Emily Watlington

Emily Watlington is associate editor of Art in America. In September 2019, she launched “The Exchange,” a column pairing artists in conversation with scientists, researchers, or practitioners working on similar subjects. Her criticism often focuses on video and media art through the lenses of gender and disability studies. A Fulbright scholar with a master’s degree from MIT in the history, theory, and criticism of architecture and art, she has held curatorial positions at the MIT List Visual Arts Center and MassArt’s Bakalar and Paine Galleries (now the MassArt Art Museum). Her writing has been translated into French, German, and Croatian, and has appeared in magazines such as Artforum, Mousse, and Frieze, as well as in books and exhibition catalogues including Before Projection: Video Sculpture 1974–1995 (Hirmer, 2018), An Inventory of Shimmers: Objects of Intimacy in Contemporary Art (Prestel, 2017), and Independent Female Filmmakers (Routledge, 2018). She recently guest-edited a special issue of Art Papers on disability and the politics of visibility. She has lectured widely at institutions including Harvard University, Museo Reina Sofía, the Berlin Museum für Fotografie, and the Rhode Island School of Design. With architect Gabriel Cira, she co-taught the course “Architectural Access: Code and Care” at the MIT School of Architecture. In 2018 she was awarded the Vera List Writing Prize for Visual Arts.