Carol Armstrong

Carol Armstrong is a Professor of the History of Art at Yale University, appointed in 2007. She holds a Ph.D. from Princeton University (1986) and previously taught at the University of California, Berkeley (tenured 1990), the Graduate Center of CUNY, and Princeton University (1999–2007), where she also directed the Program in the Study of Women and Gender. Her research focuses on 19th-century French painting, photography history, feminist theory, and gender representation in art. She has curated exhibitions at institutions like the J. Paul Getty Museum and organized interdisciplinary conferences such as “Woman/Artist” (2021).

Armstrong’s academic contributions include seminal works like Cézanne’s Gravity (2018), which won the 2019 Robert Motherwell Book Award. She is a frequent contributor to October and Artforum, and her current project, Medium Matrix Materiality, explores feminist perspectives on modern art’s medium-specificity. She teaches courses spanning art criticism’s history, feminist art historiography, and visual culture.

Her advising expertise spans 19th-century European art, French art (17th–20th centuries), women artists, and the intersection of art and science. She is based in Yale’s Loria Room (190 York St, New Haven, CT) and will be on leave during the 2025–2026 academic year.