Ph.D. from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, 2000.

Juli Carson is an art historian, critic and curator. Currently, she is Associate Professor at UCI in the Department of Studio Art where she teaches art history, critical theory, and curatorial practice. She is also Director of UCI’s University Art Gallery and Room Gallery, each of which hosts an annual rotation of professional and student shows. In Fall 2011, UCIrvine inaugurated their new Contemporary Arts Center, which contains a new state-of-the-art exhibition space. As Director of the three University Art Galleries, Carson curates several series: The Emerging Artist Series, for which a single installation by a young artist is commissioned; the Major Work of Art Series, which features new work by first generation conceptual artists; and the Critical Aesthetics Program, which commissions new work by mid-career artists. Artists that Carson has curated at the UAG / Room Gallery include: Kelly Barrie, Yael Bartana, Steve Fagin, Andrea Geyer, Sharon Hayes, Roberto Jacoby, Adria Julia, Mary Kelly, Cristóbal Lehyt, Shana Lutker, Florian Pumhösl, Constanze Ruhm, Barbara T. Smith, Koki Tanaka, Stephanie Taylor, Erika Vogt and Zinny/Maidagan. The UAG’s group exhibitions have also featured: Fallen Fruit, Gaylen Gerber, Alexandre Joly, Silvia Kolbowski, Sowon Kwon, Dorit Margreiter, An Te Liu, Katya Sanders, Hong-An Truong, and Bahc Yiso. In addition to Carson’s curatorial activities at UCI, she curates thematic exhibitions on contemporary art that travel internationally. Her most recent international exhibition is: Exile of the Imaginary: Aesthetics / Politics / Love hosted by the Generali Foundation in Vienna.

Carson’s academic research focuses on the effect that legacies of 1960s Minimalism and 1970s Conceptualism has had on a branch of contemporary art informed by psychoanalysis. Her art criticism is widely published. She is editor of Exile of the Imaginary: Aesthetics / Politics / Love (Vienna: Generali Foundation and Walther König Press, 2007) and Paradox and Practice: Architecture in the Wake of Conceptualism (Irvine: UCI University Art Gallery, 2007). Her interest in the combined legacies of psychoanalysis and conceptualism informed her archival exhibition (and MIT dissertation) on Mary Kelly’s Post-Partum Document: Excavating Post-Partum Document: Mary Kelly’s Archive (1968-1998), Generali Foundation, Vienna (1998). In addition to her contributions to critical anthologies, Carson’s essays appear in artUS, X-TRA, Art Journal, Texte zur Kunst, Documents, and October. She has also contributed critical essays to publications by the Whitney Museum of American Art, the Vienna Secession, the Venice Biennale, the Whitworth Art Gallery UK, the MAK Center in Los Angeles and Vienna, the Kunsthaus Bregenz, the Pasadena Armory, and the Orange County Museum of Art.

Her most recent book is The Limits of Representation: Psychoanalysis and Critical Aesthetics, (Buenos Aires: Letra Viva Press, 2011). Her forthcoming book, The Conceptual Unconscious: A Poetics of Critique, will be published by PoLYpeN.