Profile
Masha Chlenova is an art historian and curator specializing in modern art, with a focus on the historical avant-gardes of the 1910s and 20s that revolutionized the way art is made, presented and understood. She is particularly interested in the invention of abstraction across the media and in the radical practices of Imperial Russia and the early Soviet Union. Her work also focuses on听the history of exhibitions and display and on听the close ties between word and image in modern art.
Degrees Held
Ph.D., M.A., and B.A., Art History, Columbia University, New York
B.A., French and Linguistics, Moscow State Linguistic University, Moscow
Professional Affiliation
College Art Association (CAA)
Association of Art Museum Curators (AAMC)
Society of Historians of Eastern European and Russian Art and Architecture (SHERA)
Association for Slavic, East European and Eurasian Studies (ASEEES)
Recent Publications
鈥淢arc Chagall: Beyond the Ordinary鈥 in听Harmony & Dissonance:听Orphism in Paris, 1910-1930.听Vivien Greene and Tracey Bashkoff, eds. New York: Guggenheim Museum, 2024
鈥淎lexander Archipenko鈥 in听Tracing the Modern: Selections from the Tel Aviv Museum of Art, 1880-1989.听Edited by Hillary Reder. New York: Rizzoli Electa, 2025
鈥淟anguage Understandable to All Peoples: The International Connections and Legacy of the Moscow Museum of Painterly Culture鈥澨Museum of Painterly Culture: Research and Discoveries. Moscow: State Tretyakov Gallery, 2023 (proceedings of a 2019 conference)听
"Traveller's Tales: Alfred Barr, Soviet Union and International Modernism in the Postwar Period" in听New Histories of Art in the Global Postwar Era: Multiple Modernisms. Flavia Frigieri and Kristian Handberg, eds. (London: Routledge, 2021)听
"Museums of Artistic Culture in Russia and Wladislaw Strzeminski" in The Avant-Garde Museum. Jaroslaw Suchan and Agniezka Pindera, eds. (Lodz: Muzeum Sztuki, 2020)
"Attributed to Wladislaw Strzeminski. Unovis Posters 1920-21" in Engineer, Agitator, Constructor: The Artist Reinvented, 1918-1939. The Merrill C. Berman Collection. Jodi Hauptman and Adrian Sudhalter, eds. (New York: The Museum of Modern Art, 2020)
"'A Fight for Modern Art': The Rise of Museums of Living Artists in the West" in The International Collection of Modern Art of the "a.r." Group. Paulina Kurc-Maj and Anna Saciuk-Gosowska, eds. (Lodz: Museum Sztuki, 2019)听
"Innovative, Polemical, Dogmatic: The Case of Soviet Experimental Museum Displays, 1930-1933" in Curatorial Challenges: Interdisciplinary Perspectives on Contemporary Curating. Malene V. Hansen, Anne F. Henningsen, Anne Gregersen, eds. (London: Routledge, 1919)听
"Liubov' Popova, "Objects from a Dyer's Shop," 1914" on Post. Notes on Modern and Contemporary Art around the Globe MoMA, NY, 2019
"The Beginnings in Russia" in Katarzyna Kobro Wladislaw Strzeminski: A Polish Avant-Garde (Paris: Centre Pompidou, 2018)
Russian Revolution: A Contested Legacy. New York: International Print Center, 2017
鈥淭heater鈥 in Revolutsiia! Demonstratsiia! Soviet Art Put to the Test, 1917-1937.鈥 Matt Witkowsky and Devin Fore, eds. Chicago: Art Institute of Chicago, 2017听
鈥淪oviet Museology during the Cultural Revolution and Modernization of Western Museums: An Educational Turn鈥 in Image, Education and Communism in Germany and USSR in the 1920s and 1930s, collection of essays in the French peer-reviewed journal Histoire@Politique, 2017
鈥淪oviet Art in Review: 鈥楩ifteen Years of Artists of the Russian Soviet Republic鈥 in Leningrad, 1932鈥 in Revolution: Russian Art, 1917-32. John Millner and Natalia Murray, eds. London: Royal Academy of Art, 2017
鈥淭he Secret Recesses of Picabia鈥檚 Transparencies鈥 in Anne Umland and Catherine Hug, eds. Francis Picabia: A Retrospective. New York: The Museum of Modern Art, 2016
鈥淢otivating the Line: Waclaw Szpakowski's Modernism鈥 in Elzbieta Lubowicz, ed. Waclaw Szpakowski: A Retrospective. Warsaw, 2015
鈥淟anguage, Space, and Abstraction鈥 in Achim Borchardt-Hume, ed. Kazimir Malevich. London: Tate Modern, 2014
鈥淪taging Soviet Art: 鈥楩ifteen Years of Artists of the Soviet Socialist Republic,鈥 1932-33鈥 October 147 (Spring 2014): 36-53
鈥淜azimir Malevich鈥 in 鈥淎bstraction, 1910-1925: Eight Statements鈥 October 143 (Winter 2013): 18-27
鈥淓arly Russian Abstraction, as Such鈥 and 鈥0.10鈥 in Leah Dickerman, ed., Inventing Abstraction, 1910-1925: How a Radical Idea Changed Modern Art. New York: The Museum of Modern Art, 2012
Performances and Appearances
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Research Interests
- cosmopolitanism, anti-nationalism, internationalism among the historical avant-gardes
- history and theory of exhibitions and displays
- invention of abstraction (including poetry, film, dance and music)
- the intertwining of word and image in the visual arts
- languages of representation
- realism after modernism