Terry Smith

Terence Edwin "Terry" Smith (born 1944) is an Australian art historian, art critic, and artist who has lived and worked in Sydney, New York City, and Pittsburgh. Since 2001 and he is Andrew W. Mellon Professor of Contemporary Art History and Theory at the University of Pittsburgh, and for the academic year 2025-6 is Slade Professor of Fine Art at Cambridge University.

Early life and education Terence Edwin Smith was born in 1944.

He was a student at Melbourne High School, where he matriculated in 1962, earning a General Exhibition (academic award). He edited the school magazine, The Unicorn, and was in the football and basketball teams and athletics teams. and remained an active member 1972–1976.

Returning to Australia in 1975, he taught contemporary art and art historical method in the Fine Arts Department at the University of Melbourne and at the Art School, Preston Institute of Technology.

He earned a Master of Arts with his thesis "American Abstract Expressionism: ethical attitudes and moral function" in 1976 from the University of Sydney. Emeritus Professor of Art History, University of Sydney; and Professor at Large, The Africa Institute, Sharjah, UAE. He was appointed Slade Professor of Fine Art at Cambridge University in 2025-6.

Specialisations and publications Smith has particular expertise in international contemporary art, American visual art since 1870, and Australian art, including Aboriginal art.

Smith was elected a Corresponding Fellow of the Australian Academy of the Humanities in 1996. In the same year, he was elected a membre titulaire of the Comité International d'Histoire de l'Art, serving as the Australian representative and vice-president from 1999 until 2003.

He was named by the College Art Association as the 2010 winner of the Frank Jewett Mather Award for distinction in art criticism. In 2011, he was the recipient of the Australia Council Visual Arts Laureate Award.

He has been a visiting professor at the Universities of California, San Diego, Chicago, Duke University, Pennsylvania, Queensland, and a visiting professor in the Faculty of Architecture, Design and Planning at the University of Sydney.

Smith has also been awarded a number of research fellowships, including being named a Getty Scholar at the Getty Research Institute, Los Angeles, in 2001-2 and GlaxoSmithKlein Senior Fellow at the National Humanities Center, Research Triangle Park, Raleigh-Durham, NC in 2007-8.

In 2022, the College Art Association awarded him the Distinguished Teacher of Art History award.

Publications Terry Smith, "The Provincialism Problem", Artforum, Sept. 1974, pp. 54–9. Terry Smith, What is Contemporary Art? Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2009 Terry Smith, Okwui Enwezor and Nancy Condee editors, Antinomies of Art and Culture: Modernity, Postmodernity, Contemporaneity, Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2008 Terry Smith, editor, Contemporary Art + Philanthropy, Sydney: University of New South Wales Press for the Sherman Foundation, 2007 Terry Smith, The Architecture of Aftermath, Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2006 Terry Smith, Transformations in Australian Art, vol. 1, The Nineteenth Century: Landscape, Colony and Nation; vol. 2. The Twentieth Century: Modernism and Aboriginality, Sydney: Craftsman House, 2002 Terry Smith Editor, Paul Patton editors,Jacques Derrida, Deconstruction Engaged: The Sydney Seminars Sydney: Power Publications, 2001; Japanese edition, Tokyo: Iwanami Shoten, 2005 Terry Smith, What is Contemporary Art? Contemporary Art, Contemporaneity and Art to Come, Sydney, Artspace Critical Issues Series, 2001 Terry Smith, editor, Impossible Presence: Surface and Screen in the Photogenic Era, Sydney, Power Publications, Chicago, University of Chicago Press, 2001 Terry Smith, editor,First People, Second Chance; The Humanities and Aboriginal Australia, Canberra, Australian Academy of the Humanities, 1999 Terry Smith, editor, with Jennifer Allison, Katherine Gregouras, George Symons,From Vision to Sesquicentenary, The University of Sydney through its Art Collection, Sydney, Standing Committee of Convocation of the University of Sydney, 1999 Terry Smith, editor, In Visible Touch: Modernism and Masculinity, Sydney, Power Publications, 1997, Chicago, University of Chicago Press, 1998 Terry Smith, editor, Ideas of the University, Sydney: Research Institute for the Humanities and Social Sciences and Power Publications, 1996 Terry Smith, Making the Modern: Industry, Art and Design in America, Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1993 Terry Smith, editor, Constructing Australian Art: Eight Critiques, Sydney: Power Institute of Fine Arts Occasional Paper No 2, May 1986 Terry Smith and Anthony Bradley editors, Australian Art and Architecture: Essays Presented to Bernard Smith, Oxford University Press, Melbourne 1980) Terry Smith, editor, Art & Language: Australia 1975, Art & Language Press, Banbury, New York, Sydney 1976 Terry Smith, Ian Burn and Mel Ramsden, Draft for an Anti-Textbook, special issue, Art-Language, Vol.3, No 1 (Sept 1974) Terry Smith, Ian Burn, Mel Ramsden, et al., Handbook (Art & Language Press, New York, and the Mezzanine, Nova Scotia College of Art, Halifax, N.S. 1973