Mimi Hellman

Professor AND ASSOCIATE 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

Spring 2024 Office Hours:
Wednesdays, 4:00 pm-5:30 pm
Thursdays, 4:00 pm-5:30 pm
And, 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 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

• "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

• The Hôtel de Soubise: Decoration and Dynasty in a Rococo Interior (book project).

• “Lost in Decoration: Design, Visuality, and the Power of the Glance in the 18th-Century Interior” (article project).