Melanie Nguyen named a Tyson Scholar at Crystal Bridges Museum of Art for Spring 2024

Melanie is wrapping up her graduate experience with a signature honor

Melanie Nguyen, who specializes in contemporary art and the environment, is in residence at Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art for spring 2024 as a Tyson Scholar. While there she will put on finishing touches for her dissertation, “Embodied Ecologies: Performance Art and Environmentalism, 1970-1990,” which she will defend this spring on campus.

In this dissertation Melanie re-narrates the history of U.S. environmental art, demonstrating how women and artists of color—often performing with their own bodies—offered an expansive and socially embedded notion of ecology absent from canonical histories. The dissertation mines three case studies—on Ana Mendieta, Mierle Laderman Ukeles, and Maren Hassinger—finding in the art radical potential for rethinking current approaches to climate change.

Congratulations Melanie!