Emily Braun

Distinguished Professor, Hunter College and the Graduate Center; Director of the Art History Program, Deputy Chair of the Department of Art and Art History

Prof. Braun’s research interests are interdisciplinary and focus on the interaction between political ideologies and visual representation. She has written extensively on twentieth century Italian art and Fascist culture, including her book, Mario Sironi and Italian Modernism: Art and Politics under Fascism (Cambridge University Press: 2000). Several of her essays also analyze the construction of gender and otherness in belles-lettres art criticism.  Her essays and reviews have been featured in the Times Literary Supplement, Modernism/modernity, Journal of Contemporary History, Art in America, Art Journal, Arts Magazine and the Short Oxford History of Italy. She is an active curator and has contributed to numerous museum exhibition catalogues in Great Britain, Europe, Canada, Mexico, and the United States. Her awards include a Fellowship from the New York Public Library’s Dorothy and Lewis B. Cullman Center for Scholars and Writers (2002-2003) and a Senior Research Grant from the Getty Foundation (1993). She has twice received the annual Henry Allen Moe Prize from the New York State Historical Association for the best art catalogue: as a contributing author to Northern Light: Realism and Symbolism in Scandinavian Painting (1982) and co-author of Gardens and Ghettos: The Art of Jewish Life in Italy (1990). The Power of Conversation: Jewish Women and their Salons, for which she was the co-curator and co-author, won a National Jewish Book Award for 2005. Her recent research includes, ““Ornament as Evolution: Gustav Klimt and Berta Zuckerkandl,” which documents the influence of Darwin’s theory of evolutionary biology on the art of Gustav Klimt (in Gustav Klimt The Ronald S. Lauder and Serge Sabarsky Collections. (New York: Neue Galerie and Prestel Verlag, 2007).