About
Photo: Sam Gehrke
Laurel V. McLaughlin (she/her/hers) is a curator, art historian, writer, and educator from Philadelphia, based in New Haven, CT and Boston, MA. Her research and writing explores research-based sculpture, installation, new media, and social practice works activated by performance concerning formal liminalities, globalized migration, and ecological networks. McLaughlin holds a BA in English and Art History from Wake Forest University, MAs from The Courtauld Institute of Art and Bryn Mawr College, and a PhD from Bryn Mawr. She is a Curator and the Director of the Collective Futures Fund at Tufts University Art Galleries.
McLaughlin’s interdisciplinary research incorporating performance studies, art history, and cultural studies, has been supported by a 2020–2021 Luce/ACLS Dissertation Fellowship in American Art, as well as a 2021–2022 Bryn Mawr College Areté Fund Grant and Dean’s Fellowship Awards. She has shared her scholarly and curatorial work in conferences ranging from Performance Studies International, Calgary; the Universities Art Association of Canada Conference, Toronto, Montreal and New London; the Berkeley Film & Media Studies Graduate Conference, San Francisco; the Philadelphia Avant-Garde Studies Consortium, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia; the College Art Association, New York; the Midwest Art Historical Society Annual Conference, Cincinnati; and the Association of the Study of the Arts of the Present, Hong Kong and New York, among others. Her research, critical art writing, and curatorial work has appeared in Art Papers, ASAP/J, Antennae: The Journal of Nature in Visual Culture, BOMB Magazine, BIG WINDOW, Burnaway, Boston Art Review, The Brooklyn Rail, C Magazine, Contact Quarterly, Performa Magazine, Performance Research: A Journal of the Performing Arts, PARtake: The Journal of Performance as Research, Sculpture Magazine, Women & Performance, Sculpture Magazine, and Te Magazine, alongside recent contributions to edited volumes such as Bare Bodies—Thresholding Life, edited by Mariella Griel (De Gruyter GmbH, 2024), and journals such as ASAP/Journal (2024) and International Journal of the Arts in Society (2024). Forthcoming writing from McLaughlin will be featured in the edited volume The Borders of Art, co-edited by Dina Ramadan and Sarah Rogers (Bloomsbury 2025) and Women’s Innovations in Theatre, Dance, and Performance series, Volume 1: Performers, co-edited by Wendy Arons, Melissa Blanco Borelli, and Elizabeth W. Son (Bloomsbury, Methuen Drama Series, 2025). She co-edited the multidisciplinary reader, Tania El Khoury’s Live Art: Collaborative Knowledge Production, with Carrie Robbins, published by Amherst College Press in 2024. Additionally, McLaughlin has written catalog essays and exhibition texts on the work of Rami George, Ilana Harris-Babou, Carolina Caycedo, Baseera Khan, Emily Jacir, Tsedaye Makonnen, Dawit L. Petros, Emilio Rojas, and Bergman & Salinas.
McLaughlin has organized exhibitions and programming with artist collectives Vox Populi, FJORD, AUTOMAT, after/time, in addition to non-profit organizations, museum institutions, and collegiate galleries such as Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, the University of Pennsylvania in collaboration with the Arthur Ross Gallery and the ICA Philadelphia, the Center for Contemporary Art & Culture, Lafayette College Art Galleries, Emerson Contemporary, and Artspace New Haven in collaboration with the Yale University Art Gallery. She organized the traveling 2021–2023 survey Emilio Rojas: tracing a wound through my body (originating at Lafayette College Art Galleries, PA, followed by venues Emerson Contemporary, MA; Usdan Gallery, Bennington College, VT; and the Southeastern Center for Contemporary Art, NC), and the symposium Magical Thinking at MASS MoCA. Her curatorial work has been supported by Terra Foundation for American Art, the Helen Frankenthaler Foundation, and the Dutch Consulate of New York, PICE Mobility Grant, Acción Cultural Española, Spain, and The Sachs Program for Arts Innovation, University of Pennsylvania, among others. She is currently collaborating with Tanya Gayer on a research initiative How do you throw a brick through the window... at the Tufts University Art Galleries and the John Michael Kohler Arts Center, supported by a 2022 Andy Warhol Curatorial Research Fellowship.