About

Bio

Jessamine Batario is an art historian, curator, and museum educator specializing in modern and contemporary art. Within this broad field, she is primarily concerned with issues of critical historiography, interrogating how histories are written in the first place. Her projects question canonical authority and advocate for a transgression of the traditional boundaries between the roles of historians and the roles of artists.

Batario’s current research and curatorial project features modern and contemporary art by artists with cultural heritage ties to Cuba, Guam, the Philippines, and Puerto Rico. This project critiques U.S. imperialism by foregrounding the lived experiences of those who resist U.S. interventions and interrogate their inheritance of colonialist narratives.

In 2020, Batario co-founded Kababayan: Filipinx American Art History Working Group with Dr. Pearlie Rose Baluyut and Dr. Lalaine Bangilan Little.

Batario’s research has been supported by fellowships and grants from the Teiger Foundation, Dedalus Foundation, the Getty Research Institute Library, the Vivian L. Smith Foundation at The Menil Collection, and The Graduate School of The University of Texas at Austin.

She is currently the Linde Family Foundation Curator of Academic Engagement at the Colby College Museum of Art in Waterville, Maine.

Education

PhD, Art History, The University of Texas at Austin, 2018

MA, Art History, The University of Texas at Austin, 2012

BA, History of Art, University of California, Berkeley, 2004