Biography

Douglas Gabriel received his PhD in Art History from Northwestern University in 2019 and has held postdoctoral fellowships at Harvard University and The George Washington University. Before coming to UF, he was also a 2021-22 Getty/ACLS Postdoctoral Fellow in the History of Art, and a lecturer in the College of Liberal Studies at Seoul National University.

Gabriel is a co-editor of ARTMargins and has published on North and South Korean art and visual culture in Art History, Third Text, Art Journal, and the Journal of Korean Studies. He is currently completing a book manuscript titled The Cold Contemporary: Realist Art, Reunification, and the Enduring Cold War Across the Two Koreas, which explores connections between North Korean socialist realism and the art of the South Korean democratization movement of the 1980s. The book challenges such dichotomous distinctions as totalitarian aesthetics and politically-engaged art, shedding light on how Cold War-era binaries continue to shape our understanding of contemporary art’s structural formations. 

His teaching covers a wide range of directions, including the avant-gardes of East Asia, performance and participatory art, and science fiction in contemporary art. 

Gabriel’s ongoing projects include a book manuscript on art and youth culture in North Korea, as well as a study of North Korean artists’ reception and representation of religious cultural heritage.