Terence Edwin "Terry" Smith (born 1944) is an Australianart historian,art critic, and artist who has lived and worked inSydney,New York City, andPittsburgh. Since 2001 and as of 2025[update] he is Andrew W. Mellon Professor of Contemporary Art History and Theory at theUniversity of Pittsburgh, and for the academic year 2025-6 isSlade Professor of Fine Art atCambridge University.
Terence Edwin Smith[1][2] was born in 1944.[3]
He was a student atMelbourne High School, where hematriculated in 1962, earning a General Exhibition (academic award). He edited the school magazine,The Unicorn, and was in the football and basketball teams and athletics teams.[1]
Between 1963 and 1967, he studied at theUniversity of Melbourne,[3] where he studied art history underSir Joseph Burke, Franz Philipp, andBernard Smith. When thePower Institute of Fine Arts was established at theUniversity of Sydney in 1968, he tutored to professors Bernard Smith, David Saunders, and Donald Brook.[citation needed]
Winning aHarkness Fellowship in 1972, he studied at theInstitute of Fine Arts,New York City, and atColumbia University underMeyer Schapiro. While in New York, he joined theArt & Language group of conceptual artists, includingJoseph Kosuth,Ian Burn,Mel Ramsden, andMichael Corris,[4] and remained an active member 1972–1976.[citation needed]
Returning to Australia in 1975, he taught contemporary art and arthistorical method in the Fine Arts Department at the University of Melbourne and at the Art School,Preston Institute of Technology.[citation needed]
He earned a Master of Arts with his thesis "American Abstract Expressionism: ethical attitudes and moral function" in 1976 from theUniversity of Sydney.[3]
Later, in 1986 he earned his PhD. Hisdoctoral dissertationMaking the Modern: Industry, Art and Design in America was published in 1993 by the University of Chicago Press.[3]
Appointed a lecturer at the Power Institute of Fine Arts in 1976,[citation needed] Smith was appointed Power Professor of Contemporary Art and Director of the Power Institute, Foundation for Art and Visual Culture from 1994 until 2001.[5]
When Ian Burn and Nigel Lendon returned to Australia in 1976, Smith joined with them to found Media Action Group, which soon was augmented by others, including Ian Milliss, and became Union Media Services (Sydney), an independent, artist-run organisation that provided graphic art services to the union movement and dissident groups.
Smith wrote art criticism for theWeekend Australian,Nation Review,The Times on Sunday in the 1970s, and has continued to write articles for local and international journals.[5] He was sacked from theMurdoch-ownedWeekend Australian after criticisingAustralian involvement in the Vietnam War, along with other political views in his art columns[3]
In 2001 he was appointed Andrew W. Mellon Professor of Contemporary Art History and Theory in the Department of the History of Art and Architecture at theUniversity of Pittsburgh, and is still in the position as of December 2025[update].[5]
From 2011 to 2014 he wasDistinguished Visiting Professor at the National Institute for Experimental Arts, College of Fine Arts at theUniversity of New South Wales in Sydney.[5]
As of December 2025[update] he is also professor in the Division of Philosophy, Art and Critical Thought at theEuropean Graduate School inSaas-Fee, Switzerland; faculty at large in the Curatorial Program of theSchool of Visual Arts in New York;[5] Emeritus Professor of Art History, University of Sydney; and Professor at Large,The Africa Institute,Sharjah, UAE.[1][6] He was appointedSlade Professor of Fine Art atCambridge University in 2025-6.[7]
Smith has particular expertise in international contemporary art, American visual art since 1870, and Australian art, includingAboriginal art.[5] Among his most significant contributions are chapters on the modern and thepostmodern inAustralian Painting 1788-2000 (2001), andTransformations in Australian Art: volume 1,The Nineteenth Century: Landscape, Colony and Nation; and volume 2,The Twentieth Century: Modernism and Aboriginality (2002).[3]
His work has explored the relationships between contemporary art and its wider settings. His findings are presented in a series of books, includingThe Architecture of Aftermath (2006);Antinomies of Art and Culture: Modernity, postmodernity and contemporaneity (edited with Nancy Condee and Okwui Enwezor, 2008); andWhat is Contemporary Art? (2009).[citation needed] He has also written two books oncurating contemporary art.[3]
In the 1960s and 1970s, Smith wanted to introduce major international art movements to an Australian audience. In 1970, he co-founded, with Paul McGillick, a new art criticism journal,Other Voices, which aimed "to offer an alternative platform for serious writing about the newest art".[3]
Smith was a founding board member of theMuseum of Contemporary Art, Sydney,[5] and served as a board member ofThe Andy Warhol Museum inPittsburgh from 2004 until 2014.[5]
He supports the Melbourne High School Foundation's Visiting Artist Program (A$4,000 per year) and the Terry Smith Visual Arts Scholarship, which supports a visual arts student from year 10 to first year post-secondary studies (A$1,000 per year).[1]
Smith's 1986doctoral dissertation becameMaking the Modern: Industry, Art and Design in America (1993), winner of the inauguralGeorgia O'Keeffe Museum Prize in 2009 for the best book on modern American art published in the past 25 years.[8]
Smith was elected a Corresponding Fellow of theAustralian Academy of the Humanities in 1996.[9] In the same year, he was elected amembre titulaire of theComité International d'Histoire de l'Art, serving as the Australian representative and vice-president from 1999 until 2003.[citation needed]
He was named by theCollege Art Association as the 2010 winner of theFrank Jewett Mather Award for distinction in art criticism.[10][5] In 2011, he was the recipient of theAustralia Council Visual Arts Laureate Award.[5]
He has been a visiting professor at theUniversities of California, San Diego,Chicago,Duke University,Pennsylvania,Queensland, and a visiting professor in the Faculty of Architecture, Design and Planning at the University of Sydney.[citation needed]
Smith has also been awarded a number ofresearch fellowships, including being named a Getty Scholar at theGetty Research Institute,Los Angeles, in 2001-2[5] and GlaxoSmithKlein Senior Fellow at theNational Humanities Center,Research Triangle Park, Raleigh-Durham, NC in 2007-8.[5]
In 2022, theCollege Art Association awarded him the Distinguished Teacher of Art History award.[1]
