About Dr. Chuong
about
Jennifer Chuong’s research centers on the art, architecture, and material culture of the transatlantic world as they relate to histories of environment and race. In her work Dr. Chuong prioritizes the intelligence of makers and making in order to expand our understanding of what art is, and who makes it.
Current projects include a book manuscript, “Surface Experiments: Art, Nature, and the Making of Early America,” which recovers the artistic, scientific, and philosophical fascination with surfaces as sites of physical transformation in the eighteenth-century transatlantic world. In this project, Dr. Chuong explores a range of experimental surface techniques, including mezzotint engraving, paper marbling, veneer furniture, and oil painting.
Prior to joining the Art History Program at UIUC, Dr. Chuong held postdoctoral fellowships in the Harvard Society of Fellows and at Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin.
Education
- Ph.D. and M.A. Harvard University
- S.M.Arch.S. Massachusetts Institute of Technology
- B.Arch. Cornell University
Research and publications
Ongoing and upcoming research
Upcoming talks
Upcoming talks
Keynote Address, University of Delaware, Center for Material Culture Studies, Dynamic Objects: Material Connections Across the Globe, Emerging Scholars Symposium – April 24, 2026
Cambridge University, Association of Art History Annual Conference, “Action Printing: Dox Thrash’s Queer Presentation of Carborundum Mezzotint” – April 8, 2026
Selected publications
“All That is Steel: Appearance and Presence in Carol Bove’s Collage Sculptures.” Carol Bove. New York: Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation, [2026].
“Isaiah Thomas's Stamp Acts: Printers and Tacit Protest in Revolutionary America.” Material Cultures of the Global Eighteenth Century: Art, Mobility, and Change, edited by Wendy Bellion and Kristel Smentek. London: Bloomsbury Academic Press, 2023.
“Surfaces, Surfacing: Flatness as Physical Fact in Alex Katz’s Work.” Alex Katz: Gathering. New York: Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation, 2022.
“‘A Gloss Equal to Glass’: The Material Brilliance of Early American Furniture.” In Sparkling Company: Reflections on Glass in the 18th-Century British World, edited by Christopher Maxwell. Corning, NY: Corning Museum of Glass, 2020.