Dr. C. Ondine Chavoya was appointed the John D. Murchison Regents Professorship in Art in the Department of Art and Art History at UT Austin in 2023. A specialist in Chicanx and Latinx art, Chavoya is co-editor of Chicano and Chicana Art: A Critical Anthology (Duke University Press, 2019) which was named one of “The Best Art Books of the Decade” by ARTnews. Chavoya’s writings have appeared in Afterimage, Artforum, Art Journal, Aztlán: A Journal of Chicano Studies, CR: The New Centennial Review, Performance Research, Wide Angle, and in numerous exhibition catalogues and edited volumes. He is the recipient of a 2021 Andy Warhol Foundation Arts Writers Grant.
Chavoya’s curatorial projects have addressed issues of collaboration, experimentation, social justice, and archival practices in contemporary art. Recent exhibitions include Asco: Elite of the Obscure (with Rita Gonzalez, 2011), Robert Rauschenberg: Autobiography (with Lisa Dorin, 2017), and Axis Mundo: Queer Networks in Chicano L.A. (with David Evans Frantz, 2017). The exhibition catalogue for Axis Mundo: Queer Networks in Chicano L.A. (DelMonico Books•Prestel, 2017) garnered nine international book awards, including a 2018 Award for Excellence from the Association of Art Museum Curators (AAMC), the organization’s annual prize recognizing groundbreaking new scholarship in the field. In addition to exhibition-focused curatorial projects, Chavoya served as the International Consulting Curator to the Museo de Arte de Lima (MALI) in Perú from 2018–2020.
From 2002–2022, Chavoya was Professor of Art History and Latinx Studies at Williams College, where he was a co-founder of the College’s interdisciplinary program in Latinx Studies. Prior to Williams, Chavoya taught contemporary art and visual culture at RISD and the School of the Museum of Fine Arts/Tufts University. In spring 2021, Chavoya was the Belle Ribicoff Distinguished Visiting Professor of Art History at Vassar College and offered a seminar on Contemporary Art and Curatorial Practice. Chavoya is a graduate of the University of California at Santa Cruz, where he studied art history and comparative literature, and the University of Rochester (Ph.D. 2002).
Currently, Ondine has reunited with curator David Evans Frantz to develop Teddy Sandoval and the Butch Gardens School of Art, an exhibition co-organized with the Vincent Price Art Museum at East Los Angeles College, the Williams College Museum of Art, and Independent Curators International that will open in fall 2023.