Alyson Cluck

Alyson Cluck is a PhD candidate studying modern and contemporary Latin American art with Dr. Abigail McEwen. Her dissertation project, "Forms of Encounter: Zilia Sánchez's Erotic Topologies in 1960s New York," proposes an interdisciplinary and diasporic reading of the artist's early sculptural canvases. Focusing on Sánchez's New York period (1960-71), it charts her topologies in relation to new forms of abstraction, discourses of the body, and interdisciplinary collaborations (across art, poetry, and theater) within her Cuban and Caribbean émigré circles. Cluck served as a 2018-19 University of Maryland Museum Fellow at The Phillips Collection, where she contributed to the museum retrospective and catalogue Zilia Sánchez: Soy Isla. She earned an MA in Humanities and Social Thought from New York University and a BA in Anthropology and Latin American Studies from Wesleyan University. She previously worked as a curatorial assistant at The Frick Pittsburgh and as an exhibitions/publications coordinator and press officer at NYU's Grey Art Gallery.