Richard Meyer, Robert and Ruth Halperin Professor in Art History, teaches courses in twentieth-century American art, the history of photography, arts censorship and the first amendement, curatorial practice, and gender and sexuality studies.  His first book, Outlaw Representation: Censorship and Homosexuality in Twentieth-Century American Art, was awarded the Charles C. Eldredge  Prize for Outstanding Scholarship from the Smithsonian American Art Museum.  In 2013, he published What Was Contemporary Art?, a study of the idea of "the contemporary" in early twentieth-century American art, and, with Catherine Lord, Art and Queer Culture, a survey focusing on the dialogue between visual art and non-normative sexualities from 1885 to the present. 

Professor Meyer is interested in the relation between the academic discipline of art history and the practice of museum curating.  Prior to arriving at Stanford, he taught undergradaute curatorial courses at USC and the University of Pennsylvania, both of which culminated in museum exhibitions.  In 2014, he will co-teach an undergraduate curatorial course with Connie Wolf, the Director of the Cantor Arts Center at Stanford, that will result in a collaboratively organized show at the museum.  Outiside the context of university teaching, Meyer served as guest curator of Warhol’s Jews: Ten Portraits Reconsidered at the Jewish Museum in New York and the Contemporary Jewish Museum in San Francisco and of Naked Hollywood: Weegee in LosAngeles at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Los Angeles.

Since joining the Stanford faculty in fall 2012, Meyer helped launch the new Stanford-in-Washington Arts program, a track within SIW that enables students to hold full-time internships in museums and other cultural institutions in the nation's capital.  He also serves on the Committee-in-Charge for the Program in American Studies and on the Undergraduate Advisory Council which works with the Vice Provost for Undergradate Education on matters of curriculum, policy, and student life at Stanford.