Bio

Alexis Clark received her Ph.D. in Art History and Visual Studies from Duke University in 2014. Since then, she has taught as lecturer or postdoctoral fellow at the University of Southern California, University of California, Riverside, and Washington University in St. Louis.

Dr. Clark’s research concentrates on the global historiography and museology of nineteenth- and twentieth-century art with a focus on impressionism. In her peer-reviewed articles in the Archives of American Art Journal, Burlington Magazine, Museum History Journal, and Oxford Art Journal, she has raised questions related to art and language: style, translation and silent translators, the publication and circulation of art writing in relation to international copyright laws, the defining and redefining of art-historical categories, and the limits of language to communicate the experience of art.

With Frances Fowle, Dr. Clark edited the collection Globalizing Impressionism: Reception, Translation, and Transnationalism (Yale UP 2020). In April 2024, Globalizing Impressionism was named one of the “most essential books in Impressionism”. With Martha Ward, she edited an Oxford Art Journal special issue, “Impressionism After Impressionism” (August 2023). Her reviews of exhibitions and books have appeared in Art History, Burlington Magazine, H-France, Nineteenth-Century Art Worldwide, and elsewhere.

In 2025-2026, Dr. Clark published a review of exhibitions of impressionism spanning the U.S. from coast to coast in Nineteenth-Century Art Worldwide. She also published a essay in the catalogue accompanying James McNeill Whistler (Tate Britain/Van Gogh Museum, 2026-2027).

She has spoken about her research at conferences and symposia around the world: the College Art Association, Courtauld Institute of Art, National Gallery, London, National Gallery, Washington, D.C., Musée d’Orsay, the University of Glasgow, the University of Montreal, and Columbia University (Casa Muraro). In 2024 and 2025, Dr. Clark co-led ‘Workshopping Future Directions in Impressionism 1.0’ at the Institute of Advanced Studies (London) and “Workshopping Future Directions in Impressionism 2.0” at Caltech, the Getty Research Institute, and Norton Simon Art Museum in southern California. Continuing this active schedule of presentations, in 2026-2027, Dr. Clark will speak at the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts, Birkbeck College (University of London), and more.

At NCSU, she is Assistant Professor in the History of Art. She teaches a range of courses with an emphasis on global modern and contemporary art. Dr. Clark especially enjoys engaging students in active learning and connecting them with area arts institutions. She has taught independent studies in animals in art, borderlands, and Creole visual culture. She currently serves as a graduate student adviser and committee member on a spectrum of topics: contemporary Native art, 1980s U.S. photography and the Culture Wars, and the long history of FSA photographs.

In Fall 2026, Dr. Clark’s office hours are Tuesdays, 10:30 a.m.-12:30 p.m.