Thyrza Nichols Goodeve


Thyrza Nichols Goodeve is a writer, interviewer, artist, and teacher active in the field of contemporary art and culture.

Biography

Goodeve was born in Middlebury, Connecticut, where she lived until her family moved to Windham, Vermont. Her brother is actor Grant Goodeve, and she is a great-great-granddaughter of the Vermont politician and Union Army Colonel William T. Nichols. She attended the Westover School in Middlebury, Connecticut and Northfield Mount Hermon School in Massachusetts. In 1975, through NMH, she attended the American School of Tangier where she met Paul Bowles and Mohammed Mrabet, key influences on her career as a writer. She received a B.A. from Sarah Lawrence College, an M.A. from New York University, and a Ph.D. from the University of California, Santa Cruz under Donna Haraway and James Clifford. She lives in Brooklyn Heights, New York.

Writing and performance

Goodeve is known both as an essayist and as an interviewer. She writes on diverse topics ranging from vaudeville to cyborgs to the art of doodling, and she has published in such respected periodicals as Artforum, Parkett, Art in America, Artbyte, The Guggenheim Magazine, The Village Voice, The Brooklyn Rail, Art Agenda, and Camerawork. She has interviewed Matthew Barney, Yvonne Rainer, Ellen Gallagher, the Quay Brothers, McKenzie Wark, Tim Rollins and K.O.S., Aziz + Cucher, and Carolee Schneemann. Her book-length conversation with the influential science and technology scholar Donna Haraway offers a wide-ranging and intimate introduction to Haraway's challenging work. Among other things, she argues that science fiction offers a model for Haraway's imaginative theorizations.
Goodeve has also written on Jeff Koons, Raymond Pettibon, Tony Oursler, Michael Joaquin Grey, Matthew Ritchie, Joseph Nechvatal, Heide Hatry, Eve Andrée Laramée, and Lesley Dill.
As a performer, Goodeve has appeared in works by Yvonne Rainer, Joseph Nechvatal, Bradley Rubenstein, and Ellen Harvey. She appears as the graduate student in Yvonne Rainer's 1985 film The Man Who Envied Women.

Teaching

From 1995 to 1997, Goodeve worked as a research associate at the Whitney Museum of American Art on the American Century Exhibition. From 1998 to 1999, she was Senior Instructor at the Whitney Independent Studio Program.
Since 1999, she has been on the faculty of the School of Visual Arts, teaching in the M.F.A. programs in Art Criticism and Writing; Art Practice; and Computer Art. She has also taught in SVA's undergraduate art history and film programs.
Outside of New York, Goodeve has taught at the Rhode Island School of Design and is the program coordinator for the Maryland Institute College of Art summer intensive program in New York City.

Publications

;Books
;Selected essays and interviews