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Art History and Visual Culture
Faculty

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Core Faculty

  • Susan Aberth
    Susan Aberth
    Edith C. Blum Professor of Art History
    Area of Focus: Latin American Art, Surrealism with an emphasis on Latin America and women artists, Occultism, Outsider Art
    Phone: 845-758-7126
    Email: [email protected]
    Office: Fisher Annex 113
     

    Susan Aberth

    Susan Aberth
    Edith C. Blum Professor of Art History
    Area of Focus: Latin American Art, Surrealism with an emphasis on Latin America and women artists, Occultism, Outsider Art
    Phone: 845-758-7126
    Email: [email protected]
    Office: Fisher Annex 113
     
    Education: BA, University of California, Los Angeles; MA, Institute of Fine Arts, New York University; PhD, The Graduate Center, City University of New York

    Honors and Awards: Bard Research Council Award (2008) for work on Czech surrealist Toyen; Professional Development Fellowship, the College Art Association and the National Endowment for the Humanities. (2000–01)

    Publications: Leonora Carrington: Surrealism, Alchemy, and Art (Lund Humphries, London and in Spanish by Turner, Madrid 2004)

    Research Interests: Latin American Art, Surrealism with an emphasis on Latin America and women artists, Occultism, Outsider Art

    Teaching Interests: Latin American Art, African Art, Outsider Art, Various aspects of religious art including African religious practices in the Americas

    Other Interests: Art of the occult and alchemy, Spiritualism in the United States and elsewhere, Freemasonry and fraternal organizations, Visionary and outsider art, Art dealing with death and mourning
  • Katherine Morris Boivin
    Katherine Morris Boivin
    Associate Professor of Art History and Visual Culture
    Area of Focus: Western Medieval Art, in particular Gothic Art and Architecture in Germany, Islamic Art
    Program Director
    Phone: 845-758-7159
    Email: [email protected]
    Office: Fisher Annex 109
     

    Katherine Morris Boivin

    Katherine Morris Boivin
    Associate Professor of Art History and Visual Culture
    Area of Focus: Western Medieval Art, in particular Gothic Art and Architecture in Germany, Islamic Art
    Program Director
    Phone: 845-758-7159
    Email: [email protected]
    Office: Fisher Annex 109
     
    Education: BA, Tufts University; MA, MPhil, PhD, Columbia University

    Areas of Interest: Primary field: Western Medieval Art, in particular Gothic Art and Architecture in Germany; Secondary field: Islamic Art. Professor Boivin’s research focuses on the dynamic interactions between figural art, architecture, and human activity. She is interested in the spatiality of Late Medieval churches, in the diverse functions of architectural space, and in the ability of artistic ensembles to shape human experience. Her current book project investigates architectural sites of passage and projection.

    Selected Awards and Fellowships: VISTAS Digital Project Grant (2020); NEH Summer Stipend (2017); Samuel H. Kress Foundation Art History Grant (2017); Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft Grant (2017); ICMA-Kress Research Grant (2017); Post Doctoral Fellowship, Université de Montréal (2012-13); SAH Rosann S. Berry Conference Fellowship (2013); Fulbright Research Grant, Germany (2011-2012); British Archaeological Association Conference Travel Grant (2012); DAAD Research Grant, Germany (2011).

    Selected Publications:
    Books and Edited Volumes
    Boivin, Riemenschneider in Rothenburg: Sacred Space and Civic Identity in the Late Medieval City (Penn State University Press, 2021).
    Boivin & Bryda (eds), Riemenschneider in Situ (Brepols, 2021).

    Articles and Chapters
    Boivin, “Two-Story Charnel-House Chapels and the Centrality of Death in the Medieval City,” in Picturing Death 1200–1600, eds Stephen Perkinson and Noa Turel (Brill, 2020), pp. 79–103.

    Boivin, “The Visual Arts” in A Cultural History of the Emotions in the Medieval Age (350-1300), eds Juanita Ruys and Clare Monagle (Bloomsbury, 2018), pp. 83–99.

    Boivin, “Holy Blood, Holy Cross: Dynamic Interactions in the Parochial Complex of Rothenburg” The Art Bulletin 99, no. 2 (2017), pp. 41–71.

