Martha Ward

Martha Ward’s current research focuses on the arrangement and reception of art in exhibition and museum spaces, particularly in modern France.  Her book, The Art Show, forthcoming from the University of Chicago Press, examines museological practices at the Louvre and other sites in the first half of the 20th century in relation to aesthetic, social, and political developments. She also studies the creation of art in the light of real or imagined destinations, as in Pissarro, Neo-impressionism and the Spaces of the Avant Garde. A course she regularly offers, “Museums and Art,” considers the changing relationship between artistic production and museum- and exhibition-related innovation over the last two and half centuries, content that she is fashioning into a book-length study.  As much as possible, she focuses her teaching upon objects in local collections.  She is the recipient of both the Faculty Award for Excellence in Graduate Teaching and Mentoring and the Quantrell Award for Excellence in Undergraduate Teaching.