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.