Research Activities and Interests
My work explores interfaces between physical materials and cognitive processes -- between making and knowing. Although my primary publications have focused upon the history of art and architecture in early modern Europe, my broader research interests include theories of representation in art and science, structures of artistic community, history and theory of collecting, and art-historical methodology. Having trained in studio art, I am very interested in what historical interpretation can learn from contemporary art practice.
My book, Wicked Intelligence: Visual Art and the Science of Experiment in Restoration London, was published by University of Chicago Press in 2013; it won the Historians of British Art award for best book on a pre-1800 topic in 2015 and was a finalist for the College Art Association Charles Rufus Morey Book Award. My second book, Painting with Fire: Sir Joshua Reynolds, Photography, and the Temporally Evolving Chemical Object, was published by Chicago in 2020. I am also an editor of Grey Room.
Collaboration is a key component of my research. Some projects I have co-organized include: The Clever Object, a research project co-sponsored by the Research Forum of the Courtauld Institute of Art and California Institute of Technology. Co-organized with Francesco Lucchini, that project appeared as a special issue of Art History in June 2013 and has since been published as a free-standing volume. Beyond Mimesis and Convention: Representation in Art and Science, a volume I co-edited with Roman Frigg, came out from Springer in 2010. With John Brewer, I convened a symposium at Caltech in June 2010 based upon our co-taught seminar "Artworlds" (responded to here). We also initiated an ongoing collaboration with scholars at the Courtauld Institute of Art entitled Modeling/Modelling.
