Ph.D. (Art History), Brown University, 1987

M.A. (Art History), Brown University, 1982

B.A. (Art History and German), McMaster University, 1978

Participation in undergraduate/graduate student exchange and research programs at the Université de Poitiers (France); the Universities of Göttingen, Köln, Kiel, and Rostock (Germany); and at the Zentralinstitut für Kunstgeschichte, Munich

Research

Interests

Professor Brush’s undergraduate and graduate teaching focuses on medieval art and architecture and on the histories, theories, and practices of art history and visual culture in the modern era.  Her primary research interests are: Romanesque and Gothic art, medieval sculpture, the historiography of cultural-historical thought, and histories of museums, archives, and art collecting.

Current Projects

Professor Brush is currently conducting research for a book that will map and contextualize the scholarly imagination of Arthur Kingsley Porter (1883-1933), North America’s pioneering scholar of medieval visual culture.  She has received a three-year grant (2009-2012) from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada to support this project.  She is also preparing several articles on related topics, including a study of the formation of Harvard University’s collection of medieval art.

Her graduate seminar during the academic year 2009-2010, “Mapping Medievalism at the Canadian Frontier,” was awarded special support from the Cohen Explorations Program in the Visual Arts.  Professor Brush collaborated with graduate students and with art and historical institutions in southern Ontario, including the University of Toronto Art Centre, the Museum of Ontario Archaeology, and Museum London, to map the rich and multidimensional impact of medievalism on representations of North America’s history and visual culture.  During the academic year 2010-11 this exploratory research and curatorial project resulted in an exhibition with multiple venues, a book, a symposium, and a range of public programming.

Awards, Honours, Grants

Graham and Gail Wright Distinguished Scholar Award, Faculty of Arts and Humanities,
University of Western Ontario, 2010-11

Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada Standard Research Grants,
2009-2012; 1995-1999; and 1991-1994

Visiting Scholar, Harvard University Art Museums, 2007-2008

New Research and Scholarly Initiative Award, Academic Development Fund, University of Western Ontario, 2006

University of Western Ontario-SSHRC International Travel and/or Research Grants, 2005, 1995, 1994, 1988 and 1987

Research Fellow, Harvard University Art Museums, 2001-2002

Research Fellowship from the Alexander von Humboldt-Stiftung, Federal Republic of Germany, 1997-1998 (Kunsthistorisches Institut, Universität Trier)

Short-Term Visiting Fellowship, Princeton University Libraries, 1996

Andrew W. Mellon Faculty Fellowship in the Humanities, Harvard University, 1991-1992

German Academic Exchange Service (DAAD) Study Grant for Foreign Academics, 1990 (Zentralinstitut für Kunstgeschichte, Munich)

Selected Publications

Books

Mapping Medievalism at the Canadian Frontier (editor).  London, ON: Museum London and The McIntosh Gallery, University of Western Ontario, 2010.

Vastly More Than Brick and Mortar: Reinventing the Fogg Art Museum in the 1920s.  Cambridge, Mass., and New Haven: Yale University Press, 2003.

The Shaping of Art History: Wilhelm Vöge, Adolph Goldschmidt, and the Study of Medieval Art.  Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press, 1996.

Artistic Integration in Gothic Buildings (co-editor with Virginia Raguin and Peter Draper).  Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1995.

Recent Articles

“Naumburg und Cluny—Vergleichende Internationalitätsbegriffe in der europäischen und amerikanischen Kunstwissenschaft um 1920,” Der Naumburger Meister: Bildhauer und Architekt im Europa der Kathedralen, Tagungsband, ed. Holger Kunde and Hartmut Krohm (Petersberg: Michael Imhof Verlag, 2012) [in press]

“Arthur Kingsley Porter et la genèse de sa vision de Cluny,” Constructions, reconstructions, et commémorations clunisiennes, 1790-2010, ed. Didier Méhu (Rennes: Presses universitaires de Rennes, 2012) [in press]

“Bernard Berenson and Arthur Kingsley Porter: Pilgrimage Roads to I Tatti,” Bernard Berenson at Fifty, ed. Joseph Connors and Louis A. Waldman (Florence and Cambridge, Mass.: Villa I Tatti, The Harvard University Center for Italian Renaissance Studies, 2011) [in press]

“Reframing Canada’s ‘Wilderness’ Icons: Medievalism, Tom Thomson, and the Group of Seven,” Mapping Medievalism at the Canadian Frontier, ed. Kathryn Brush (London, ON: Museum London and the McIntosh Gallery, 2010), 144-161.

“The Capitals from Moutiers-Saint-Jean (Harvard University Art Museums) and the Carving of Medieval Art Study in America after World War I,” Medieval Art and Architecture after the Middle Ages, ed. Janet T. Marquardt and Alyce A. Jordan (Newcastle upon Tyne: Cambridge Scholars Press, 2009): 298-311.

