Overview
Fred Cruz Nowell is a PhD Candidate in Musicology at Cornell University and a Joan Tisch Teaching Fellow at the Whitney Museum of American Art. His research focuses on the intellectual history of art and other sense-objects, from the late-19th century to the present. His work brings together three fields, which are often separated today due to modern disciplinary divides: the history of music theory (HoT), religious studies, and Modern and Contemporary art. His dissertation, “On the Art of Spiritual Harmony”: Esoteric Music Theory in Early-20th Century Modern Art, bridges this gap by examining how three mystical modern artists, (Hilma af Klint, Vasily Kandinsky, and Marcel Duchamp), integrated occult musical doctrines into their explicitly “esoteric” and religio-philosophical art. This work is supervised by Prof. Andrew J. Hicks. Before pursuing doctoral study, Fred was a University Fellow in the department of Art, Theory, and Practice at Northwestern University. He frequently collaborates on curatorial projects and has contributed to an array of exhibition essays and didactics, including the curatorial texts for Wu Tsang: Anthem (2018) at the Guggenheim Museum and the film program for the 14th Istanbul Biennal: SALTWATER: A Theory of Thought-Forms, among others.