The School of Art, Art History, and Design is excited to welcome new Assistant Professor of Modern and Contemporary Art, Dr. Max Boersma, to the faculty beginning in Fall 2026.

Max is a historian of European modernist and avant-garde art in a global context. His current research focuses on interdisciplinary, transnational, and transcultural histories of abstract art, as well as intersections of art with histories of craft, science, technology, and design. His first book, provisionally titled Technical Implications: The Making of Interwar Abstraction in Russia and Germany, is under contract with the University of Chicago Press.

Boersma received a PhD in the History of Art and Architecture at Harvard University, MA in Art History from Williams College, and BA from the University of Colorado Boulder. Prior to joining the University of Iowa, he was a Postdoctoral Fellow at the Kunsthistorische Institut of the Freie Universität Berlin. His research has been supported by the Minda de Gunzburg Center for European Studies, Davis Center for Russian and Eurasian Studies, Stiftung Arp e.V., and Deutsch-Amerikanische Fulbright-Kommission.

We couldn’t be more pleased to welcome Dr. Boersma to the School.