معرفی
Christina Neilson is a Professor of Art History at Oberlin College in the College of Arts and Sciences. Her research focuses on the relationship between theory and practice, particularly the meaning of materials and techniques in European and Latin American art from the medieval through early modern periods.
Dr. Neilson's educational background includes a BA (Honours) from the University of Sydney (1997), an MA from Johns Hopkins University (2000), and a PhD from Johns Hopkins University (2009). Her academic work centers on Renaissance art, with special emphasis on 15th-century Florence, sculpture, and the materiality of art objects.
Her research explores how materials and making processes carry meaning, particularly in Renaissance workshops. Her acclaimed book, Practice and Theory in the Italian Renaissance Workshop: Verrocchio and the Epistemology of Making Art (Cambridge University Press, 2019), examines how processes of making functioned as systems of knowledge for artists like Andrea del Verrocchio. Her current research includes a second book project on life-size, polychromed wood sculptures with movable parts in religious devotion across Europe and Latin America between the 14th and 17th centuries.
Neilson's publications demonstrate how artists' techniques can be read as theoretical commitments, even in the absence of written treatises. She has made significant contributions to understanding the meaning of wood in sculpture, the concealment and revelation of knowledge in workshops, and the significance of mechanical elements in religious sculptures.
- National Endowment for the Humanities grant
- American Council for Learned Societies fellowship
- Villa I Tatti fellowship (Harvard Center for Italian Renaissance Studies)
- Volkswagen Foundation grant
- Andrew W. Mellon Foundation support
- Furthermore Foundation grant
- American Philosophical Society grant
Dr. Neilson has been actively involved in academic service, including co-organizing the international conference "Cultural Encounters and Shared Spaces in the Renaissance City, 1300-1700" in 2014 and co-curating the exhibition "A Picture of Health: Art and the Mechanisms of Healing" at the Allen Memorial Art Museum in 2016. She regularly teaches courses on European and Latin American art from c. 1300 to c. 1750, including specialized seminars on topics like "Love, Lust, and Desire in Renaissance and Baroque Art" and "Wood, Flesh, Metal, Blood."
Her research has established important connections between artistic practice and theoretical knowledge in the Renaissance workshop, demonstrating how material choices and technical processes were meaningful expressions of artistic thought.
