Alex Zivkovic is an art and media historian, specializing in modern French art. He is interested in ecological media, the visual culture of empire, and global surrealism. He holds a B.A. in Art History and Comparative Studies in Race and Ethnicity from Stanford University and a Ph.D. in Art History from Columbia University. His current book project, The Art of Artificial Nature, offers a new perspective on modernism by uncovering connections between artists and greenhouses, aquariums, and gardens in Paris. This research has been supported by the the Leonard A. Lauder Research Center for Modern Art at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Gerda Henkel Foundation, the Buell Center, DFK Paris, the Huntington Library, the Society for French Historical Studies, among others.
He is also the editor of Surrealism’s queer methods (Manchester University Press, 2027). The book gathers art historians, surrealist specialists, and queer theorists to identify intersections between surrealist art and queer life, from the First World War to the AIDS crisis. His other essays have appeared in the Journal of Cinema and Media Studies, Nka: Journal of Contemporary African Art, and Afterimage. He has also contributed to exhibition catalogues for Manet: A Modern Family (Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, 2024) and Remedios Varo: Science Fictions (Yale UP/Art Institute of Chicago, 2023).