michael alexander pio harper is an artist, art historian, researcher, critic, and curator. he received his ba and ma in the history of art at johns hopkins university in baltimore, specializing in italian futurist art and later twentieth century/contemporary receptions of the avant-garde. his thesis, force-lines and fault lines: paradoxes of movement, art historiography, and photography during italian futurism’s “classical” period (1909-1914), explored futurist tensions with the photographic medium, issues of stasis, the science of animal locomotion, philosophies of the fourth-dimension, and classicism or ‘passatismo'. the essay hailed anton giulio bragaglia, futurism’s premier photographer, to accurately represent the fourth-dimension, as according to the philosophy of henri bergson, something his painter colleagues struggled to do.

michael’s images and artistic practice have been influenced by his research of the futurist movement and 20th century avant-gardism. dynamism, ‘force-lines,’ and materiality characterize his work.

he has worked at art institutions and organizations like the metroplitian museum of art, the morgan library & museum, the baltimore museum of art, johns hopkins university’s special collections, the evergreen museum & library, the valerie j. maynard foundation, nancy rosen, cindy glanzrock realartmuse, and arader galleries. he is currently based in nyc and nj.