My chief goal in teaching art history is two fold: to encourage students to see and
understand works of art in their original contexts; and to try to understand why and how
they continue to speak to us. I focus on why works were made and why they looked the way
they did.
Art is all about communicating with and touching the viewer. It must engage people and a
society, and reflect the concerns of its creator, era, and locale for it to have any
chance of continuing to speak meaningfully to later generations.
I stress that students must know what has been done before so that they will not just
repeat what others have done. Moreover, by learning why earlier artists worked as they
did, they will acquire some better idea of why they themselves think and work as they do,
and be better equipped to understand and master more sophisticated means of expression
| education |
| Ph.D. Art History, University of
Delaware |
1992 |
| M.A. Art History, University of
Delaware |
1984 |
| J.D. University of Maryland School
of Law |
1976 |
| |
| academic experience |
| Associate Professor, Louisiana Tech
University |
2000 - present |
| Assistant Professor, Louisiana Tech
University |
1994 - 2000 |
| Assistant Professor, American University |
1994 |
| Assistant Professor, Georgia Southern
University |
1990 - 1993 |
| |
| publications |
| What the Four Million Bought:
Cheap Oil Paintings of the 1880s," American Quarterly 48 (March
1996): 77-109 |
1996 |
| Competition and Conflict in
the New York Art World, 1874-1879," Winterthur Portfolio 29 (Autumn
1994): 103-20 |
1994 |
| Against the Current: Anti-Modern
Images in the Work of Winslow Homer," American Art Review 5 (Fall
1993): 120-25 |
1993 |
| From
Havana to Wall Street: Popular Sheet Music in America, 1898-1929 exhibition cat., University of Delaware Gallery, 1988
In
Progress, Eugene Ludins and the Tragedy of American Painting |
1988 |
|