Leo Costello

Leo Costello is an Associate Professor of Art History at Rice University, where he chairs the Department of Art History and co-directs the Program in Museum and Cultural Heritage. His expertise spans 18th-19th century European art with a focus on British art and social theory, supported by two decades of teaching and curatorial experience.

• Ph.D., Bryn Mawr College
• M.A., American University
• B.A., Skidmore College

Dr. Costello's research interrogates the intersections of art, politics, and identity in British Romanticism, particularly through J.M.W. Turner's works. His scholarship extends to ecocritical approaches in art history, modernist aesthetics, and ethics in visual representation. He has organized major exhibitions like ‘Raymond Mason: To Speak of Everything’ (2023) and contributed to Tate Britain's Turner retrospective.

His publications include the book J.M.W. Turner and the Subject of History (Ashgate, 2012) and forthcoming Early Turner: Seen and Unseen in London, 1795-1819 (Routledge, 2023). Recent articles analyze Turner's Thames Estuary series, the sublime, and political dimensions of art.

• 2013 GSA Faculty Teaching and Mentoring Award
• 2008 Individual Faculty Fellowship, Humanities Research Center
• 2008 Phi Beta Kappa Teaching Award Finalist

As department chair, Dr. Costello shapes academic discourse while maintaining active engagement in curatorial projects and interdisciplinary research bridging art history with philosophy, environmental studies, and colonial history.