Meghan Kirkwood

Meghan Kirkwood is an associate professor and chair of undergraduate studio art at Washington University in St. Louis. She earned a Bachelor of Fine Arts in photography from Rhode Island School of Design, a Master of Fine Arts in studio art at Tulane University, and a doctorate at the University of Florida. Her photographic research looks at the ways in which landscape imagery can inform and advance public conversations around land use, infrastructure, and planning. 

Kirkwood’s work has been exhibited internationally in solo and group shows at venues including Blue Sky Gallery (Portland, Ore.), Filter Space (Chicago, Ill.), Bangkok Art and Culture Center (Thailand), ArtSpace Durban (South Africa), Colorado Photographic Arts Center (Denver, Colo.) Plains Art Museum (Fargo, N.D.), Greenville Center for the Arts (Greenville, S.C.), Rosza Gallery (Houghton, Mich.), and the Humble Arts Foundation. 

Her photographs are held in several private and public collections, including the RISD Museum of Art, the Museum of Contemporary Photography in Chicago, Lewis and Clark University, University of Idaho, Minot State University, North Dakota Museum of Art, and the University of Florida Genetics Institute. Her work has been featured in publications such as Places, Lenscratch, Oxford American, New Landscape Photography, and Landscape Stories. She has also received full funding to participate in artist residencies through the National Parks Service, the Vermont Studio Center, and the Lakeside Lab in Iowa. 

In tandem with her studio practice, Kirkwood also researches in the fields of African art and the history of photography. Presently, her writing focuses on the uses of landscape imagery by contemporary South African photographers. Her writing has been published in Lenscratch, Social Dynamics, Exposure, Photography and Culture, Landscape Journal, and Photographies.