Tina Rivers Ryan

Tina Rivers Ryan attended Gulliver Preparatory School in Miami for high school.[1] She has a BA degree from Harvard University,[1] and a PhD from Columbia University. Her dissertation was, 'Lights in Orbit': The Howard Wise Gallery and the Rise of Media in the 1960s (2014), her doctoral advisor was Branden W. Joseph.[9] She worked as a fellow at the Metropolitan Museum of Art.[1]

In 2017, Ryan was hired at Albright-Knox Art Gallery in Buffalo, New York.[10][11] Prior to her appointment she previously worked at the New Museum, MoMA PS1, and the Institute of Contemporary Art, Boston.[10] Ryan has researched "time-based media" of the 1960s and 1970s.[12] She has also been involved in the study and research of digital art preservation, including NFTs.[12][13][14][15]

Ryan and co-curator Paul Vanouse organized the 2021 exhibition Difference Machines: Technology and Identity in Contemporary Art at the gallery.[16][17] The Difference Machines exhibition features 17 artists and has a hybrid display design featuring interactivity, the artwork is technical but also accessible to people without technical knowledge, and it exists as a learning space.[18][19] A review in The Brooklyn Rail discussed the exhibition's themes of "the use of digital technologies for passive (but not always effective) surveillance, how identities are shaped by technology, the erasure of marginalized communities, and the active reassertion of control."[20]

Other exhibitions at Albright-Knox she has co-curated include Tony Conrad: A Retrospective (2018), and We The People: New Art from the Collection (2018–2019).[21]

• Ryan, Tina Rivers (2016). McLuhan's Bulbs: Light Art and the Dawn of New Media. Columbia University.

• Conservation and restoration of time-based media art
• Digital curation
• Women in the art history field