Temple University

Ali Printz (she/her) is a scholar, painter, 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 and the catalogue for the upcoming biennial, From These Hills: Contemporary Art in the Southern Appalachian Highlands, opening at the William King Museum of Art in October 2023. Her recent artistic projects include Women’s Work: Redefining Appalachian Traditions at the University of Kentucky in 2022, and her solo exhibition, Into the Mountains, at the William King Museum of Art in 2023. Printz is the 2023-2024 Terra Foundation Reinstallation Curatorial Fellow at PAFA and a 2023-2024 Library Company of Philadelphia /Historical Society of Pennsylvania Short-term Research Fellow. 

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