https://orcid.org/0000-0001-6456-003X
Susannah Thompson is an art historian, writer and critic. She is Professor of Contemporary Art and Criticism at GSA.
Susannah holds a PhD in History of Art from the University of Glasgow, an MPhil in Art and Design in Organisational Contexts from The Glasgow School of Art and an MA (Hons) in History of Art from the University of Glasgow. She has a PG Cert in Academic Practice from University of Edinburgh (2014), is a Fellow of the HEA and (since 2017) a member of the Executive Board of the Scottish Graduate School for Arts and Humanities.
Before taking up her position at The Glasgow School of Art in 2017, Susannah worked at Edinburgh College of Art (ECA), University of Edinburgh, as Director for Postgraduate Research (2014-17), Co-Director of Visual Culture (2011-14) and Lecturer in Visual Culture (2006-2017) in the School of Art.
Susannah’s research has been widely published in journals including the British Art Journal, Art History, Visual Studies, Journal for Writing in Creative Practice, Museum History Journal, Journal of the Scottish Society for Art History and Visual Culture in Britain. Her doctoral research (2010) examined artists’ writings in Scotland published between 1960-1990, focusing on alternative and experimental modes of writing and post-criticism, writing as a part of visual art practice and the role of zines and ephemeral publications within contemporary art in Scotland. Her course, Art Writing, was a core component of the MA Contemporary Art Theory programme and ran between 2010-2017, the first of its kind in Scotland. As well as her role as Head of Doctoral Studies Susannah is an experienced PhD supervisor and examiner (of practice-led, curatorial and art historical PhD projects) and contributes to the MLitt Art Writing and MRes programmes at GSA. She has supervised ten successful PhD completions to date.
Alongside her academic research Susannah has a longstanding practice as a freelance art writer, critic and curator. She has extensive curatorial and programming experience and as a writer and critic has contributed to magazines and journals including Artforum, Art Review, The Burlington Magazine, Sight and Sound, Burlington Contemporary, Flash Art, Even, Contemporary, Modern Painters, Circa, Variant, A-N and MAP. She has written numerous catalogue essays and gallery texts for artists and organisations including Tramway, CCA, Transmission, Sorcha Dallas, Washington Garcia, Mary Mary, Street Level Photoworks, The Glasgow School of Art, Leeds College of Art, Linn Lühn (Cologne), Collective (Edinburgh) and YYZ (Toronto). She is a member of AICA (International Association of Art Critics). In 2023-24 she was awarded the third Association of Art Historians and Ampersand Foundation Residency at Wigwell Lodge in Derbyshire.
Susannah's research interests are in the broad area of contemporary art history and visual culture, with a particular emphasis on interdisciplinary and feminist approaches to: Art Writing; Criticism/Post-Criticism; Art Historical writing; Fiction / Literature and/in/as Art; Contemporary Art Theory; Contemporary Art; Feminism; Class; 20th Century Painting; Scottish Art (20th century and contemporary). Recent and current research projects include (separate) work on the Scottish artists Maud Sulter, Cordelia Oliver, Pat Douthwaite, Stephen Sutcliffe and Joan Eardley and an ongoing project on the African-American and Chippewa artist Edmonia Lewis.
Selected recent and forthcoming publications and projects:
Scotland and Surrealism: co-investigator on the RSE-funded, cross-institutional network (with Prof Patricia Allmer, Edinburgh College of Art and Dr. Grainne Rice, National Galleries of Scotland). The network brought together international researchers, artists and curators to explore the range and depth of Scotland's engagement with Surrealism and its legacies in the twentieth century and beyond. As well as convening a panel for the Association for Art Historians in 2021, the network's activities included four digital workshops and a conference in 2022.
With Jenny Brownrigg (GSA), Susannah is co-author of an extended academic article tracing the early years of the painter and GSA graduate Joan Eardley, published in The British Art Journal in Spring 2022. The article contests dominant readings of Eardley's development and re-examines her diverse and wide-ranging work of the 1940s. A further, solo authored essay on Eardley 'Letters from Joan', has also been published for the edited book 'All Becomes Art' (Speculative Books). Research for the article led to the 2023 exhibition 'Early Eardley' held at the Reid Gallery, Glasgow School of Art.
'Spark's Spinsters', Susannah's contribution to book 'The Crooked Dividend: Essays on Muriel Spark' considered the relationship between the lives of women writers and their material and domestic conditions, specifically the role of bedsits and boarding houses in Spark's life and early novels.
You can read Susannah’s art criticism at: www.artreview.com, https://mapmagazine.co.uk/, https://contemporary.burlington.org.uk/ and more.
Current PhD students and recent completions:
Rebecca Meanley (current)
A Hyper-Present State: Experiential Encounters in the Act of Painting and the Act of Writing (practice-led)
Co-supervised with Dr Laura Haynes and Dr Zoe Mendelson (GSA)
Kiah Endelman Music (current)
Fences, tradition and navigating the boundary lines of emptiness and fullness as a queer, feminist Jew (practice-led)
Co-supervised with Dr Laura Haynes (GSA)
Helen de Main (current)
Feminist Participatory Printmaking (practice-led)
Co-supervised with Dr Adele Patrick (GWL) and Dr Nicky Bird (GSA)
Kyla McDonald (completed Nov 2023)
Re–discovery, Restoration and Revision: investigating the position of women artists within recent curatorial trends in Europe and North America. Funded by AHRC's Scottish Graduate School for Arts and Humanities DTP. Co-supervised by Professor Patricia Allmer, Edinburgh College of Art and Dr Adele Patrick, Glasgow Women's Library.
Storm Greenwood (completed Nov 23)
Unravelling Text: Reading as a Polyphonic Practice (practice-led)
Funded by Techne/Scottish Graduate School for Arts and Humanities. Co-supervision with Dr Laura Haynes (GSA)
