Content editors and contributors

Content Editors

Sarah Barack is Contributing Editor for conservation and material technology. Sarah studied archaeology at Brown University. She received her Masters in Art History and Advanced Certificate in Conservation from the Conservation Center, Institute of Fine Arts at New York University. She also holds an MBA from Columbia University. Sarah completed a Mellon Fellowship at The Metropolitan Museum of Art focused on a technical study of 16th Century glass-working techniques and later joined the museum’s conservation staff. She also completed a Getty Postgraduate fellowship at the Oriental Institute Museum at the University of Chicago. She is co-chair for the K-12 Outreach Committee for the American Institute for Conservation.

Dr. Jeffrey A. Becker is Contributing Editor for Ancient Roman and Etruscan art. His research is focused on Italo-Roman architecture and urbanism, but is interested in urbanism across the Mediterranean basin, as a well as in building techniques, city planning, Roman villas, and archaeological theory. Becker was trained in Classics at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill (M.A., Ph.D.) and has extensive experience as a classroom instructor and as an excavator, having worked for a number of years in and around Rome.

Dr. Amy Calvert is the Contributing Editor for Ancient Egyptian art. Amy holds a Ph.D. from the Institute of Fine Arts at New York University and has been involved in several excavations in Italy, Egypt, and the U.S. She has acted as registrar in the field for the Osiris Temple Project with the Yale-University of Pennsylvania-New York University Expedition to Abydos and has worked at The British Museum and the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston.

Dr. Esperança Camara is Contributing Editor for Mannerist and Baroque art. She received her Ph.D. from Johns Hopkins University. Her research focuses on Italian devotional art of the post-Tridentine period (1560-1640). In 2006 she received the Excellence in Teaching and Campus Leadership Award at the University of Saint Francis in Fort Wayne, Indiana where she is currently Associate Professor of Art History and Director of the MA in Studio Art Program.

Dr. Kristen Chiem is Contributing Editor for the art of China and Korea. She earned her M.A. from Harvard University and her Ph.D. from the University of California, Los Angeles. Her research concentrates on late imperial Chinese painting. She is currently Associate Professor of Art at Pepperdine University.

Dr. Rebecca Jeffrey Easby is Contributing Editor for 19th Century Art and an Associate Professor of Art History and Chair of the Fine Arts Program at Trinity Washington University in Washington, D.C. Her research can be found in publications such as The Burlington Magazine and History and Community: Essays in Victorian Medievalism (Garland Press). She received her Ph.D. from the Courtauld Institute of Art, University of London.

Beth Edelstein is Contributing Editor for conservation and material technology. Beth is currently Conservator of Objects at the Cleveland Museum of Art. Previously, she was an Associate Conservator at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, focusing on the Arts of Africa, Oceania and the Americas. Beth earned her M.A. from the Conservation Center, Institute of Fine Arts at New York University, and was an Andrew W. Mellon Fellow at the Cloisters, studying Spanish polychrome tomb sculpture. Beth is co-chair with Sarah Barack of the K-12 Outreach Committee for the American Institute for Conservation.

Dr. Sally Hickson is Contributing Editor for Renaissance art in Northern Italy and Associate Professor of Renaissance Art History at the University of Guelph. She has received the H.P. Krauss Fellowship in early books and manuscripts at the Beinecke Library at Yale University (2009), and the Natalie Zemon Davis Award from the Journal Renaissance and Reformation (2010). She is the author of Women, Art and Architectural Patronage in Renaissance Mantua: Matrons, Mystics and Monasteries (Ashgate 2012), and the co-editor of Inganno—The Art of Deception (Ashgate, 2012).

Dr. Ellen Hurst is Contributing Editor for Byzantine art. Ellen earned her PhD at the Graduate Center, CUNY. Her research addresses cultural interaction in the early modern world, with a focus on the exchange between northern Italy and Muscovy in the sixteenth century. She has taught art history in the Midwest and on the East Coast, and currently works as a consulting writer, editor, and researcher for several major arts organizations, including the Metropolitan Museum of Art and the US State Department’s Art in Embassies Program.

