificial plant if it remains in expected spaces and functions as intended. Through the playful use of time and format, this project crafts a novel perspective on ordinary objects and the society that produced them.
What is Biodesign?
M21D | The term “biodesign” seems to be just about everywhere these days. It’s often mentioned as part of a comprehensive approach to combating the climate crisis. Other common suggestions include biomimicry, bio-inspired design, bioengineering, and biofabrication. But what do these terms mean, and why should people who use objects (rather than design them) be interested in them?
Practicing Utopia: The Mensch Meier Collective in the Time of COVID-19
PLATFORM | Walking into the Mensch Meier with the lights turned on rarely occurs. Although a proper night of dancing at any techno club in Berlin continues past sunrise, the Mensch Meier’s labyrinthine interior remains dark as long as the base notes are roaring and the people are spinning.
Scholarship
“Misunderstanding Familiar Objects in an Imagined Future: A Critical Method for Discovery.” On_Culture: The Open Journal for the Study of Culture 15 (2023).
Touching: Material as a Research Method. The Hague: Royal Academy of Art, 2022. (Contributing editor)
“The Political Life of a Chair: The Chaise Sandows in Interwar France,” Ph.D. dissertation, Department of Art History, University of Delaware, 2022.
“Book Review: Stephanie Schwartz, Walker Evans: No Politics.” History Network Review, January 2022.
“Book Review: Chris Millington, A History of Fascism in France.” History Network Review, March 2021.
“Practicing Utopia: The Mensch Meier Collective in the Time of COVID-19.” Platform, April 5, 2021.
“Politics and Politicization of the Chaises Sandows,” RADDAR, no. 3 (Autumn 2021): 80-101.
“Object as (Obscured) Archive: The Chaise Sandows.” In Fugitive Archives, edited by Sandy Isenstadt and Martin Brückner, Chapter 8. Newark, Delaware: University of Delaware Press, 2021.
“Review of Une Aventure Moderne: The Union des artistes modernes. Le Centre Pompidou, Paris,” Design and Culture 10, no. 2 (Autumn 2018): 139-141.
“Revolution through Beautiful Modern Art: René Herbst’s Chaises Sandows.” MA thesis, Department of Art and Architectural History, University of Oregon, 2014.
Speaking
2024 “Bewildering Things and Material Legacies: Recontextualizing Quotidien Objects in Stories from a Likely Future,” DASTS KONFERENCE 2024: Elegies of waste, surplus, and excess, Technical University of Denmark
2023 “Uncovering Histories of Environmental and Social Impact,” Society of Architectural Historians Conference
2023 “You can’t re-enter your path: A conversation with Karen Lamassonne about memorializing moments,” KUNST-WERKE Institute for Contemporary Art
2023 “Leveraging the Authority of Labels to Align Design with Diverse Audiences,” Terms of Art, Hood Museum of Art, Dartmouth University
2022 “The Chaises Sandows: Investigating Colonial and Immigration Histories of 1930s France through Steel and Rubber,” Design History Forum, Drexel University
2022 “Style Paquebot: Ocean Liners, the Steel Industry, and National Identity in Interwar France,” Society for French Historical Studies
2022 “Reconsidering the Chaises Sandows: Materials, Makers, Industry, and Environments,” College Art Association
2021 “The O.T.U.A.’s Use of Chaises Sandows within Modern Publicity Practices,” Victoria & Albert Museum, FHS
2019 “The Men of L’Union des artistes modernes: sustained productivity of a particular homosociality across the twentieth century,” Historicising Masculinities Conference, Newcastle University
2018 “Mass Production as Nature and Nature as Mass Production,” International Conference on Ecocriticism and Environmental Studies, London Centre for Interdisciplinary Research
2018 “Integration According to Herbst: Mass Production as ‘Nature’” Berkeley/Stanford Symposium, SF MoMA
2018 “A Masculine Comfort: Physical Culture, René Herbst, and the Chaise Sandows,” College Art Association
2018 “Sport, Design, and Politics,” Osher Life Long Institute, Wilmington, DE
2017“Institutional/Cripp/Queer Time at St. Elizabeths,” Graduate Student Forum, University of Delaware
2017 “Material, Structure, and a Queer Temporality at the Government Hospital for the Insane,” Art History Graduate Student Symposium, Rutgers University
2016 “The Chaises sandows, René Herbst, and Psychological Repose,” The Refuge of Objects/Objects of Refuge Symposium at the Universität Mainz
2016 “Temporality and Structure at the Government Hospital for the Insane,” UCLA Art History Graduate Symposium
2015 “Unlikely Metropolis: Cottages of The Studio,” Graduate Group Symposium, Bryn Mawr College
2015 “The 1851 Exhibition and its Legacy,” Guest Lecturer, Nineteenth-Century European Art (M. Werth), University of Delaware
2014 “Situationists International: An Introduction.” Guest Lecturer, Neo-Marxism (A. Chari), University of Oregon
Exhibitions
Curator, Permanent Collection at the Museum of 21st Century Design, 2021-2023.
Co-curator, “Objects from our 21st-century ancestors,” M21D with Depot Boijmans Van Beuningen, 2023.
Co-curator, “Out of Time and Place,” M21D at Dutch Design Week, 2022.
Curatorial Intern, “Architecture of an Asylum: St. Elizabeths,” National Building Museum, 2017.
Experience the art history of Berlin, even if you aren’t here.
