Department of Art

Faculty

Dr. Thor J. Mednick
Professor of Art History

Thor J. Mednick earned his doctorate in the history of modern European art, and wrote his dissertation on the turn-of-the-century artists' colony at Skagen, Denmark. Specializing in the art of nineteenth-century Denmark, he has published on painters such as P.S. Krøyer and Vilhelm Hammershøi, and on the relationship of agricultural reform to nineteenth-century Danish landscape painting. He is the co-curator of From the Golden Age to the Modern Breakthrough: Danish Paintings from the Collection of Ambassador John L. Loeb, Jr. (New York, 2013) and Jorforbindelser: Dansk maleri 1780-1920 og det antropocene landskab (Denmark, 2017-2019).

He is a former Fellow of the American-Scandinavian Foundation, the Ambassador John L Loeb, Jr Foundation, and the American Philosophical Society, and a legatee of the Danish Ministry of Culture. He has been a Visiting Scholar at the University of Copenhagen and the University of California at Los Angeles, and a Visiting Professor at Fuglsang Museum and Faaborg Museum, in Denmark.

A proven instructor in a variety of settings since 2003, Dr. Mednick became affiliated since 2010 with Missouri Southern State University (MSSU), in Joplin, as a non-tenure stream Assistant Professor of Art. He was Visiting Scholar for the University of Copenhagen's Department of Art and Cultural Studies in 2009-2010 and for the Scandinavian Section at the University of California, Los Angeles in 2008-2009. He served as Visiting Lecturer, from 2006 to 2009 at the University of Copenhagen, and in 2005 at the Visual Arts and Media Studies Division at Pasadena City College.

At Indiana University, he was Instructor of Record in Fall 2004 and Spring 2005 as well as Teaching Assistant in Fall 2003 and Spring 2004. Between 2000 and 2003, he was also employed in a number of curatorial positions, including at the National Gallery of Art in Copenhagen; the Bowers Museum of Cultural Art in Santa Ana, California; and the Fisher Gallery at the University of Southern California, in Los Angeles.

VA 3120
Center for the Visual Arts
419.530.8325