    Boivin, “The Chancel Passageways of Norwich,” in Norwich: Medieval and Early Modern Art, Architecture and Archaeology. eds T.A. Heslop and Helen E. Lunnon. British Archaeological Association Conference Transactions, vol. 38 (Maney Publishing, 2015), pp. 307–323.
  • Anne Chen
    Anne Chen
    Assistant Professor of Art History and Visual Culture
    Area of Focus: Ancient Art and Antiquity, Archaeology, Digital Humanities, Middle Eastern Studies, Colonialism and Archeology, Digital Humanities and Linked Open Data, Roman Provincial Art and Archaeology, Critical Archival Practice
    Phone: 845-758-7258
    E-mail:  [email protected]
    Office: Fisher Annex 111

    Anne Chen

    Anne Chen
    Assistant Professor of Art History and Visual Culture
    Area of Focus: Ancient Art and Antiquity, Archaeology, Digital Humanities, Middle Eastern Studies, Colonialism and Archeology, Digital Humanities and Linked Open Data, Roman Provincial Art and Archaeology, Critical Archival Practice
    Phone: 845-758-7258
    E-mail:  [email protected]
    Office: Fisher Annex 111

    Dr. Chen specializes in the art and archaeology of the globally-connected Roman world, and is committed to exploring how low-barrier Linked Open Usable Data (LOUD) can be harnessed not only to provide more equitable access to archaeological data in the digital realm, but also to empower stakeholder audiences as collaborative curators. She is the founder and co-director of the NEH-funded International Digital Dura-Europos Archive (IDEA), an archaeological data accessibility project whose documentation efforts are aimed at sharing-out workflows that help to overcome disciplinary data silos and work to dislodge enduring impacts of colonialism. Thanks to her work on IDEA, her role as the Co-Chair and Annotations Activity co-coordinator for the international Pelagios Network, and time spent as a fellow in the Department of the Ancient Near East at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, Dr. Chen has extensive experience working with GLAM professionals and collections. Additionally, she has published on Roman, Persian, and Digital Humanities topics, and taught equally wide-ranging coursework. She also serves as an historical consultant for the Virtual Center for Late Antiquity (VCLA).
  • Laurie Dahlberg
    Laurie Dahlberg
    Associate Professor of Photography and Art History and Visual Culture 
    Area of Focus: Photography, 18th and 19th Centuries painting and graphic art, Victorian studies, Colonial and Travel Photography
    Phone: 845-758-7239
    Email: [email protected] 
    Office: Fisher Annex 108

    Laurie Dahlberg

    Laurie Dahlberg
    Associate Professor of Photography and Art History and Visual Culture 
    Area of Focus: Photography, 18th and 19th Centuries painting and graphic art, Victorian studies, Colonial and Travel Photography
    Phone: 845-758-7239
    Email: [email protected] 
    Office: Fisher Annex 108

    Education: BS, MA, Illinois State University; MA, PhD, Princeton University

    Awards and Honors: National Endowment for the Humanities summer stipend (2012 and 2000); The Franklin Research Grant from the American Philosophical Society (2012); Model/Blum Fellow, National Gallery of Canada (1995); Fowler-McCormick Research Fellowship, Princeton University (1993).

    Current Publishing Projects: “Amateur vs. amateur: Photography and the [D]evolution of a Gentleman’s Art”; “‘Art’s Mortal Enemy’: Baudelaire, Photography, and the Ruin of French Taste.”

    Books: Stephen Shore: The Hudson Valley (Blindspot Editions, 2011); Victor Regnault and the Advance of Photography: The Art of Avoiding Errors (Princeton Univ. Press 2005); Larry Fink 55 (Phaidon, 2005).

    Selected Other Publications: “At Home with the Camera: Modeling Masculinity in Early French Photography,” in Interior Portraiture and Masculine Identity in France, 1789-1914 (Belnap-Jensen, et al., Ashgate, 2011); Contributor, Impressionism and the Ecology of Landscape, Stephen Eisenman, ed., Complesso del Vittoriano, 2010; Contributor, Encyclopedia of Nineteenth-Century Photography, John Hannavy, ed., Routledge, 2007. Critic, Aperture Magazine, 2004-present.

