Matthew James Holman is a writer and academic, based in London.
I write on
literature
and the visual arts, especially in relation to questions of conflict and
diplomacy, democracy and culture, and the avant-garde. I completed a PhD in American cultural history at University College London, and have held research or postdoctoral fellowships at Yale University, The Smithsonian, The Courtauld Institute (as the Terra Foundation for American Art Fellow), the Paul Mellon Centre for Studies in British Art, and the John F. Kennedy Institute for North American Studies in Berlin, funded by the Leverhulme Trust.
My first book, Frank O’Hara and MoMA: New York Poet, Global Curator, is forthcoming with Bloomsbury in September 2025. I am currently working on a new project, a group biography of Black Mountain College, and a novel.
I have contributed essays for artist books, international exhibitions, and monographs, including on Frank Auerbach, Jean-Michel Basquiat, Daniel Crews-Chubb, Theodore Ereira-Guyer, Pam Evelyn, Françoise Gilot, Emily Kraus, Sir Christopher Le Brun, Megan Rooney, and Gideon Rubin. My art and literary criticism has appeared in Apollo, The Art Newspaper (where
I often contribute the Big Review feature), Burlington Contemporary, Frieze, Jacobin, Literary Review, New Left Review Sidecar, Poetry London, Poetry Review, The White Review, The Times
Literary Supplement, and elsewhere. I am a member of the International Association of Art Critics
(AICA) and have lectured extensively on contemporary art and curatorial practice, including at
The Barbican, The Guildhall School, The Slade and, most recently, for the Apollo Painting School in Manchester.
My academic scholarship has examined, amongst other subjects, socialist theatre in New Deal-era New York, contemporary environmental poetics, and forms of capital in the work of Pierre Bourdieu, and has been published by Critical Quarterly, Essays and Studies, The Journal of Modern Literature, Oxford Art Journal, Women’s Studies, and elsewhere. I am currently Lecturer in Modern Literature at the University of Hertfordshire, and continue to teach transatlantic art history at The Courtauld.
For enquiries, please email me at matthew.james.holman@gmail.com.
