Zoltán Somhegyi

Zoltán Somhegyi is a Hungarian art historian with a PhD in aesthetics, currently based in Sharjah, United Arab Emirates, and working as Chair of the Department of Fine Arts of the College of Fine Arts and Design of the University of Sharjah, and from September 2020 he will continue as an associate professor of art history at the Károli Gáspár University of the Reformed Church in Hungary. As a researcher, he specializes in eighteenth- and nineteenth-century art and art theory with a strong interest in contemporary arts and art criticism. He curated exhibitions in six countries, participated in international art projects, and often lectures on art and aesthetics in academic conferences. He is the secretary general and website editor of the International Association for Aesthetics, a member of the Executive Committee of the International Council for Philosophy and Human Sciences, and consultant of Art Market Budapest: International Contemporary Art Fair. He is the author of books, academic papers, artist catalogues, and more than two hundred articles, essays, critiques, and art fair reviews. His recent books are Reviewing the Past: The Presence of Ruins (2020), Learning from Decay: Essays on the Aesthetics of Architectural Dereliction and Its Consumption (2018; coauthored with Max Ryynänen), and Retracing the Past: Historical Continuity in Aesthetics from a Global Perspective—19th Yearbook of the International Association for Aesthetics (2017; editor and contributor). As of his editorial experience, he is an associate editor of Popular Inquiry: The Journal of the Aesthetics of Kitsch, Camp and Mass Culture, editorial board member of Evental Aesthetics: An Independent Journal of Philosophy and of Terra Aestheticae: Journal of the Russian Society for Aesthetics, advisory board member of Argument: Biannual Philosophical Journal, of Espes: Journal of the Society for Aesthetics in Slovakia, and of the Polish Journal of Aesthetics.