    Selected Public Presentations: The Royal Museums of Fine Art, Belgium (2012); Concordia University (2010); Western Society for French History (2008); Princeton University (2007); Hermitage Museum, St. Petersburg, Russia (2005); Bibliotheque Nationale de France (2004); Brooklyn Museum of Art (2002); Aarhus University, Aarhus, Denmark (2001).
  • Alex Kitnick
    Alex Kitnick
    Assistant Professor of Art History and Visual Culture; Faculty, Center for Curatorial Studies
    Area of Focus: Postwar Art, Architecture, Design, and Media, particularly in the US and England, Curatorial Studies
    Phone: 845-758-6822
    Email: [email protected] 
    Office: Fisher Annex 114

    Alex Kitnick

    Alex Kitnick
    Assistant Professor of Art History and Visual Culture; Faculty, Center for Curatorial Studies
    Area of Focus: Postwar Art, Architecture, Design, and Media, particularly in the US and England, Curatorial Studies
    Phone: 845-758-6822
    Email: [email protected] 
    Office: Fisher Annex 114

    Alex Kitnick completed his BA at Wesleyan University, attended the Whitney Museum’s Independent Study Program in New York, and received his PhD from the Department of Art and Archaeology at Princeton University in 2010. Before coming to Bard, he taught at Otis College of Art and Design, School of Visual Arts, Vassar College, and UCLA.

    His research interests focus on imbrications between art, architecture, design, and media in the postwar period, particularly in the US and England. He has edited a number of books including The Expendable Reader: Articles on Art, Architecture, Design, and Media, 1951–1979, which assembles key writings by the artist and critic John McHale, and an October File on the artist Dan Graham. His scholarly articles have appeared in journals including Art Journal and October, and he is currently preparing a book based on his dissertation for publication. In addition to his work as a scholar, Kitnick is also an active critic of contemporary art, and has published essays and reviews in venues such as Artforum, Fillip, May, Parkett, and Texte zur Kunst.
  • Hillary Langberg
    Hillary Langberg
    Visiting Assistant Professor of Religion and Art History and Visual Culture
    Area of Focus: Asian Art, Pan-Asian Buddhist sculpture, Asian goddess imagery, bodhisattva-goddesses in Mahayana Buddhism, intersections of ritual texts and visual culture in Buddhist Tantra, Pala-period Indian sculpture, East Asian painting, Zen painting
    Phone: 845-758-7389
    Office: Hopson 204
    Email: [email protected]

    Hillary Langberg

    Hillary Langberg
    Visiting Assistant Professor of Religion and Art History and Visual Culture
    Area of Focus: Asian Art, Pan-Asian Buddhist sculpture, Asian goddess imagery, bodhisattva-goddesses in Mahayana Buddhism, intersections of ritual texts and visual culture in Buddhist Tantra, Pala-period Indian sculpture, East Asian painting, Zen painting
    Phone: 845-758-7389
    Office: Hopson 204
    Email: [email protected]
    Eduation: BA, University of California, Berkeley; MA, PhD, University of Texas at Austin.

    Dr. Langberg's research focuses on the historical development of goddess traditions in Indian Mahayana Buddhism by placing textual sources in conversation with the visual arts. She is currently working on her first book, Goddesses on the Bodhisattva Path, and co-editing an interdisciplinary volume, The Tantric World (forthcoming from Routledge, 2026). She was previously Robert H. N. Ho Family Foundation Buddhism Public Scholar at the National Museum of Asian Art, Smithsonian (2022–24), where she co-curated the exhibition, The Art of Knowing in South Asia, Southeast Asia, and the Himalayas, and curated the online exhibition, Wisdom of the Goddess. Peer-reviewed articles include: "Gender Equity in a Mahayana Sutra: The Gaṇḍavyūha's Enlightened Goddesses" (The Eastern Buddhist, June 2021) and “Gifts of the Goddess: Offerings of Dhāraṇī, Mantras, and Tantric Invocation Rituals in the Sūtra of Golden Light” (Pacific World: Journal of the Institute of Buddhist Studies, Nov. 2022). Previous awards include the American Institute of Indian Studies (AIIS) Junior Research Fellowship. Previously taught at the University of Texas at Austin and Colgate University. At Bard from 2020–22, and since 2024.
  • Susan Merriam
    Susan Merriam
    Associate Professor of Art History and Visual Culture
    Phone: 845-758-7163
    Email: [email protected] 
    Office: Fisher Annex 115

    Susan Merriam

    Susan Merriam
    Associate Professor of Art History and Visual Culture
    Phone: 845-758-7163
    Email: [email protected] 
    Office: Fisher Annex 115
    Education: Harvard University, PhD, Department of History of Art and Architecture, 2002

    Select Fellowships: Mellon Conservation Fellowship; Harvard University Art Museums (2002-2003); Center for Advanced Studies in the Visual Arts, National Gallery, Washington -Clarice and Robert Smith Fellow (1999-2000); Belgian American Educational Foundation Dissertation Research Fellowship (1997-1998)