Dr. Maya Jiménez is Contributing Editor for Twentieth-Century Latin American Art. She received her Ph.D. from the Graduate Center, CUNY, where she focused on the transatlantic dialogues between Latin American and European modern art. She is currently a lecturer at the Museum of Modern Art and Assistant Professor at Kingsborough Community College, CUNY.

Dr. Lauren G. Kilroy-Ewbank is the Contributing Editor for Latin American Colonial and Native American/First Nation art. She received her Ph.D. in Art History from the University of California Los Angeles. In 2013, she received a Mrs. Giles Whiting Foundation Fellowship for Excellence in Teaching at Brooklyn College, CUNY, where she was an Assistant Professor of Art History. She is currently an Associate Professor at Pepperdine University.

Dr. Rex Koontz is Contributing Editor for Pre-Columbian art in Mesoamerica. Rex is an art historian who works in the museum collections and archaeological sites of Mexico. He has written extensively on the ancient history of Mexico, including the recent Lightning Gods and Feathered Serpents: The Public Sculpture of El Tajin (2009, University of Texas Press). He is also the author (with Michael Coe) of Mexico: From the Olmecs to the Aztecs, the standard English introduction to the history of Ancient Mexico. He was recently one of three North Americans asked to contribute to the celebration of Mexico’s Bicentenary at the National Museum of Anthropology and History, Mexico City. He is currently Professor of Art History and Director of the School of Art, University of Houston.

Dr. Billie Lythberg is Contributing Editor for the Art of Oceania. Billie received her PhD in Art History from the University of Auckland (NZ), and completed post-doctoral research at Cambridge University Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology (MAA,UK). She is currently Senior Research Fellow at the University of Auckland Business School and an Affiliated Researcher at MAA. Billie explores Indigenous economies and aesthetics and has collaborated with Māori and Pacific artists, academics and communities towards co-developed research, co-authored publications, co-curated exhibitions, and projects of artistic and economic revitalisation. She has a particular passion for eighteenth-century Māori and Tongan artefacts, and the economic and political objectives their transactions were harnessed to.

Dr. Elizabeth Macaulay-Lewis is Contributing Editor for the Arts of the Islamic World. She is an archaeologist and architectural historian. She is currently Visiting Assistant Professor at the Graduate Center at CUNY and serves on the governing board of the Archaeological Institute of America. She has a DPhil in Classical Archaeology from Oxford University.

Dr. Joanna Milk Mac Farland is Contributing Editor for Fourteenth- and Fifteenth-Century Tuscan Art. She recently received her Ph.D. in the History of Art from the University of London’s Courtauld Institute of Art, where she attended as a Thomas Lee scholar. Currently, she is working on a book project investigating depictions of visionary experience in early Renaissance Italy.

Dr. Wayne Ngata is an advisor on the art of the Pacific Islands. He is Head of Matauranga Māori (Māori knowledge) at the Museum of New Zealand Te Papa Tongarewa. He is an advocate for reo Māori and mātauranga Māori as platforms for helping Māori to contribute constructively to the advancement of New Zealand society, including the museum sector. His research interests include revitalisation of indigenous language and knowledge as future models of best practice.

Dr. Bonnie J. Noble is Contributing Editor for the Northern Renaissance. She is Associate Professor of Art History at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte. She received her Ph.D. in art history from Northwestern University, her MA in art history from the University of Pennsylvania. Her specialization is the art of the Northern Renaissance, particularly sixteenth-century German painting.

Dr. Melody Rod-ari is Contributing Editor for Southeast Asian art. She earned her M.A. from Boston University and her Ph.D. from the University of California, Los Angeles. Her research examines modern and contemporary Thai Buddhist visual culture. She is currently Assistant Curator of Asian art at the Norton Simon Museum and Editor for the American Council for Southern Asian Art. Beginning in August she will join the faculty of art history at Loyola Marymount University.

