He codirected the Critical Theory Program at UC Davis from 2001 to 2003. Stimson earned his MA and PhD in art history in 1998 at Cornell University in Ithaca, New York, and his MFA in sculpture in 1992 at Tufts University and the School of the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston, Massachusetts. His book, The Pivot of the World: Photography and Its Nation, was recently published by MIT Press. Stimson and Alex Alberro, editors of Conceptual Art: A Critical Anthology (1999), are working on a second book, entitled Institutional Critique: A Critical Anthology.