    Select Publications:
    • Seventeenth-Century Flemish Garland Paintings: Still Life, Vision, and the Devotional Image (2012)
    • Inventing the Animal in Early Modern Europe  (book manuscript in progress)
    • “The Garland Pictures’ Reception in Seventeenth-Century Flanders and Italy,” Domestic and Institutional Interiors in Early Modern Europe, ed.
    • Sandra Cavallo and Silvia Evangelisti. (Aldershot, Hampshire, and Burlington VT: Ashgate Press, 2009)
  • Julia Rosenbaum
    Julia Rosenbaum
    Professor of Art History and Visual Culture
    Area of Focus: American visual culture; public sculpture; cartography; art and science/medicine; environmental art; world’s fairs
    Phone: 845-758-7257
    Email: [email protected]
    Office: Fisher Annex 110

    Julia Rosenbaum

    Julia Rosenbaum
    Professor of Art History and Visual Culture
    Area of Focus: American visual culture; public sculpture; cartography; art and science/medicine; environmental art; world’s fairs
    Phone: 845-758-7257
    Email: [email protected]
    Office: Fisher Annex 110

    Education: BA, Yale University; PhD, University of Pennsylvania

    Awards and Fellowships: Harvard Research Grant; Henry Luce/ACLS Fellowship in American Art; Chimicles Fellowship; multiple teaching awards.

    Area of Interest: Specialization in American art and culture.

    Publications: 
    Visions of Belonging: New England Art and the Making of American Identity (2006)
    Articles in scholarly journals and edited volumes, including American Art, Encyclopedia of New England Culture. 
  • Heeryoon Shin
    Heeryoon Shin
    Assistant Professor of Art History and Visual Culture
    Area of Interest: Art, Architecture, and Material Culture of South Asia, focus on early modern and colonial India
    Email: [email protected]
    Office: Fisher Studio Arts 157

    Heeryoon Shin

    Heeryoon Shin
    Assistant Professor of Art History and Visual Culture
    Area of Interest: Art, Architecture, and Material Culture of South Asia, focus on early modern and colonial India
    Email: [email protected]
    Office: Fisher Studio Arts 157

    Heeryoon Shin specializes in the art, architecture, and material culture of South Asia, with a particular focus on early modern and colonial India. Her current book project, tentatively titled Temples Between Empires: Architectural Encounters in Banaras, ca. 1750-1850, explores architectural revival, cross-cultural exchange, and historiography during the fraught moments of transition between the Mughal and British empires through the lens of temple architecture in the Hindu pilgrimage city of Banaras. Her work on temple architecture is part of a larger interest in the complexity of global and local exchanges fostered by travel, trade, and colonialism, and she is currently developing a second project on the global circulation of blue-and-white ceramics and their interaction with the local production and use in South Asia. Her research has been supported by the American Council of Learned Societies, Samsung Scholarship Foundation, and the Paul Mellon Centre for Studies in British Art, and published in Artibus Asiae and Journal 18.
     
    Shin holds a PhD in History of Art from Yale University. She also has secondary training in East Asian art from Seoul National University in South Korea, where she received her BA and completed MA coursework in Art History. Before coming to Bard, she taught at Colorado College, Williams College, and Vanderbilt University.  
  • Olga Touloumi
    Olga Touloumi
    Associate Professor of Art History and Visual Culture
    Area of Interest: 20th Century Architecture and Media forms of liberal internationalism
    Phone: 845-758-6822
    Email: [email protected] 
    Office: Fisher Studio Arts Building 156

    Olga Touloumi

    Olga Touloumi
    Associate Professor of Art History and Visual Culture
    Area of Interest: 20th Century Architecture and Media forms of liberal internationalism
    Phone: 845-758-6822
    Email: [email protected] 
    Office: Fisher Studio Arts Building 156

