Biography
I was born and raised in a western suburb of Chicago. I went (was sent) to New England for college; ditto for my older brother (MIT) and younger sister (RISD). My destination, Wellesley, was a bit of a shock. It was full of snooty and brilliant young women smarter than yours truly. But in the positive column, I discovered Art History there, and the field became my life-long passion and profession. After graduation, I lived in Athens, Greece, working as Advisor on Student Affairs at an American style (AID funded) liberal arts college. A wonderful experience (my command of Greek was strong enough that I could pass for Greek!) and I was asked to stay on. But, no, I was in a hurry to start graduate school in Art History back in the USA.
It’s a long story, but I ended up at UCLA. (One detail: I didn’t go to NYU because I learned from the 1969 hit film, Midnight Cowboy, that if I went to NYC I’d end up just like Ratso Rizzo. My midwestern sophistication was all-encompassing). At UCLA, desperate to shake off the dust of my conventional Wellesley training, I wrote my 1975 Master’s Thesis on floats in the Pasadena Tournament of Roses Parade. A charismatic new professor and his Marxist inflected version of the social history of art swept me into the study of Paris-based art practices of the 19th century; my specialty for lo these many years: subject of my 1984 PhD and my subsequent publications. Paris was home to many extended (pre-Covid) research trips from 1976 to 2019, and the French Ministry of Culture made me a Chevalier in 2014. My books have studied, among other topics, Art and Prostitution, Art and War, and Art and Artificial Illumination.
I started teaching at Northwestern in 1982 as a VAP leaving a tenure line position elsewhere. After 2 years, I left for a tenure track position elsewhere but was hired back into the NU Art History Department in 1985 in a tenure line job. I rose through the ranks and retired in 2020 as Professor Emerita of Art History and Bergen Evans Professor Emerita in the Humanities. My proudest achievements during my 37 years at Northwestern were receiving every teaching award NU had to offer, serving as the Founding Director of the Kaplan Institute for the Humanities (2006-2013), and advising 26 Ph.D. dissertations (there are still 2 more in the works). I’m still doing art history scholarship; a new book on the Eiffel Tower is underway. In the private sphere, I’ve been married to my high school art teacher since 1983. Our industrial designer son, his landscape architect spouse, and our two grandsons live in Brooklyn.