John Ott

John Ott is Professor of Art History at James Madison University and, for 2021–22, the Ray and Margaret Horowitz Visiting Professor in American Art at Boston University.

His two major areas of research are art consumption, patronage, and markets in the United States, and artwork by and portrayals of African Americans. He is author of the books Manufacturing the Modern Patron in Victorian California: Cultural Philanthropy, Industrial Capital, and Social Authority (Ashgate, 2014; Routledge, 2016) and (with Tim Cresswell) Muybridge and Mobility (California, 2022). Ott’s half of this volume examines the representation and social mobility of Black athletes in the Gilded Age.

His abnormally wide range of interests has also led to dozens of articles and book chapters on such varied topics as the rise of blockbuster art auction in the U.S., murals at historically black college and universities, early exhibitions of global art history at MoMA in New York, modernist painters’ designs for domestic textiles and ceramics, white Taos artists’ depiction of Pueblo and Nuevomexicanx communities, and illustrations for early auto touring magazines.

His current book project, Mixed Media: The Visual Cultures of Racial Integration, 1931–1954, has received support from the American Council of Learned Societies, the Center for Advanced Study in the Visual Arts, the National Endowment for the Humanities, and the Smithsonian Institution.

He lives in Charlottesville, Virginia, with his partner Tina and their son Linus.