Robert Bailey is Interim Associate Dean for Technology and Grants in the Weitzenhoffer Family College of Fine Arts and Professor of Art History in the School of Visual Arts at the University of Oklahoma. His research and teaching focus on contemporary art, the historiography of art history, and the creative humanities with additional interests in the performing arts, literature, environmental studies, and emerging technologies. He holds a B.A., M.A., and Ph.D. in the History of Art and Architecture from the University of Pittsburgh.
Bailey is the author of Conceptual Art after Modernism: Reconceiving Art and Art History (Routledge, 2025) and Art & Language International: Conceptual Art between Art Worlds (Duke University Press, 2016). His other books include a collaboration with photographer Todd Stewart, The Course of Water: Fieldnotes from California’s Owens Valley (The Eriskay Connection, 2025), and Terry Smith’s One and Five Ideas: On Conceptual Art and Conceptualism (Duke University Press, 2017), which he edited and introduced.
In addition to his publications, Bailey has exhibited or performed creative work involving writing or sound at the Chinati Foundation, NEST Studio for the Arts at the University of Colorado Boulder, Oklahoma Contemporary Arts Center, Southern Utah Museum of Art, and the Fred Jones Jr. Museum of Art. His work has been supported by the Mellon Foundation, the National Archives, the National Endowment for the Humanities, the Oklahoma Arts Council, and the Norman Arts Council.
