Professor Alyce Mahon
- Professor of Modern and Contemporary Art (on sabbatical until October 2026)
- Fellow in History of Art, Trinity College
- Director of Studies at Trinity College (on leave until Michaelmas 2026)
About
Professor Mahon is on sabbatical leave until Michaelmas term 2026.
She is not considering MPhil or PhD students until the Academic Year 2026-27.
Alyce Mahon specialises in Modern and Contemporary Art History and Theory. She studied the History of Art & Architecture and Modern English at Trinity College Dublin, graduating with a double first and gold medal for exceptional academic achievement. Awarded both Chevening and British Academy scholarships for doctoral studies she moved to London to pursue a PhD at the Courtauld Institute of Art. She received her doctorate in 1999 and took up her position at Cambridge in 2000 when she was also elected Fellow of Trinity College Cambridge.
Research
Research and Curating:
Professor Mahon specialises on the dynamic between the body and the body politic in modern and contemporary art, photography, film and exhibition practice - from Dada, Surrealism and the Sixties counter-culture to queer-feminist art today.
Mahon has been involved in numerous international exhibitions as advisor, catalogue contributor and guest curator. She is the academic and curatorial advisor for Ithell Colquhoun: Between Worlds | Tate St Ives for Tate St Ives, Cornwall (Feb 2-May 2, 2025) and Tate Britain, London (June-October 2025), the first retrospective of this British surrealist-occultist artist and writer.
She co-curated SADE: Freedom or Evil for the Centre de Cultura Contempoània de Barcelona (May 10 to Oct 15, 2023), the first exhibition to explore the philosophy of the Marquis de Sade and his impact on modern and contemporary art, visual culture, and activism.
Mahon curated the first major retrospective of American Surrealist Dorothea Tanning for the Reina Sofia Museum, Madrid (Oct. 3, 2018-Jan. 6, 2019) that toured to Tate Modern London (Feb 28 - June 9 2019). She was also the curatorial advisor for the first retrospective exhibition of Surrealist Leonor Fini in the United States - Leonor Fini: Theatre of Desire, 1930-1990 - Museum of Sex in 2018-2019. In addition, Mahon has contributed to the accompanying catalogues for, and often acted as curatorial advisor to, major exhibitions on modern and contemporary art throughout her career, especially advancing research and the profile of women of the avant-garde. These include: Maria Martins (MASP, 2021-22), Fantastic Women: Surreal Worlds from Meret Oppenheim to Louise Bourgeois (Schirn Kunsthalle, Frankfurt and Louisiana Museum of Modern Art, Humlebæk, 2020), Couples Modernes 1900-1950 (Pompidou Metz, and Hayward Gallery London, 2018), Dreamers Awake (White Cube Bermondsey, London, 2017), No Place Like Home (Israel Museum, Jerusalem, 2017), Silent Partners: Artist and Mannequin from Function to Fetish (Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge 2014 & Musée Bourdelle, Paris, 2015 ), The Institute of Sexology (Wellcome Collection, London, 2014), Le Surréalisme et l’objet (Centre Pompidou, Paris, 2013), Leonora Carrington (Irish Museum of Modern Art, Dublin, 2013), Matta. Fiktionen (Bucerius Kunst Forum, Hamburg 2012), and Donna: Avanguardia femminista negli anni ’70 (Galleria nazionale d'arte moderna, Rome, 2010).
She was awarded a British Academy/ Leverhulme Senior Research Fellowship for 2017-2018, and has been a Distinguished Scholar for the Hong Kong Li Ka Shing Foundation's Scholars Exchange Programme with the University of Cambridge (2004), giving a series of academic and public lectures across China; a Research Fellow at the Columbia University Institute for Scholars, Reid Hall, Paris (2005); a Visiting Scholar at Princeton University (2006-07); and an Andrew Mellon Teaching Fellow at CRASSH, Cambridge (2009).
Professor Mahon welcomes enquiries from prospective PhD students interested in fields related to her specialisms in modern and contemporary art as reflected in her curatorial and publication work to date. See: Current PhD Topics in the Department | Department of History of Art
Teaching and supervision
At undergraduate level, Mahon teaches a Part II option titled "The Poetics & Politics of Surrealism" which addresses the long history of Surrealism (1924-69) as well as its impact on the counter-culture and its legacy in contemporary art. She convenes and contributes lectures and seminars on modern and contemporary art to core BA papers including Part I 'Paper 1: Objects' and 'Paper 2/3: The Making of Art' , and Part IIB 'The Display of Art: The Politics of Display'. She also contributes lectures to the core, team led paper 'Approaches to the History of Art'.
At graduate level, Mahon supervises students and teaches on the team-taught MPhil degree. Topics she covers include Symbolism, the livre d'artiste, Surrealist art and writing, the 'informe' in inter-war Paris, 1960s performance art and contemporary feminist art, film and photography.
Professor Mahon has supervised numerous doctoral students to completion during her 25 years at Cambridge and on various historical and thematic aspects of American, French, German, British and Czech Surrealism; inter-war art in France and American art and politics; modern and contemporary French and German photography; queer-feminist art practice from punkfeminism to Moving Image Art .