Mimi Hellman teaches and writes about visual and material culture in Europe between the seventeenth and nineteenth centuries. Her special interests include interior design in eighteenth-century France and Victorian Britain, the cultural politics of rococo art, and the role of images and objects in cultural history of coffee, tea, and chocolate. She received the B.A and M.A. from Smith College and the Ph.D. from Princeton University and has been the recipient of grants from the Samuel H. Kress Foundation, the Center for Advanced Study in the Visual Arts, and the National Endowment for the Humanities. Her publications include articles on furniture and social practice in eighteenth-century France, interdisciplinarity in eighteenth-century studies, and the history of domesticity. She is currently writing a book on the design and social history of the hôtel de Soubise, an aristocratic residence in eighteenth-century Paris.

	Hotel de Soubise. Interior. Salon de la Princesse. Paris, 1735-9 Designed by Germain Boffrand. Paintings by Charles-Joseph Natoire