Dr. Elizabeth Rodini (Ph.D. University of Chicago) is contributing editor for Museum Studies. She founded the Program in Museums and Society at Johns Hopkins University and served for ten years as its Director and as Teaching Professor in the History of Art. She teaches and writes about museum and collection history, heritage landscapes, and the politics of culture. Dr. Rodini’s art historical work centers on cross-cultural encounters in the early modern period, focusing on matters of object mobility, recontextualization, and reuse. Her current book project focuses on Gentile Bellini’s portrait of the Ottoman Sultan Mehmet II, using it as a lens to examine questions of authenticity, verisimilitude, ownership, cross-cultural exchange, and political identity in a global context.

Dr. Nancy Ross is Contributing Editor for Medieval Art. She received her Ph.D. in the History of Art from Cambridge University in 2007. She specializes in medieval illuminated manuscripts and teaches art history at Dixie State College of Utah.

Dr. Sarahh Scher is a Contributing Editor for Pre-Columbian South American Art. She received her Ph.D. in art history from Emory University and an M.F.A. in printmaking from New Mexico State University. Her research focuses on issues surrounding the representation of gender, identity, and costume in the Andean area. She teaches part-time at Salem State University.

Dr. Cristin McKnight Sethi is Contributing Editor for the art of South Asia. Cristin earned her M.A. from the University of Texas at Austin and her Ph.D. from the University of California, Berkeley. Her research examines South Asian art of the early modern to contemporary periods with a particular focus on the production and circulation of textiles and craft. She has held curatorial and research positions at a number of museums including the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, the Philadelphia Museum of Art, and the Museum of International Folk Art in Santa Fe, New Mexico. She is currently Assistant Professor of Art History at the George Washington University.

Dr. Hannah Lubman Sigur holds a Ph.D. from the Institute of Fine Arts, New York University. Since 2003 she has taught at several Bay Area universities. From an initial emphasis on the traditional arts of Japan, her courses and interests now encompass a spectrum—across the arts of traditional and modern Asia to the material culture of internationalism and cross-cultural exchange particularly in the development of modernism, from contemporary craft to modern floral design. Her 2008 book, The Influence of Japanese Art on Design examines Japonisme, Arts & Crafts, Art Nouveau, and early Contemporary design across a range of media. Her deepest interests lie in the architecture of the world’s fairs from 1867 – 1915, particularly with respect to Japanese and American national identity.

Dr. Allison Young is Contributing Editor for Global Modern and Contemporary Art. She is currently Assistant Professor for Contemporary Art History at Louisiana State University. A specialist in postcolonial and contemporary art of the Global South, Allison received her Ph.D. in Art History in 2017 from the Institute of Fine Arts, NYU, with her dissertation “Torn and Most Whole: On the Poetics of Difference in the Art of Zarina Bhimji.” She previously held an Andrew W. Mellon Foundation Fellowship in Modern and Contemporary Art at the New Orleans Museum of Art, where her curatorial projects included Carlos Rolón: Outside/In (2018), Changing Course: Reflections on New Orleans Histories (2018), Lina Iris Viktor: A Haven. A Hell. A Dream Deferred (2018), Bodies of Knowledge (2019) and others.

Dr. Bryan J. Zygmont is Contributing Editor for American Art. He earned his Ph.D. from the Department of Art History and Archaeology at the University of Maryland in 2006. He is currently Associate Professor of Art History at Clarke University in Dubuque, Iowa. Zygmont is the author of Portraiture and Politics in New York City, 1790-1825: Gilbert Stuart, John Vanderlyn, John Trumbull, and John Welsey Jarvis, a book he partially wrote while a Visiting Scholar at the National Portrait Gallery. Zygmont was a Fulbright Scholar in 2013.

Contributors