Adela Kim

Adela Kim works on modern and contemporary art. Her research interests include institutional critique, contractual relations in art, and collective social practices across the United States, Germany, and South Korea. 

Her monographic dissertation, “Beyond Institutional Critique: Tearing in the Work of Andrea Fraser, 1986 — Present,” charts an alternate genealogy of institutional critique by advancing a theory of Fraser’s practice as a tearing critique. By not only tearing apart the ideologies undergirding the art world, but also tearing up—weeping—Fraser’s practice reconceptualizes the site of the institution. The project argues that by beckoning us to examine the institution in our desires, Fraser’s tearings allows us to consider the use-value of art again. 

Adela is the 2024-2025 Mellon-Marron Research Consortium Fellow at the Museum of Modern Art. She has been the recipient of the Douglass Foundation Fellowship in American Art at the Smithsonian American Art Museum (2023-2024); the MacMillan International Dissertation Research Fellowship (2024); the Mason and Julia Gross Scholarship (2020); Robert Lehman Distinguished Fellowship (2019); the Beinecke Rare Book & Manuscript Library Pre-Prospectus Summer Fellowship (2019); the Dumbarton Oaks Humanities Fellowship (2017); and the Fulbright Study and Research Grant in Berlin, Germany (2016). She was a 2021-2022 Curatorial Fellow at the Beinecke Rare Books & Manuscripts Library. Adela’s writing has appeared in Source: Notes in the History of Art, The Journal of Visual Cultures, Artforum, Texte zur Kunst, and The Burlington Contemporary, among others. 

Concurrent with her PhD, Adela is pursuing a joint MBA degree at the Yale School of Management with a focus in non-profit management. A Forté Fellow and a Frederick Frank ’54 B.A. Scholar, Adela has worked as a consultant for fundraising and has conducted impact evaluations and financial analysis. 

Adela holds an A.B. in History of Art with Highest Honors from Harvard University, where she was awarded the Matthew Abramson Prize for Best Thesis in History of Art. She has worked at the National Gallery of Art, Washington D.C., the Hamburger Bahnhof Museum for Contemporary Art, the Zentrum für Kunst und Medientechnologie, and documenta 14.