Elizabeth Marlowe, Associate Professor of Art and Art History, has been named the Gretchen Hoadley Burke ’81 Endowed Chair in Regional Studies, for one year, beginning July 1, 2017.
Elizabeth Marlowe holds a PhD in Art History from Columbia University. At Colgate she teaches courses on Roman Art and Medieval Art History and on Museum Studies. Her research and publications on classical art offer new readings of key monuments from late antique Rome. Early in her career Liz’s article “Framing the Sun: The Arch of Constantine and the Appropriation of the Roman Cityscape” earned her the College Art Association’s Arthur Kingsley Porter prize for the best article by an emerging scholar in the history of art and architecture, and since then she has published widely in a range of prestigious journals. Her recent work has focused on ancient art historiography’s largely uncritical reliance upon a small canon of archaeologically undocumented artworks. Shaky Ground: Context, Connoisseurship and the History of Roman Art(2013) calls for greater epistemological consciousness in the writing of Roman art history. The book advocates shifting the focus of the field away from long-famous artworks in museum collections (many of which have been heavily restored to live up to modern aesthetic ideals; others may even be forgeries) to more recently-discovered works whose archaeological contexts are better documented. At Colgate Liz was instrumental in creating the new Museum Studies minor, which she directs. Her current teaching and research explore issues central to Museum Studies through a close examination of a range of important museums in New York’s Upstate region.