Research output per year
Research output per year
Lexington Davis (she/her) studies feminist art’s intersection with political activism from the 1960s to the present. Her Arts & Humanities Research Council-funded thesis ‘Women’s Work: 1970s Feminist Art and Domestic Labour Politics’ examines how feminist artists in the US, UK, France and Mexico situated the home as a crucial site of labour struggle. This project diverges from scholarship that places the middle-class housewife at the centre of feminist domestic labour debates, focusing instead on artworks highlighting working-class subjects marginalised in feminist art history, including paid domestic employees, homeworkers, sex workers, welfare activists and the incarcerated. Building on methodological intersections between social art history and labour studies, this thesis illustrates how 1970s feminist art radically re-envisioned labour struggle’s subjects and terrain by connecting the home to other institutions, including the plantation, factory, prison and archive.
Lexington’s research has been supported by a Fulbright Fellowship; the Harvard Radcliffe Institute; the Paul Mellon Centre for Studies in British Art; Het Cultuurfonds; the Association for Art History, UK; the Scottish Society for Art History and the Netherlands Institute in Athens. Currently, she is a 2024–25 Tyson Scholar at the Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art, and she was previously a 2023–24 Visiting Fellow at the Center for Place, Culture and Politics at CUNY. Her writing has been published in Feminist Media Histories, Sculpture Journal, Flash Art, Espace art actuel, and Metropolis M.
In addition to academic work, Lexington has held curatorial and research positions at the New Museum, New York; Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam and the Los Angeles County Museum of Art. As an independent curator, she has organised exhibitions at apexart, New York; Neue Galerie, Innsbruck; Robert Capa Contemporary Photography Center, Budapest and the Finnish Museum of Photography, Helsinki. She is currently working on an exhibition titled ‘Say No! Art, Activism and Feminist Refusal’, which will open at the University of St Andrews’s Wardlaw Museum in January 2025, and will be accompanied by a full programme of public events.
In 2015, UN member states agreed to 17 global Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) to end poverty, protect the planet and ensure prosperity for all. This person’s work contributes towards the following SDG(s):
Research output: Contribution to journal › Book/Film/Article review
Research output: Contribution to journal › Article › peer-review
Research output: Contribution to specialist publication › Book/Film/Article review
Research output: Contribution to specialist publication › Article
Research output: Contribution to specialist publication › Article
Davis, L. (Speaker)
Activity: Talk or presentation types › Presentation
Davis, L. (Speaker)
Activity: Talk or presentation types › Presentation
Davis, L. (Organiser)
Activity: Participating in or organising an event types › Participation in or organising a public festival/exhibition/event
Davis, L. (Visiting researcher)
Activity: Visiting an external institution types › Visiting an external academic institution
Davis, L. (Visiting fellow)
Activity: Visiting an external institution types › Visiting an external academic institution
Davis, L. (Recipient), 2021
Prize: Prize (including medals and awards)
Davis, L. (Recipient), 2023
Prize: Prize (including medals and awards)
Davis, L. (Recipient), 2023
Prize: Prize (including medals and awards)
Davis, L. (Recipient), 2023
Prize: Prize (including medals and awards)
Davis, L. (Recipient), 2022
Prize: Prize (including medals and awards)