University of Oxford
Faculty of History
Search

Professor Geraldine A. Johnson

Professor Geraldine A. Johnson

Associate Professor of the History of Art; Fellow of Christ Church

Christ Church

01865 286 830geraldine.johnson@hoa.ox.ac.uk Much of my research has focused on the history of sculpture from the late Medieval period to the present day, as well as on the visual arts more generally in Early Modern Europe. I have also worked on the history of photography, the historiography of Art History, and women and the visual arts. I have published on subjects ranging from the sculpture of Donatello and Rubens's female patrons, to art historians' reliance on photography and the contemporary sculptor Richard Serra.

 

Research Interests

  • Early Modern Art and Culture
  • History of Sculpture: Late Medieval to Contemporary
  • Women and the Visual Arts
  • History of Photography
  • Historiography of Art History

I am the co-editor of a prize-winning volume entitled Picturing Women in Renaissance and Baroque Italy (Cambridge University Press, 1997) and the editor of Sculpture and Photography: Envisioning the Third Dimension (Cambridge University Press, 1998). In 2005, Oxford University Press published my book Renaissance Art: A Very Short Introduction, which has been translated into Chinese, Greek, Romanian, Turkish, Thai and Vietnamese. I recently published a co-edited volume, Photo Archives and the Place of Photography (Routledge 2025) and I have edited a field-defining collection of 30 essays entitled Art History Now: Theories, Methods, Approaches (Routledge, forthcoming 2025). I am currently completing a monograph entitled Photography and Sculpture, which will be published by Reaktion Books, and I am also working on a second monograph, The Sound of Marble: The Materiality and Immateriality of Italian Renaissance Art. With Dr Leah Clark, I am co-curating a major exhibition at the Ashmolean Museum entitled Sensory Worlds of the Global Renaissance, which will open in 2027.

Publications

Art History Now
Featured Publication

Art History Now: Objects, Concepts, Approaches

(Routledge, 2025)

This volume presents definitive essays by internationally renowned experts and innovative younger scholars on the wide range of approaches used by art historians past and present to analyze images, objects, buildings, and performances.

It provides critical considerations of key methodologies, from formalism and iconography to social history and psychoanalytic approaches. It foregrounds fundamental concepts, from the artist, the beholder, and the frame to museums, canons, and periodization. At the same time, it broadens art itself as a category by considering photographs, digital media, performance, architecture, and visual culture more generally.

DPhil Students

I would like to hear from potential DPhil students regarding History of Art and Visual/Material Culture.

Hannah "Hannele" Hellerstedt

DPhil Student

Anya Perse

DPhil Student

Eunice Yu

DPhil Student

In the Media

  • 2024 - Renaissance festivities and on Leonardo da Vinci - New York Times
  • 2024 - Cited in article on new and historic royal portraiture - Daily Mail
  • 2018 - Cited in article on sculpture newly-attributed to Michelangelo.  - CNN
  • 2015, 2016, 2017 - Round-up of Sunday Papers: Discussed current education topics - BBC Radio Oxford
  • 2015-16 - Medici: Masters of Florence, series 2  - Academic consultant for 8-part television series in production with Big Light and Lux Vide, distributed by Netflix on five continents.
  • 2015 - Discussed depicting famous women on banknotes - Woman’s Hour, BBC Radio 4