Dr Jeff O’Brien
Curator
Ph.D., University of British Columbia, Canada
M.A., University of British Columbia, Canada
B.A., University of Victoria, Canada
Jeff O’Brien is an art historian and curator whose research engages contemporary art, photography, video, and critical archival studies. He is curator of MIRL, the Material / Image Research Lab in the Department of History of Art & Architecture at the University of California, Santa Barbara. His work examines the cultural, political, and epistemological dimensions of images, with particular attention to lens-based practices, media technologies, and the role of archives in shaping historical knowledge. O’Brien received his Ph.D. in Art History and Theory from the University of British Columbia, where his dissertation, The Right to Be Seen: Archiving Absence in Post-Civil War Lebanon, investigated visual practices addressing disappearance, testimony, and cultural memory.
At MIRL, O’Brien leads interdisciplinary initiatives that integrate digital humanities, imaging technologies, and object-based inquiry with rigorous art-historical analysis. Projects include the California Native American Modern Art Archive, documenting and amplifying Native American artists across California; Object Histories, Making, and Meaning in the Andes, using 3D imaging, hyperspectral imaging, and radiocarbon analysis to reconstruct Andean artifacts; and Ways of Seeing, exploring computational 3D visualization to reveal form, surface, and internal structure for analysis and teaching. He has been a Liu Scholar and curator at the Liu Institute for Global Issues, held multiple fellowships including the Joseph-Armand Bombardier CGS Doctoral Fellowship, and was fellow-in-residence for Modern and Contemporary Arab Art at Darat al Funun, Jordan. His publications include What Are Our Supports? (Information Office, 2022), a finalist for the City of Vancouver Book Award, and “Under-Writing Beirut-Mathaf, Whose Ghosts Must be Summoned” (Bloomsbury, 2021). He serves on the editorial board of Afterimage and has presented his work widely across the United States, Canada, and the Middle East.
jeffobrien@ucsb.edu
https://www.arthistory.ucsb.edu/people/jeff-obrien
Christine Fritsch
Assistant Curator
M.A., Art History, Pennsylvania State University
B.A., Art History, The Ohio State University
B.A., German, The Ohio State University
cfritsch@ucsb.edu
805.893.7403