Mimi Hellman
Associate Professor of Art History

Mimi Hellman

CONTACT INFORMATION

Office:  Filene 118B
Tel:      518-580-5058
Email:  mhellman@skidmore.edu

Office Hours Spring 2012:
Thur. 3:30-5:30 pm
Or by appointment

EDUCATION

  • Ph.D., Art History, Princeton University, 2000
  • M.A., Art History, Smith College, 1992
  • B.A., Religion and Art History, Smith College, 1985

RESEARCH AND TEACHING INTERESTS

  • European art between the 17th and 19th centuries
  • 18th-century France: visual and material culture, social practice, modes of perception
  • The reception of 18th-century art and culture in the modern period
  • The cultural history of decorative art, interior design, and domesticity
  • The history of art history as a discipline
  • Films about art and artists
  • The cultural history of food

COURSES

  • Scribner Seminar:  BUZZ: The Visual and Material Culture of Caffeine
  • Ways of Seeing: The Domestic Interior (AH107)
  • Practices of Art History (AH221)
  • Surveys of 17th, 18th, and 19th-century European art (AH253, AH254, AH257)
  • Rococo Art and Design (AH345)
  • Visual Culture of the French Revolution (AH355)
  • History of Photography (AH321)
  • Art History seminars: Women of Versailles; Impressionism (AH375)
  • Honors Forum courses: The French Revolution on Film; Van Gogh on Film

SELECTED PUBLICATIONS

FOR SCHOLARLY READERS

  • “Enchanted Night: Decoration, Sociability, and Visuality after Dark.” In Paris: Life & Luxury in the Eighteenth Century, ed. Charissa Bremer-David, 91-113. Los Angeles: J. Paul Getty Museum, 2011.
  • “The Nature of Artifice: French Porcelain Flowers and the Rhetoric of the Garnish.” In The Cultural Aesthetics of Porcelain in the Eighteenth Century, ed. Alden Cavanaugh and Michael E. Yonan, 39-64. Burlington, Vermont and London: Ashgate Publishing, 2010.
  • “The Decorated Flame: Firedogs and the Tensions of the Hearth.” In Taking Shape: Finding Sculpture in the Decorative Arts, ed. Martina Droth, 176-85. Los Angeles: J. Paul Getty Museum, 2008.
  • “The Joy of Sets: The Uses of Seriality in the French Interior.” In Furnishing the Eighteenth Century: What Furniture Can Tell Us About the European and American Past, ed. Dena Goodman and Kathryn Norberg, 129-53. New York and London: Routledge, 2006.
  • “Object Lessons: French Decorative Art as a Model for Interdisciplinarity.” In The Interdisciplinary Century: Tensions and Convergences in 18th-Century Art, Literature, and History. Special issue of Studies on Voltaire and the Eighteenth Century, ed. Julia Douthwaite and Mary Vidal, 60-76. Oxford: Voltaire Foundation, 2005.
  • “Furniture, Sociability, and the Work of Leisure in 18th-Century France.” Eighteenth-Century Studies 32 (Summer 1999): 415-45.

FOR GENERAL READERS

  • “Elusive Temptations.” Gastronomica: A Journal of Food and Culture 11 (Summer 2011): 7-11.
  • “Up the River: Touring Sing Sing.” In Lives of the Hudson, ed. Ian Berry and Tom Lewis, 148-152. New York: Prestel Publishing, 2010.
  • “Interior Motives: Seduction by Decoration in Eighteenth-Century France.” Introduction to Dangerous Liaisons: Fashion and Furniture in the Eighteenth Century, by Harold Koda and Andrew Bolton, 15-23. New Haven: Yale University Press for The Metropolitan Museum of Art, 2006.
  • “Of Water and Chocolate.” Gastronomica: A Journal of Food and Culture 4 (Fall 2004): 9-11.
  • “Domesticity Undone: Three Historical Spaces.” In Undomesticated Interiors, ed. Linda Muehlig, 9-39. Northampton, Massachusetts: Smith College Museum of Art, 2003.

SELECTED CONFERENCE PAPERS AND INVITED LECTURES

  • Getty Research Institute, Los Angeles, 2011
  • Bard Graduate Center: Decorative Arts, Design, Material Culture, New York, 2011
  • Harvard University, 2010
  • College Art Association Annual Meeting, 2010, 2006
  • University of California, San Diego and University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, 2009
  • Henry Moore Institute, Leeds, 2008
  • University of Georgia, Athens and University of Hamburg, Germany, 2007
  • American Society for Eighteenth-Century Studies Annual Meeting, 2005
  • The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, 2004
  • Ecole nationale supérieure des beaux-arts, Paris, 2003

WORK IN PROGRESS

  • The Hôtel de Soubise and the Rohan-Soubise Family: Art and Ambition in Eighteenth-Century France.  A book about the architecture and interior decoration of an aristocratic residence in 18th-century Paris.

FELLOWSHIPS

  • American Society for Eighteenth-Century Studies Robert R. Palmer Research Travel Fellowship, 2008 National Endowment for the Humanities Fellowship, 2002-3
  • David E. Finley Fellowship, Center for Advanced Study in the Visual Arts, National Gallery of Art, Washington, DC, 1997-2000
  • Samuel H. Kress Foundation Fellowship, 1995-97


CREATIVE THOUGHT MATTERS
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