Jeffry Cudlin
Practicum & SEMINAR Professor

Jeffry Cudlin was born in 1972 in Durham, North Carolina; raised in Lynchburg, Virginia; and currently lives in Washington, D.C. Cudlin works as an artist, critic, educator, and curator. He serves as full-time Professor of Curatorial Studies and Practice at the Maryland Institute College of Art in Baltimore, Maryland, teaching in George Ciscle's groundbreaking new Curatorial Practice MFA program. 

He is a member of the Board of Trustees for The Contemporary, Baltimore’s nomadic contemporary art museum without walls.

At MICA, Cudlin teaches Exhibition Development Seminar, a two-semester course in which students make all important leadership decisions in the creation of a major contemporary art exhibition. Cudlin also teaches the first year Practicum course in the Curatorial Practice MFA program, in which students develop collaborative exhibitions with the direct participation of residents from diverse communities within central Baltimore’s Station North Arts and Entertainment District.

As a critic, Cudlin has written for The Washington Post, The Washington City Paper, and Sculpture Magazine. In both 2009 and 2008, the Association of Alternative Newsweeklies recognized him with a First Place Altweekly Award for arts criticism in papers with circulations greater than 50,000. He won third place for the same award in 2006. His now-retired personal arts blog, Hatchets & Skewers, has been nationally recognized.

As a curator, Cudlin has worked with The Arlington Arts Center (AAC) since 2007. AAC is a 14,000 square foot non-profit contemporary art space just outside of Washington, D.C., focusing on artists from the mid-Atlantic region and beyond. During his tenure as Director of Exhibitions, Cudlin dramatically increased the profile of AAC exhibits, and organized challenging shows on topics like transhumanism, historical reenactments, and experimental geography. Cudlin has shown works by Renee Cox, Mel Chin, Mark Tribe, Olav Westphalen, Ana Lucas, Shane Hope, Arakawa and Gins, Nadine Robinson, Mary Mattingly, Leon Ferrari, Saya Woolfalk, Anton Kannemeyer, Sam Gilliam, and many others.

As an artist, Cudlin uses performance, cross-disciplinary collaboration, and parody to create opportunities for awkward encounters. For the inaugural SUPERNOVA Performance Art Festival in 2013, Cudlin led a team of artists on a faux rock climbing expedition—moving horizontally, roped together, crawling on their bellies through parks, onto and off of curbs, and across skywalks. In 2011, Cudlin competed in a sprint triathlon within the confines of the Capitol Skyline Hotel alongside performance artist and collaborator Kathryn Cornelius as a part of the inaugural (e)merge art fair. In 2007, Cudlin’s mockumentary, "Ian and Jan: The Washington Body School," appeared at DCAC. For that project, Cudlin and his collaborator, Meg Mitchell, performed an art-historical intervention by interviewing local art luminaries—including artist Sam Gilliam and blogger Tyler Green—and asking them to describe a nonexistent DC art movement.Cudlin also has taught painting, drawing, and art theory as an adjunct at The University of Maryland, College Park, from 2003 to 2007. While teaching there, he worked closely with the University Union Gallery on a number of projects, including organizing and moderating panel discussions in conjunction with exhibitions, and designing and teaching a theory course funded by the gallery, "Contemporary Art: Theory, Markets and Collecting."

Cudlin received his MFA from the University of Maryland College Park, and his undergraduate degree in Studio Art from the University of Virginia.