Robert Atkins

Robert Atkins is a UC Berkeley-trained art historian who works at the intersection of art, politics, and queer identities. A former Village Voice columnist, he has written for more than 100 publications and is the author of ArtSpeak: A Guide to Contemporary Ideas, Movements, and Buzzwords, its modern-art prequel ArtSpoke, and Censoring Culture: Contemporary Threats to Free Expression. He has curated exhibitions at venues from Sao Paulo to Tokyo, including “From Media to Metaphor: Art About AIDS,” the first international traveling show of its kind. He also produced the pioneering online resources TalkBack: A Forum for Critical Discourse, Artery: The AIDS-Arts Forum, and ArtSpeak China.org, the first such bilingual wiki. He is a co-founder of Visual AIDS, creators of Day With(out) Art and the Red Ribbon. Atkins now lives in San Francisco where he is at work on his selected writings The Eternal Frame: Sex and Politics in Recent American Art, So You Want to Be An Artist? A Primer for Prospective Picassos and Their Parents, and On Susan Sontag: Media, Morality & Modernity.

San Francisco, United States