Temple University

Ali Printz is a scholar, painter and interdisciplinary artist, and curator who studies Modern and Contemporary Appalachian art. Her interests lie in ecocriticism, the conjuncture of fine art and craft, and marginalized histories in American Art. She received a BFA in Painting and BA in Art History from West Virginia University and an MA in Contemporary Art at Sotheby’s Institute of Art, New York. Her research has been supported by Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art, The Smithsonian American Art Museum, The Terra Foundation, The Center for Curatorial Leadership, and The Decorative Arts Trust. Her recent publications include Queering Appalachia’s Visual History: A Collection of Queer Appalachian Photographers, to be published by University of Kentucky Press in 2024, as well as upcoming publications for Appalachian Journal and the Archives of American Art. Her recent artistic projects include her solo exhibition, Into the Mountains, at the William King Museum of Art in 2023 and an upcoming solo show at Bloomfield Ridgewood in the fall of 2025. Printz was the 2023-2024 Terra Foundation Reinstallation Curatorial Fellow at PAFA and the 2023-2024 Andrew W. Mellow research fellow at Library Company of Philadelphia /Historical Society of Pennsylvania. Her recent curatorial projects include the biennial From These Hills: Contemporary Art of the Southern Appalachian Highlands in 2023-24 and her current show at PAFA, Layers of Liberty: Philadelphia and the Appalachian Environment which runs through fall 2024.

MA, Contemporary Art, Sotheby’s Institute of Art, 2012 
BA, Art History, West Virginia University, 2009 
BFA, Painting, West Virginia University, 2009 

Dissertation Title: “Appalachian Regionalism: Reimagining Modernism on the Periphery of American Art” 

Primary Advisor: Erin Pauwels, PhD