Berit Potter

Associate Professor & Interim Department Chair

Berit Potter received her doctorate in history of art from New York University’s Institute of Fine Arts in 2015 as well as a M.A. from New York University’s Program in Museum Studies. Her research engages with issues of display including the reception of Latin American and US modern art on the West Coast, and use of exhibitions as propaganda during World War II. Her current book project examines the career of SFMOMA's first director, Grace McCann Morley, and her pioneering advocacy for global perspectives in the study and exhibition of modern and contemporary art. Her research has received support from the Rockefeller Foundation and Terra Foundation for American Art. She has held positions in several art institutions, including the Smithsonian American Art Museum and Whitney Museum of American Art. Prior to joining HSU, she taught art history and museum studies at numerous institutions, among them Mills College, the San Francisco Art Institute, and University of San Francisco. Examples of her scholarship can be found in The Americas Revealed: Collecting Colonial and Modern Latin American Art in the United States, SFMOMA's Projects + Perspectives, and the forthcoming issue of The Space Between: Literature and Culture 1914-45, "Dada and Surrealism: Transatlantic Aliens on American Shores, 1914 - 1945."