Spotlight on Alumna Katherine Brown: A Passion for Teaching Art History
When Dr. Katherine Brown (Katey) received her BA in Art History at FSU in 1989, her undergraduate experiences and accomplishments laid the groundwork for a rich and varied career as an art historian. At FSU, she started the first Art History Student Organization and spent two semesters on the Florence Program, with visits to the Etruscan excavations in Cetamura del Chianti. After an internship at the Peggy Guggenheim Collection in Venice (1990), she went on to complete an MA (1993) and PhD (1998) under the mentorship of Professor Bruce Cole at Indiana University-Bloomington. Her dissertation on Venetian self-portraiture was published by Leo S. Olschki Press in Florence as a volume in their Pocket Studies in the History of Art Series (2000) with a subvention from the Samuel H. Kress Foundation.
Katey Brown with students and her daughter Suzana, in Pompeii in 2015
While completing her graduate work, Brown served as Curator of Education at the Georgia Museum of Art in Athens, Curator of Education at the Joslyn Art Museum in Omaha, and Head of Education for the American Federation of Arts in New York. From 2000 to 2004, her love of Italy, the history of art, and service to students took her to Cortona, Italy, where she was the Art Historian and Program Coordinator for the University of Georgia’s Study Abroad Program. Brown also taught Art History as an adjunct professor at Wesleyan College in Macon, GA; Hunter College (CUNY); and the University of Nebraska-Omaha.
Since 2011, Brown has served as Director of Museum Studies and Assistant Professor of Art History at Walsh University in North Canton, OH, and in 2016 she received tenure and promotion to Associate Professor.
Brown has given conference presentations at the Ohio Museums Association, The Renaissance Society of America, the Medieval Congress at Kalamazoo (MI), and the Medieval and Renaissance Conference at New College in Sarasota (FL). She has led Walsh groups to Rome in 2012 and 2015 and to London in 2014. Her new book, Mary of Mercy in Medieval and Renaissance Italian Art: Devotional Image and Civic Emblem, is forthcoming from Taylor & Francis/Routledge Publishers in the Fall of 2016 with a publication subvention from The Renaissance Society of America and The Samuel H. Kress Foundation.
Katey & Suzana Brown in Venice, Fall 2015
Katey writes,
I still remember everything I learned at Florida State and daily pass it forward to my students. I wish particularly to thank, acknowledge, and remember FSU professors past and present who had a profound influence on my own career as well as on the Art History and international programs at FSU: Victor Carrabino, Nancy DeGrummond, Cynthia Hahn, Robert Neuman, Patricia Rose, Brad Collins, Timothy Verdon, and Lauren Weingarden.