    Olga Touloumi is Assistant Professor of Architectural History at Bard College. Her research concerns the role of architecture and media in 20th-century forms of liberal internationalism. Her book project, The Global Interior: Modern Architecture and Worldmaking in the United Nations, concerns the design and building of 20th-century public platforms for multilateralism and international relations. Touloumi has co-edited Sound Modernities: Architecture, Media, and Design, a special issue of The Journal of Architecture that investigates how acoustics and mass media, such as the radio and the telephone, transformed modern architectural culture during the twentieth century; and Computer Architectures: Constructing the Common Ground, 1945-1980 (Routledge, forthcoming 2019), a volume of essays about the exchanges between designers and technologists that shaped computational discourses and practices in European and North American institutions. Her essay “Development Media” is forthcoming with the Aggregate edited volume Systems and the South. She has presented her work internationally, and her writing has appeared in numerous journals and edited volumes, among them the Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians, Buildings & Landscapes, Journal of Architecture, and Harvard Design Magazine. She has been a visiting scholar at the Max Planck Institute for the History of Science, and her research has been awarded fellowships and research grants from the National Endowment for the Humanities, Bard College, Harvard University, the Alexander S. Onassis Foundation, the Canadian Center for Architecture, and the Propondis Foundation. Touloumi is the co-founder of the Feminist Art and Architectural Collaborative (FAAC) and a Board Member of the Center for Critical Studies in Architecture. She holds a PhD from Harvard University and a Master of Science from MIT. Before arriving at Bard, she taught architectural history at MIT and at Harvard University.
  • Patricia Karetzky
    Patricia’s Website
    Professor Emeritus of Art History and Visual Culture; Oskar Munsterberg Chair of Asian Art
    [email protected]

    Patricia Karetzky

    Patricia Karetzky
    Professor Emeritus of Art History and Visual Culture; Oskar Munsterberg Chair of Asian Art
    [email protected] Patricia Eichenbaum Karetzky is the Oskar Munsterberg Chair of Asian Art at Bard College, New York, and Adjunct Professor at Lehman College, City College of New York. She has dual interests in contemporary and medieval Chinese art. She was the editor of the Journal of Chinese Religions for over 5 years and published several books and articles on medieval Chinese religious art and numerous articles on contemporary art in such journals as Yishu, the Journal of Contemporary Art, and n.paradoxa. She has also curated exhibitions and written catalogues on Chinese contemporary art.

    Karetzky Publications 2014-15

    Books:
    • Making Sense of Buddhist Art & Architecture London: Thames & Hudson, May 2015
    • Chinese Religious Art  Maryland: Lexington Press, 2014
    Articles:
    • “The Transformations of Xuanwu/Zhenwu”
    • Journal of Daoist Studies, vol. 8 (2015): 69-95
    • “The Image of Woman as a Reflection of Change in China”
    • Revista de Cultura (Macao), issue 45 (2014): 88-96
    • “Xu Bing’s Magical Mystery Tour”
    • Yishu Journey of Chinese Contemporary Art, vol. 13, no. 1 (2014): 76-92

    Catalogue essay:
    • “Educated Youths” Educated Youth: A Fading Living Evidence Tang Desheng Paris Speos, 2014: 12 -52
    • Cui Xiuwen, The Realm of QinSe, Eli Klein Gallery NY May 2015

    Book Reviews:
    • Picturing the True Form: Daoist Visual Culture in Traditional Culture (Shih-shan Susan Huang; Harvard East Asian Monograph, Harvard University Press, 2012)
    • Review: Frontiers of History in China; vol. 9, no.1 (2014): 147-149
    Patricia’s Website
  • Tom Wolf
    Tom Wolf
    Professor Emeritus of Art History and Visual Culture
    Email: [email protected]

    Tom Wolf

    Tom Wolf
    Professor Emeritus of Art History and Visual Culture
    Email: [email protected]
    Education: BA University of California Berkley; PhD NYU Institute of Fine Arts

    Areas of interest: Teaching: 20th century and contemporary art. Research: Woodstock, New York as an art colony and Asian American art.

    Selected Curatorial: 
    Konrad Cramer: A Retrospective, Edith C. Blum Institute, Bard College, 1981.
    Yasuo Kuniyoshi: Painter/Photographer, Edith C. Blum Institute, Bard College, 1983.
    Director, Procter Art Center, Bard College, 1979 – 1995.  Four exhibitions of contemporary art per year.
    Co-curator, Byrdcliffe, An American Art Colony, Herbert F. Johnson Museum, Cornell University.
    Co-curator, The Maverick Art Colony, Hervey White’s Colony of the Arts, The Woodstock Artists Association and Museum, 2006.
    Eva Watson-Schütze: Photographer, Samuel Dorsky Museum SUNY, New Paltz, 2009.
    The Artistic Journey of Yasuo Kuniyoshi, Smithsonian American Art Museum, 2015

    Selected Publications: 
    Writer and narrator, Art/New York, bi-monthly videotape magazine of contemporary art 1982-83.
    Woodstock’s Artistic Heritage, Overlook Press, 1987, principal author.
    Yasuo Kuniyoshi’s Women, Pomegranate Press, 1993.
    “Kuniyoshi in the Early 1920s,” in The Shores of a Dream: Yasuo Kuniyoshi’s Early Works in America, Amon Carter Museum, 1996.
    “The Tip of the Iceberg:  Early Asian-American Artists in New York,” Asian American Art: A History,1850-1970, Stanford University Press, 2008.

