Mimi Hellman
Professor AND DEPARTMENT CHAIR of Art History
The Charlotte Lamson Clarke '53 Chair in Art History
CONTACT INFORMATION
Office: Filene 118B
Phone: 518-580-5058
Email: mhellman@skidmore.edu
Fall 2024 Office Hours:
Wednesdays, 4:00 pm-6:00 pm
Thursdays, 6:00 pm-7:00 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
- "Tapestries and Identities at the Hôtel de Soubise: Figuration, Embodied Vision, Intercorporeality." In Body Narratives: Motion and Emotion in the French Enlightment, ed. Susanna Caviglia, 81-117. Turnhout: Brepols, 2017.
- "Staging Retreat: Designs for Bathing in 18th-Century France." In Interiors and Interiority, ed. Ewa Lajer-Burcharth and Beate Söntgen, 49-72. Berlin: De Gruyter, 2016.
- "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 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
- "Making Coffee at Home in America: Episodes in Cultural History of Design." In Coffee, Tea, and Chocolate: Consuming the World, ed. Yao-Fen You, 100-125. Detroit: Detroit Institute of Arts, 2016.
- "Chocolate Pots and Cups." In The Oxford Companion to Sugar and Sweets, ed. Darra Goldstein, 154-56. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2015.
- "Scents and Sensibilities." In 30 Objects, 30 Insights: Gardiner Museum, ed. Rachel Gotlieb and Karine Tsoumis, 104-11. London: Black Dog Publishing, 2014.
- "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.
RECENT CONFERENCE PAPERS AND INVITED LECTURES
- National Gallery of Australia, Canberra (2017)
- University of Chicago (2015)
- University of Georgia, Athens (2013)
- Leuphana Universität Lüneburg (conference held in Berlin, 2012)
- Getty Research Institute, Los Angeles (2011)
- Bard Graduate Center: Decorative Arts, Design, Material Culture, New York (2011)
- Harvard University (2010)
- University of California, San Diego (2009)
- University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill (2009)
- Henry Moore Institute, Leeds (2008)
- University of Hamburg, Germany (2007)
WORK IN PROGRESS
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The Hôtel de Soubise: Decoration and Dynasty in a Rococo Interior (book project).
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“Lost in Decoration: Design, Visuality, and the Power of the Glance in the 18th-Century Interior” (article project).