Donald Kuspit (born March 26, 1935) is an American art critic and poet, known for his practice of psychoanalytic art criticism. He has published on the subjects of avant-garde aesthetics, postmodernism, modern art, and conceptual art.

Education

Kuspit graduated from Columbia College in 1955, and earned a M.A. from Yale University in 1958. He received his PhD in philosophy from the Goethe University Frankfurt in 1960. Kuspit next taught at Pennsylvania State University and became increasingly interested in art history. He earned a M.A. there in 1964. Kuspit is a Fulbright Scholar and has taught philosophy and American studies at Saarland University and University of Windsor. He earned a PhD in art history from the University of Michigan in 1971.

Academic career

Teaching positions

Kuspit is a Distinguished Professor Emeritus of Art History and Philosophy at the State University of New York at Stony Brook and School of Visual Arts. He was the A. D. White Professor-at-Large at Cornell University (1991–1997). In 1983, he received an honorary doctorate in fine arts from Davidson College, in 1996 from the San Francisco Art Institute, and in 2007 from the New York Academy of Art. In 1998 he received an honorary doctorate of humane letters from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. In 2005 he was the Robertson Fellow at the University of Glasgow. In 2008 he received the Tenth Annual Award for Excellence in the Arts from the Newington-Cropsey Foundation.

Awards and grants

He received the Frank Jewett Mather Award for Distinction in Art Criticism in 1983 (given by the College Art Association). In 1997, the National Schools of Art and Design presented him with a citation for Distinguished Service to the Visual Arts. In 2014 he was the first recipient of the Gabarron Foundation Award for Cultural Thought. He has received fellowships and grants from the Ford Foundation, Fulbright Program, National Endowment for the Arts, National Endowment for the Humanities, Guggenheim Foundation Fellowship, and Asian Cultural Council.

Art criticism

Poetry

Film appearance