Terri Lynn Geis

Visiting Associate Arts Professor Affiliation: NYU Abu Dhabi
Education: BA St Andrews; MA Trinity College Dublin; PhD University of Essex

Research Areas: Surrealism; Art of the Americas; Women Modernists


Terri Geis is an art historian, independent curator, and museum educator. She is a specialist on women artists affiliated with Surrealism and the intersections between Surrealism and the Americas. Past projects include In Wonderland: The Surrealist Adventures of Women Artists in Mexico and the United States (Los Angeles County Museum of Art, with Ilene Susan Fort and Tere Arcq) and “‘My Goddesses and My Monsters’: Maria Martins and Surrealism in the 1940s,” in Debates on Surrealism in Latin America: Vivisimo Muerto (Getty Research Institute). Geis’s work has also investigated Surrealism’s connections with Afro-Caribbean art and culture, with essays including “Great Impulses and New Paths: VVV, Surrealism, and the Black Atlantic” (Revue Miranda, Université Toulouse, 2017). Other publications include an essay for the retrospective exhibition Leonora Carrington: Magical Tales (Museo de Arte Moderno, Mexico City, 2018), and multiple essays for The International Encyclopedia of Surrealism (London: Bloomsbury Academic, 2019). With Manthia Diawara, Geis has been awarded the 2021 senior fellowship through the Dedalus Foundation for a book project on the surrealist Ted Joans. 

Courses Taught