Kathy O’Dell, Ph.D., is an art historian, theorist, and critic of modern and contemporary art, with a focus on performance art, issues of violence, and the importance of the esoteric. Her writings have appeared in Artforum, Art in America, Lusitania, Performance Research, TDR: The Drama Review, Textile: The Journal of Cloth & Culture, and Women & Performance: A Journal of Feminist Theory. She was also co-founder, co-editor, and president of Link: A Critical Journal on the Arts, which published ten book-length volumes between 1996 and 2005.
Author of Contract with the Skin: Masochism, Performance Art, and the 1970s (University of Minnesota Press, 1998), O’Dell is currently continuing work on a sole-authored book titled Dot: A Small History of a Big Point. She curated the first retrospective of the artwork of the renowned feminist writer but lesser-known artist Kate Millett, titled Kate Millett, Sculptor: The First 38 Years, held at UMBC’s Center for Art, Design, and Visual Culture (CADVC) in 1997 and accompanied by a book-length catalogue. Also at the CADVC, in 2017, she curated Gun Show, work by Baltimore sculptor David Hess comprising 112 facsimile assault rifles he fabricated from found objects to generate discussion of one of today’s most volatile issues. O’Dell has lectured widely, including at the Getty Research Institute (L.A.), Guggenheim Museum of Art (N.Y.), Royal Danish Academy of Art (Copenhagen), Mt. Allison University (Canada),
and John Hansard Gallery (U.K.).
Dr. O’Dell joined the faculty of the Department of Visual Arts at UMBC in 1992 and retired in 2022. She was Associate Dean in UMBC’s College of Arts, Humanities, and Social Sciences from 2001 to 2014, where her portfolio included arts and education initiatives, conflict mediation, and family support planning. When she returned to teaching and research in the Department in 2014, she continued part-time in the Dean’s Office as Special Assistant to the Dean for Education & Arts Partnerships, helping to expand UMBC’s partnerships with arts and education organizations off campus. In that role, she chaired the Higher Education in the Arts Task (HEAT) Force of the Arts Education in Maryland Schools (AEMS) Alliance for 12 years, and served on the Maryland State Arts Council and on the Greater Baltimore Cultural Alliance’s (GBCA’s) Board of Directors. She remains active in retirement with service on local, regional, and state levels, sitting on the Boards of the Catonsville Arts District, Baltimore County Arts Guild, Maryland Art Place, and on Howard County Center for the Arts’ Exhibits
Committee, of which she’s been a member for over two decades. She is also the current Chair of the Maryland Public Art Commission of the Maryland State Arts Council.
Throughout her professional life and in retirement, her passion has rested with teaching, especially in UMBC’s Intermedia + Digital Arts (IMDA) M.F.A program, where her pedagogy has focused on writing by and about artists, and the research methodologies that support that endeavor. Since the inception of the IMDA program in 1993, she has been a member of 61 graduate students’ committees, chairing 29 of them. Upon retirement, she established an endowment at UMBC for the “KO’D IMDA Award for Most Outstanding M.F.A. Written Thesis and Exhibition.”
Dr. O’Dell has a B.A. in Art and French from Colby College (1973), M.A. in Art History
from the University of California, Berkeley (1982), and Ph.D. in Art History from the
CUNY Graduate Center (1992).