PhD
she/her/hers
Shannon Bewley is an art historian specializing in modern and contemporary art. Her research focuses on twentieth-century public sculpture commissions. Drawing on newspaper accounts, community interviews, and institutional archives, she examines how arts administration and state, federal, and international funding have shaped artists’ careers and the creation of public art. Her commitment to public art is rooted in her upbringing in Birmingham, Alabama, where monuments such as the monumental cast-iron Vulcan and the city’s abstract and figurative Civil Rights memorials provided formative experiences for her research and pedagogy.
Bewley earned her PhD in the History of Art & Architecture from Boston University in May 2026. Her dissertation, “Earth Artists, Ancient Earthworks, and Land Reclamation Sculpture in the United States from 1965 to 1985,” traces the history of land reclamation sculpture: major public commissions of earthen art that rehabilitated industrial wastelands and abandoned mines as both public parks and works of art. The project expands the well-researched history of American earth art by exploring the cultural, political, and administrative contexts in which artists such as Robert Smithson, Robert Morris, and Michael Heizer drew upon ancient, Native, and Indigenous earthworks as sources for visual art and ecological remediation. Bewley contextualizes these projects at the intersection of American national identity and archaeology, environmental policy, and popular perceptions of historic earthworks. She argues that land reclamation sculptures demonstrate the potential of interdisciplinary public art to provide both aesthetic experiences and community spaces while attesting to the historical importance of Native and Indigenous earthworks to American visual art and identity.
Prior to entering Boston University, Bewley was the Provenance Research Fellow in the departments of American and European Art at the Birmingham Museum of Art in Birmingham, Alabama.
Research Interests:
- Twentieth-Century Sculpture
- Public Art Administration
- Environmental Art
Dissertation [2026]:
“Earth Artists, Ancient Earthworks, and Land Reclamation Sculpture in the United States from 1965 to 1985”
MA Paper:
“Mary Miss, Suzanne Harris, and Alice Aycock: Sculptors in ‘Crummy Spaces’”
2022-2023:
Senior Editor, SEQUITUR
History of Art & Architecture Diversity & Inclusion Committee
Chair, African American Art History: Present Coordinates Symposium
2021-2022:
Forum co-Coordinator, Graduate Student History of Art & Architecture Association
Junior Editor, SEQUITUR
History of Art & Architecture Diversity & Inclusion Committee
2020-2021:
Co-President, Graduate Student History of Art & Architecture Association
Vice-President, Graduate Student Organization
2019-2020:
GSO Representative, Graduate Student History of Art & Architecture Association