Photo of Behar, Ionit

Ionit Behar

PhD, 2021: Latin American Art; Modern and Contemporary Art

About

Ionit Behar received her Ph.D. in Art History at the University of Illinois at Chicago in 2021, having completed a dissertation titled "Intimate Space and the Public Sphere: Margarita Paksa in Argentina’s Military Dictatorship." She is interested in the relationship between art and politics in late twentieth-century Latin America and North America. Her research focuses specifically on conceptual art in Argentina during the dictatorship. She holds a Master's degree in Art History, Theory and Criticism from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, a Bachelor of Art Theory from Tel Aviv University, and a degree in Art Administration from the Bank Boston Foundation in Montevideo. She is the Director of Curatorial Affairs for Fieldwork Collaborative Projects NFP (FIELDWORK). She has served as the Curator of Collections and Exhibitions at Spertus Institute for Jewish Learning and Leadership and served as a Research Assistant for the exhibition "Hélio Oiticica: To Organize Delirium" at the Art Institute of Chicago and as a curatorial assistant at Gallery 400. She recently curated "Ellen Rothenberg ISO 6346: ineluctable immigrant" at Spertus Institute, "More Strange Than True" at Pulaski Park, "My Feet Have Lost Memory of Softness" at The Franklin, "Twin Rooms" at Julius Caesar, "Hinged Space" at Terrain Exhibitions and an online exhibition "¿Mañana será asi?" She served as a curatorial assistant at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago of the 2012 MFA Show and the 2013 Design Show, and co-curated with Julian Myers and Joanna Szupinska at Julius Caesar. She has held curatorial internships at the Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago; No Longer Empty, NYC and Israel Museum, Jerusalem. She has written for the Chicago Reader, THE SEEN, The Exhibitionist, and ArtSlant.

Education

PhD Candidate Art History, University of Illinois at Chicago, Present
MA Art History, Theory, and Criticism, School of the Art Institute of Chicago, 2013
BA Interdisciplinary Program in the Art, Tel Aviv University, 2010
Diploma Arts Administration, Bank Boston Foundation, 2007