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Katy Klaasmeyer

Katy Klaasmeyer

PhD Candidate
Arts, Design & Architecture
School of Art & Design

Email: k.klaasmeyer@unsw.edu.au

Supervisors: Livia Lazzaro Rezende, Jennifer Biddle

Prior to joining the School of Art & Design as a doctoral candidate, Katy Klaasmeyer was an art history Lecturer for over 10 years at state universities and community colleges in the Los Angeles area, including California State University, Long Beach, and the Laguna College of Art and Design. She also spent 10 years working in the Education Department of The J. Paul Getty Center as a volunteer gallery docent, leading public tours of the permanent collection and special exhibitions. She earned a master’s degree in art history from the University of Oregon with her research-based thesis, “Capitalist Realism: The Work of Gerhard Richter, Sigmar Polke and Konrad Lueg, 1962–67.”

“Reconsidering German modernism and cultural institutions and their engagement with Oceanic Material Cultures through decolonial thinking.”

The primary goal of my PhD research is to examine and reconsider, through historical research, why and how colonialist attitudes prevailed among German modernism and cultural institutions as they engaged with Indigenous peoples and Oceanic material cultures in the prewar years. Through revising this historical case study through methods and theories that challenge Eurocentric narratives, I seek to contribute new knowledge to bear upon the present and illuminate how museum and exhibition practices can engage more ethically with diverse visual and material cultures and uphold Indigenous worldviews.

Refereed Book Chapters

  • Klaasmeyer, K. 2023. “On Their Own: Reconsidering Marianne Werefkin and Gabriele Münter.” In Women in German Expressionism: Gender, Sexuality, Activism, edited by Anke Finger and Julie Shoults, 116-134. University of Michigan Press. https://doi.org/10.3998/mpub.12298135
  • Klaasmeyer, K. 2019. “Fire in the Sky: Celestial Omens of Catastrophe in a French Renaissance Painting.” In Catastrophes and the Apocalyptic in the Middle Ages and Renaissance, edited by Robert Bjork. Arizona Studies in the Middle Ages and Renaissance, no. 43: 145-164. Belgium: Brepols. https://doi.org/10.1484/M.ASMAR-EB.5.116420

Conference Papers

  • Klaasmeyer, K. 2026 (In Progress). “The Past is Present: Objects of New Guinea ancestral memory in German historical museums,” to be presented at the Pacific Arts Association International Symposium, Leiden, Netherlands, 23-27 June, 2026.
  • Klaasmeyer, K. 2021. “Abundance and Emptiness: Andrea Gurskey’s View of Globalization,” presented at the German Studies Association Berlin Program Summer Workshop, Freie Universität Berlin, 30 June - 2 July, 2021.
  • Klaasmeyer, K. 2018. “The Two Fridas: Intercultural Interpretations of Frida Kahlo’s Paintings,” presented at the Northeast Modern Language Association 49th Annual Conference, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, 12-15 April 2018.
  • Klaasmeyer, K. 2017. “Please Do/n’t Touch the Art: Engaging the Viewer’s Senses to Create Meaning,” presented at the Northeast Modern Language Association 48th Annual Conference, Baltimore, Maryland, 23-26 March, 2017.