Faculty
Dr. Mysoon Rizk
Professor, Art History
Modern and Contemporary Art
Dr. Mysoon Rizk earned a PhD in 1997 from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, Department of Art History, specializing in modern and contemporary art, with a minor in the history of photography. In 1994, she also earned an MA in Art History from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. During graduate school, she researched the work of New York-based artist David Wojnarowicz (1954-1992), whose Estate she was the first person to catalog, shortly after he died of AIDS-related illnesses. Since earning her doctorate, she has published numerous journal articles, book chapters, and exhibition catalog essays, as well as presented competitively selected papers at a wide variety of international and national conferences, on many contemporary artists including Wojnarowicz, about whom she is considered an internationally recognized expert.
While a graduate student at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, she served as Instructor of Record in Fall 1990 and Spring 1991 for several drawing classes designed for architecture students. She also served as a Teaching Assistant in Art History in Spring 1994. While archiving Wojnarowicz's Estate, during which time she lived in New York, she operated a gallery in her Brooklyn apartment and worked for PPOW as well as Gracie Mansion Gallery, both of whom had represented Wojnarowicz during his lifetime. Upon earning her doctorate, and before joining The University of Toledo, she taught full-time for three years at the Milwaukee Institute of Art and Design, in the Liberal Studies Division, in Milwaukee, Wisconsin.
Prior to graduate studies in Art History, she worked for several years in the areas of publishing, museum library science, art supply store retail, and architecture, the latter shortly after earning a second undergraduate degree (BS) in architectural studies. She has also worked as a coffee barista, a clerical typist, and a searcher for lost library books in the university library system. She earned her first undergraduate degree (BA) in 1983, in Studio Art, from Oberlin College, in Oberlin, Ohio. Growing up primarily in Greensboro, North Carolina, Dr. Rizk was born in Damascus, Syria and came to the United States with her family as a young child.
Ph. D., Art History, Modern and Contemporary
University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
M.A., Art History, Modern and Contemporary
University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
B.S., Architectural Studies
University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
B.A. Studio Art, Printmaking
Oberlin College
VA1070A
Center for the Visual Arts
419.530.8301
Mysoon.Rizk@utoledo.edu