ABOUT

I am a historian of art and visual culture specializing in works from the mid-nineteenth century to the present day. My research examines artistic engagements with gender, plants, and the environment to illuminate their historical significance while also considering how the past inflects the present. Since 2025, I have been the Reviews Co-Editor for the new interdisciplinary journal Plant Perspectives, published by the White Horse Press, UK. And I am the recipient of a 2026 Winter Perennial Residency at the Oak Spring Garden Foundation in Upperville, Virginia.

I believe in the power of art as a tool for healing and in art's capacity to help people share their experiences and nurture belonging and community. My curatorial work often involves collaborating with colleagues, students, or community members to empower everyone to co-create exhibition content together. My background in museums includes diverse positions at the University of Vermont’s Fleming Museum of Art, the University of Kansas’s Spencer Museum of Art, and the Art Institute of Chicago, among others.

I earned my PhD in art history from the University of Kansas while acquiring digital humanities skills. My dissertation studied later nineteenth-century paintings of Parisian women, ornamental plants, and urban spaces to clarify how their imagery engaged with a sudden blossoming of interest in flower markets and shops, horticulture, domestic gardening, and their gendered associations, set against the backdrop of European colonialism and botanical trade. As part of this research, I used digital mapping and historical geocoding to create a new framework for interpreting the paintings: one visualizing the intersections of female and plant mobility at sites of labor and leisure and at liminal zones in Parisian commercial networks. I presented this research at the International Summer Academy “Labour and Leisure in Global History,” convened by re:work with the Humboldt University Berlin and University of Nairobi, in Mombasa and Nairobi, Kenya.

After earning my doctoral degree, I held an academic year fellowship in plant humanities at Dumbarton Oaks, a Harvard University research institute, located in Washington, DC, contributing content to the Plant Humanities Lab and the JSTOR Daily Plant of the Month series.

Most recently, I wrote about women artists and gender inequities in the art world for a new book introducing the Christian Levett Collection at FAMM (Female Artists of the Mougins Museum) (2025). I also co-edited and contributed essays to the post-exhibition catalogue Perspectives on a Legacy Collection: Sallie Casey Thayer’s Gift to the University of Kansas (2020).