Alex Grimley holds degrees from Bennington College (B.A., Studio Art & Art History) and the University of Texas at Austin (M.A., Ph.D., Art History). His research focuses on modern and contemporary art with an interdisciplinary focus on intersections of visual art, criticism, and experimental music. His master’s thesis, Morton Feldman in Three Senses, explored phenomenologies of silence, scale, and saturation in Feldman’s music and the work of Morris Louis, Jules Olitski, and Donald Judd. His Ph.D. dissertation, Kenneth Noland, Jules Olitski, Morton Feldman: Criticism, Practice, Experience, examined the historiography of Color Field painting; featured monographic studies on the work of Color Field painters Noland and Olitski; and linked the shared circumstances of “late modernism” in the their work to the music and thought of composer Morton Feldman.
His paper “Newman’s Variety” was presented at the Menil Collection’s exhibition Barnett Newman: The Late Work, 1965–1970, and he has lectured on 19th French and American landscape painting at the University of Texas at Austin. In Spring 2026, he curated the exhibition Painting in Color: Contemporary Abstraction at the Currier Museum of Art in Manchester, New Hampshire.
He has written essays on Kenneth Noland, the Washington Color School, and Jules Olitski for major exhibitions at Yares Art. His essays on Abstract Expressionists and Color Field artists have also appeared in exhibition catalogues for Berry Campbell, Paul Kasmin Gallery, Miles McEnery Gallery, and Hollis Taggart Gallery, among others. He’s written on contemporary landscape painting for Root Quarterly, and he is a regular art reviewer for The Brooklyn Rail.