Contacting and Visiting Us

  • Contact Us
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    Art History and Visual Culture Program
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Affiliated Faculty

  • Dina Ramadan
    Assistant Professor of Arabic
    Phone: 845-758-7506
    Email: [email protected]
    Office: Seymour 103
    Dina’s Bio
  • Richard Suchenski
    Associate Professor of Film and Electronic Arts; Director, Center for Moving Image Arts
    Phone: 845-752-6482
    Email: [email protected]
    Office: Ottaway Film Center
    Richard’s Bio
In Memoriam: Jean French

In Memoriam: Jean French

Professor Emeritus Edith C. Blum Professor of Art History (1937–2019)
Jean Marie French was a specialist in Romanesque sculpture, though her interest in the history of the visual arts was much broader. At Cornell University she earned an MA in French literature before completing her PhD dissertation in 1972 on the Romanesque portal program of the abbey church of Saint-Pierre, Beaulieu-sur-Dordogne. Her study remains the fundamental work on the subject. Jean created the Art History program at Bard College and taught Medieval and Renaissance Art there from 1971 to her retirement in 2011. The river valley of the Dordogne and the Hudson River Valley were two of the places that she most loved.

In Memoriam: Jean French

I am sad to share the news that Jean Marie French, Professor Emeritus at Bard College, passed away on Thursday, May 2, 2019.

Jean was a specialist in Romanesque sculpture, though her interest in the history of the visual arts was much broader. At Cornell University she earned an M.A. in French literature before completing her Ph.D. dissertation in 1972 on the Romanesque portal program of the abbey church of Saint-Pierre, Beaulieu-sur-Dordogne. Her study remains the fundamental work on the subject. Jean created the Art History program at Bard College and taught Medieval and Renaissance Art there from 1971 to her retirement in 2011. The river valley of the Dordogne and the Hudson River Valley were, I believe, the two places that Jean most loved.

Jean was my undergraduate advisor at Bard, and later a fellow medievalist and close colleague. I am fortunate that she was always my dear friend. She was known at Bard as a demanding teacher. This is because she treated her students with the highest regard, as scholars. Her classroom seminars were exciting places—we discussed Schapiro, Porter, Mâle, Focillon. I recall her describing the modern rediscovery of Romanesque art, coincident with the explorations of artists such as Cézanne. Today when I look at the sculpture of the Moissac portal I see something visually thrilling, even modern in spirit. I know this is because Jean was able to communicate the vitality of Romanesque Art. She taught close examination of artworks, and the skill of forming descriptive language. Jean also emphasized materials and techniques, more like a studio teacher than the usual art historian. For a class on Romanesque sculpture, she secured a block of limestone and a few chisels to teach students the cutting force of the tool and the resistance of the material. 

In her scholarship, Jean was sensitive to the dispossessed, writing about heretics and lepers, so anticipating contemporary research with a focus on the outsider and alternative narratives. Her work on the scientific sampling of medieval stone sculptures and neutron activation analysis has had the greatest impact on the field. Her success led to the formation of the Limestone Sculpture Provenance Project, an international effort bringing together art historians, museum curators, geologists, and nuclear scientists (see the special issue of Gesta, volume 33/1, 1994; http://www.limestonesculptureanalysis.com; William Grimes, “New Science + Old Statues = Problem Solved,” The New York Times, November 1, 1995, p. C15).  Jean’s research speaks of her resourcefulness, and the intellectual pleasure she took from working with scholars from diverse backgrounds.

Following her retirement, Jean enjoyed time with family and friends, summer trips to Cape Cod, concerts at Bard. She remained at home taking care of herself to the end. 

I know many of you will remember and miss Jean’s inspiring work, her generous friendship and curiosity and wit. She is buried in a lovely old cemetery on the campus of Bard College with her children.

Donations may be made to the Jean M. French Travel Award in Art History supporting undergraduate research (c/o Debra Pemstein, Office of Development and Alumni/ae Affairs, Bard College, P.O. Box 5000, Annandale-on-Hudson, NY 12504; online: giving.bard.edu; phone: 845 758 7405). February 24, 1937 - May 2, 2019
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