Michael Orr

PROFESSOR OF ART HISTORY

CONTACT INFORMATION

Office: Filene Building - TBD
Telephone: TBD
Email: morr@skidmore.edu

2023-2024:
On Sabbatical for the 2023-2024 academic year.

EDUCATION

• Ph.D., History of Art, Cornell University
• M.A., History of Art, Cornell University
• B.A. (Hons), History of Art, University College London 

BRIEF BIOGRAPHY

Michael Orris a Professor of Art History at Skidmore College. He joined Skidmore in 2018 and served as Skidmore’s Dean of the Faculty and Vice President for Academic Affairs until May 2023. A scholar of late medieval English illuminated manuscripts, he has co-authored three volumes in the Harvey Miller series An Index of Images in English Manuscripts from the Time of Chaucer to Henry VIII and completed book chapters and articles on the production and decoration of illuminated books in late medieval England. He has also served as an exhibition consultant for the Department of Manuscripts at the J. Paul Getty Museum in Los Angeles. His teaching interests include medieval and Renaissance European art, and East Asian art. Before coming to Skidmore, Michael served as the Krebs Provost and Dean of the Faculty at Lake Forest College from 2011 until 2018. Prior to that, he was a faculty member for more than 20 years at Lawrence University, where he served as a professor of art history, chair of the Art and Art History Department, and Special Assistant to the President for Strategic and Financial Planning.

BOOKS

Co-author of the following volumes of An Index of Images in English Manuscripts from the Time of Chaucer to Henry VIII, c. 1380 – c. 1509. Series editor: Kathleen L. Scott (Turnhout: Harvey Miller/Brepols):

• New York: Columbia University-Union Theological, with Martha W. Driver (Turnhout: Harvey Miller/Brepols, 2007)
• The Bodleian Library, Fascicle III: MSS Musaeo-Wood, with Lynda Dennison, Ann Eljenholm Nichols and Kathleen L. Scott (Turnhout: Harvey Miller/Brepols, 2002)
• The Bodleian Library, Fascicle I: MSS Additional-Digby, with Lynda Dennison, Ann Eljenholm Nichols and Kathleen L. Scott (Turnhout: Harvey Miller/Brepols, 2000)

BOOK CHAPTERS AND ARTICLES

• “Decorating and Illustrating the Page,” co-authored with Martha W. Driver, in The Production of Books in England 1350-1530, ed. by Alexandra Gillespie and Daniel Wakelin (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2011), pp. 104-128
• “Hierarchies of Decoration in Early Fifteenth-Century English Books of Hours,” in Tributes to Kathleen L. Scott: Essays on English Medieval Manuscripts, ed. by Marlene Hennessy (Turnhout: Harvey Miller/Brepols, 2009), pp. 171-195
• “The Fitzherbert Hours (Dunedin Public Libraries, Reed MS 5) and the Iconography of St. Anne Teaching the Virgin to Read in Early Fifteenth-Century England,” in Migrations: Medieval Manuscripts in New Zealand Collections, ed. by Stephanie Hollis and Alexandra Barratt (Cambridge: Cambridge Scholars Press, 2008), pp. 216-246
• “Tradition and Innovation in the Cycles of Miniatures Accompanying the Hours of the Virgin in Early 15th-century English Books of Hours,” in Manuscripts in Transition: Recycling Manuscripts, Texts and Images, ed. B. Dekeyzer and J. Van der Stock (Leuven: Peeters, 2005), pp. 263-270
  “Illustration as Preface and Postscript in the Hours of the Virgin of Trinity College Ms. B. 11. 7,” Gesta 34 (1995): 162-176
• “The Development of the Byzantine Solidus,” in Bearers of Meaning. The Ottilia Buerger Collection of Ancient and Byzantine Coins at Lawrence University, ed. Carol L. Lawton (Appleton: Lawrence University Press, 1995), pp. 39-44.
• “The Hours of Elizabeth the Queen: Evidence for collaboration between English illuminators and an artist from the Gold Scrolls Group,” in Flanders in a European Perspective. Manuscript Illumination around 1400 in Flanders and Abroad. Proceedings of the International Colloquium (Leuven: Peeters, 1995), pp. 619-33
• “An Introduction to Medieval Book Hands,” and twelve catalogue entries in Pen, Brush, and Folio: the Art of the Medieval Book, exhibition catalogue (Ithaca, NY: Herbert F. Johnson Museum of Art, 1986)

GRANTS, FELLOWSHIPS, AND AWARDS

• Fellow, American Council on Education (ACE) Fellows Program, 2009-10
• British Academy Conference Travel Grant, 2005
• NEH Focus Grant, “Enhancing Humanities through Faculty Development in Instructional Technology” (Group award), 1996
• NEH Collections Grant, “The Corpus of Illustrations and Other Representations in English Manuscripts, c. 1380-c. 1509” (Co-recipient), 1995-97
• Lawrence University Award for Excellence in Teaching, Freshman Studies Teaching Prize, Young Teacher Award