Cristian Nae earned a PhD in Philosophy at the Alexandru Ioan Cuza University in Iasi. Currently, he is a professor dr. habil. within the Faculty of Visual Arts and Design from UNAGE in Iasi, and the director of the Multidisciplinary Research Institute in Art (ICMA). His research focuses on critical art, exhibition studies and contemporary art theory.
He was a Fulbright Visiting Scholar at the University of California, Santa Barbara (2023). He received research grants from the Erste Foundation (2010-2011), the Getty Foundation and the “New Europe College” Institute of Advanced Studies in Bucharest (2010; 2011-2012) and the CAA-Getty international program (2012; 2017; 2021). He coordinated two research projects dedicated to art exhibitions in Romania and Eastern Europe during the socialist period, funded by CNCS-UEFISCDI (2015-2016 and 2018-2020). He was a senior consultant in the project “Periodisation in the History of Art and its Conundrums. How to tackle them in East-Central Europe” funded by the Getty Foundation within the Connecting Art Histories initiative (2019-2021).
He was a member of the International Committee of the College Arts Association in the US, the European Association for Modernism and Avant-Garde Studies and the International Association of Art Critics.
He participated in conferences organized by prestigious institutions such as College Arts Association (CAA, USA), Association for Art History (AAH, UK), ASEEES, The Clark Art Institute, University Paris 1 Sorbonne and Columbia University, University of Helsinki, University of California, Santa Barbara or Zentralinstitut für Kunstgeschichte Munich, or as guest lecturer at the University of Saint Andrews.
His studies have been included in collective volumes such as Handbook of Socialist Exhibition Cultures: International Art Exhibitions in the Socialist World 1947-1989 (University of Toronto Press, 2025 – forthcoming), Globalizing the Avant-Garde (de Gruyter, 2025), Plural and Multiple Geographies of Modern and Contemporary Art in East-Central Europe (Routledge, 2024), State Construction and Art in East Central Europe 1918-2018 (Routledge, 2022), Art History in a Global Context (Wiley-Blackwell, 2020), Realisms of the Avant-Garde (de Gruyter, 2020), Performance Art in the Second Public Sphere (Routledge, 2018) or Curating Eastern Europe and Beyond: Art Histories through the Exhibition (Peter Lang, 2013).
His articles were published in major journals such as Third Text, Artmargins or Studies in Eastern European Cinema.
He edited the publications (In)visible frames (Idea, 2019) and Romanian Contemporary Art 2010-2020 (Hatje Cantz, 2020).
He curated Romania’s participation in the 58th edition of the Venice Biennale (2019).