Anastasia Aukeman is an art historian and curator living and working in New York City. Her recent book, Welcome to Painterland: Bruce Conner and the Rat Bastard Protective Association (Oakland, CA: University of California Press, 2016), is the first book-length study devoted to the Rat Bastard Protective Association, an inflammatory, close-knit community of artists who lived and worked in and around a building dubbed “Painterland” in the Fillmore neighborhood of mid-century San Francisco. The artists who counted themselves among the Rat Bastards—including Joan Brown, Bruce Conner, Jay DeFeo, Wally Hedrick, Michael McClure, and Manuel Neri—exhibited a unique fusion of radicalism, provocation, and community that had a significant impact on subsequent artistic developments across the United States and carved out an important place for West Coast activities for decades to come. Her study was awarded the Wyeth Foundation for American Art publication grant and the Meiss/Mellon Author’s Book Award and is going into its second printing.

Aukeman teaches art history and visual culture at Parsons School of Design in New York. Before becoming a professor she held several curatorial positions, most recently as Curatorial Fellow, Department of Photography, Museum of Modern Art (2007-2008). Most recently, she organized two shows on the artists of the Rat Bastard Protective Association, one in Los Angeles (The Landing, Oct 1, 2016-Jan 7, 2017) and another in New York (Susan Inglett Gallery, April 27-June 3, 2017). She has also written articles and reviews for Art in America, Art on Paper, and Elephant, among other publications. She earned her Ph.D. in Art History with a specialization in the art of the United States post-WWII at the Graduate Center, City University New York.

 
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