Paula J. Birnbaum

Paula Birnbaum is Professor of Art History and Museum Studies at the University of San Francisco. A specialist in modern and contemporary art, she holds a doctorate from Bryn Mawr College and is a former Fulbright Scholar and fellow at Stanford’s Institute for Research on Women and Gender.

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Her research examines modern and contemporary art through the lens of gender, sexuality, and museum politics. She is the author of Sculpting a Life: Chana Orloff Between Paris and Tel Aviv (Brandeis University Press, 2023) and Women Artists in Interwar France: Framing Femininities (Ashgate/Routledge, 2011), and co-editor of Essays on Women’s Artistic and Cultural Contributions 1919–1939 (Edwin Mellen). Her work spans feminist art history, museum studies, and Jewish studies, and she has lectured internationally at institutions including the University of Johannesburg, the Jeu de Paume in Paris, and Tel Aviv University.