“Screening, Sculpture, and the Structuring of Viewer Response in Thirteenth-Century Mainz,” Reading Gothic Architecture, ed. Matthew M. Reeve (Turnhout: Brepols, 2008): 25-36.

“Arthur Kingsley Porter and the Transatlantic Shaping of Art History, ca. 1910-1930,” The Shaping of Art History in Finland, ed. Renja Suominen-Kokkonen (Helsinki: Taidehistorian Seura-Föreningen för Konsthistoria-Society of Art History, 2007): 129-142.

“Adolph Goldschmidt in the ‘Wilds’ of 1920s America,” Adolph Goldschmidt (1863-1944). Normal Art History im 20. Jahrhundert, ed. Gunnar Brands and Heinrich Dilly (Weimar: Verlag und Datenbank für Geisteswissenschaften, 2007): 183-207.

“The Unshaken Tree: Walter W. S. Cook on Kunstwissenschaft in 1924,” Seeing and Beyond: A Festschrift on Eighteenth to Twenty-First Century Art in Honor of Kermit S. Champa, ed. Deborah J. Johnson and David Ogawa (Bern, Berlin, Frankfurt and New  York: Peter Lang Verlag, 2005): 329-60 [abridged version of essay published in the  Zeitschrift des Deutschen Vereins für Kunstwissenschaft, 2001].

“Arthur Kingsley Porter, le Fogg Art Museum et la sculpture romane espagnole,”Catalogne romane. Sculptures du Val de Boí, exh. cat. (Paris: Réunion des Musées  Nationaux, 2004): 43-53.  Article simultaneously published in a Catalan translation:
“Arthur Kingsley Porter, el Fogg Art Museum i l’escultura romànica espanyola,” Obres mestres del romànic. Escultures de la Vall de Boí (Barcelona: Museu Nacional d’Art de  Catalunya, 2004): 43-53.

[see curriculum vitae for other articles]

Teaching

Recent Courses

VAH 251E/2251E:  Early Medieval Art
VAH 253E/2253E:  Romanesque and Gothic Art
VAH 240E/2240E:  Theories and Practices of Art History and Visual Culture
VAH 451G/4451F:  Arts of Pilgrimage
VAH 551G:  Reading Medieval Art
VAH 551F:  Medieval Sculpture and its Historiography
VAH 551G:  Medieval Art in North American Contexts
VAH 9551G/9651G:  Medieval Art and its Modern Interpreters
VAH 4551F:  Romanesque and Neo-Romanesque: Medieval Visual Culture in Translation
VAH 9551G/9651G:  Mapping Medievalism at the Canadian Frontier

Graduate Dissertations and Theses Supervised

Ph.D. Dissertation Committees

Jeanne-Marie Musto, “Byzantium in Bavaria: Art, Architecture and History between Empiricism and Invention in the Post-Napoleonic Era,” Department of History of Art, Bryn Mawr College, 2007

Jean Brodahl, “The Melisende Psalter and Ivories (British Museum, Egerton 1139): An Inquiry into the Status and Collecting of Medieval Art in Early Nineteenth-Century France,” Department of History of Art and Architecture, Brown University, 1999

Mary Morton, "Hippolyte Taine's Lectures at the École des Beaux Arts and Taineism in Late Nineteenth-Century Art Historiography," Department of History of Art and Architecture, Brown University, 1997

Master’s Thesis Supervision

2013:
Stephanie Wittich, “Reminiscences: The Medievalisms of Wassily Kandinsky” (chief supervisor: thesis in progress)

2010:
Claire Feagan, “Surrealist Castle Culture: Gothic Traces in Surrealist Aesthetics” (chief supervisor)

Erin Rothstein, “Pablo Picasso and Primitivism: An Exploration of “Non-Western” and Medieval Influences in Les Demoiselles d’Avignon (1907)” (chief supervisor)

2007:
Siân Evans, “The Book of Kells’ Ornament and Audience” (chief supervisor)

2006:
Adam Stead, “The Visitatio Sepulchri: Acting, Ausstattung and Audience in Medieval Germany” (chief supervisor)

2005:
Amanda Morhart, “Giorgio Vasari: Imitation and Invention in Painting and Lives” (co-supervisor with Prof. Madeline Lennon and program examiner)

2001:
Jessica Marshall, “Viollet-le-Duc’s Writing and Reconstruction: Gothic and Otherwise” (chief supervisor)

Carrie Vassallo, “The Early Years of Art History in English-Speaking Canada: McMaster, Toronto and Queen’s Universities, ca. 1930-1945" (chief supervisor)

2000:
Joanna Schreyer, “The Balance of Wealth: An Economic Interpretation of a Gdansk Triptych” (chief supervisor)