DRYLANDSDr. Melissa Warak teaches modern and contemporary art at UTEP and specializes in the relationship of music and sound to art of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. Dr. Warak earned a B.A. in English literature and art history from Vanderbilt University, and her M.A. and Ph.D. in art history from the University of Texas at Austin. Her current research focuses on the ways that visual artists from the mid-fifties to late sixties employed musical models in their work and she is writing a book about contemporary sound art. Her research on sound studies is naturally interdisciplinary with the sciences. Dr. Warak regularly teaches a course on art, science, and technology in modern and contemporary art at UTEP; this course covers topics related to biology, physics, chemistry, astronomy, and the environmental sciences. For the Drylands CZ project, Dr. Warak will collaborate with the team and co-teach a course called Art and the Critical Zone with Dr. Tom Gill. Other research interests include conservation studies, the history of abstraction, spirituality in modern and contemporary art, disability and art, and astronomy in art. Her research has been supported by grants and fellowships from the National Portrait Gallery of the Smithsonian Institution, the Getty Research Institute, the Royal Music Association of the United Kingdom, The Menil Collection in Houston, the Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art, the Kress Foundation, the Yale University Art Galleries, and the Tate Modern, among others. Dr. Warak enjoys interdisciplinary collaboration and looks forward to further opportunities to explore art and science.
University of Texas at El Paso
