Max Boersma is a historian of European modernist and avant-garde art and research fellow at the Institute of Art History of the Freie Universität Berlin. His current work focuses on transnational histories of modernist abstraction and the intersections of art, design, and craft, particularly in Germany, Russia, and France. He received his PhD in the History of Art and Architecture at Harvard University in 2023.

His research has received support from the German-American Fulbright Commission, the Richard and Susan Smith Foundation, the Davis Center for Russian and Eurasian Studies, and the Minda de Gunzburg Center for European Studies.  

Prior to the FU Berlin, he held teaching positions at Williams College and Harvard University, and his writing has appeared in October, Grey Room, and Les Cahiers du Musée national d’art moderne.

Education

PhD, History of Art and Architecture, Harvard University

MA, History of Art, Williams College

BA, Art History, University of Colorado Boulder

Fellowships and Grants

• Presidential Scholar Dissertation Completion Fellowship, Graduate School of Arts and Sciences, Harvard University, 2022–23 
• GSAS Dean’s Fund for Graduate Program Initiatives, Harvard University, 2023
• Krupp Foundation Dissertation Research Fellowship, Minda de Gunzburg Center for European Studies, Harvard University, 2021–22
• Graduate Research and Travel Grant, Davis Center for Russian and Eurasian Studies, 2021
• Fulbright Research Grant, Deutsch-Amerikanische Fulbright-Kommission, 2020–21
• Graduate Research and Travel Grant, Davis Center for Russian and Eurasian Studies, 2020–21
• Porter Travel Award (10-month grant), Harvard University, 2019–20
• Presidential Scholar, Graduate School of Arts and Sciences, Harvard University, 2016–18
• Richard and Susan Smith Foundation Fellowship, Harvard University, 2017–18
• Graduate Fellowship, Williams College Graduate Program in the History of Art, 2014–16

Awards and Honors

• Bowdoin Prize for Graduate Essay in the English Language, Harvard University, 2022–23
• Bowdoin Prize for Graduate Essay in the English Language, Harvard University, 2020–21
• Certificate of Distinction in Teaching, Harvard University, Spring semester 2019
• Certificate of Distinction in Teaching, Harvard University, Fall semester, 2018
• Fulkerson Leadership in the Arts Award, Williams College Museum of Art, 2016

Lehre

Summer Semester 2023

• Global Abstraction

This course examines the global phenomenon of 20th century abstract art, concentrating on the medium of painting—broadly defined—from the interwar period through the early 1970s. Rather than attempting a comprehensive survey, weekly readings will engage students with recent scholarship on abstraction in a variety of contexts, including Europe, the Americas, Asia, and the Arab World. The seminar will balance investigations into cultural contacts, transnational networks, comparative models, and shared concerns (materiality, color, composition, gesture, and subjectivity) with attention to autochthonous practices and specific regional and national conditions. The politics of abstraction will likewise be approached from several distinct perspectives, highlighting entanglements in both cultural imperialism and decolonial movements as well as issues of gender, race, and class.

Ort: A 320 Übungsraum (Koserstr. 20)

Zeit: Mi 12:00-14:00

Erster Termin: 19.04.2023

Unterrichtssprache: Englisch

Journal Articles:

• “Global Patterns: Hannah Höch, Interwar Abstraction, and the Weimar Inflation Crisis,” Grey Room 91 (Spring 2023): 6–35. Link.

• “Le patron dégenré: Hannah Höch, le cubisme et les collages-dessins,” Les Cahiers du Musée national d’art moderne, no. 159 (Spring 2022): 40–52. Link.

• “From Material to Infrastructure: Germaine Krull’s Métal,” October 173 (Summer 2020): 118–142. Link.

Other publications:

• “Elegy to Construction,” in Polina Joffe, Ode to Construction – Abstraction in the Digital Age (Eindhoven: Onomatopee, 2020), 14–31. Co-written with Madeleine Morley.
  • Project awarded Bronze Medal by the Stiftung Buchkunst, Best Book Design from all over the World, 2023
• “Staging the ‘Nautch Girls,’” in Women in South Asian Art, digital publication, Harvard Art Museums, January 2018.

• “Selected Bibliography,” in Kevin M. Murphy, “Not Theories but Revelations:” The Art and Science of Abbott Handerson Thayer (Williamstown, MA: Williams College Museum of Art, 2016), 119–126.