Dr Melissa L. Gustin
Select CV
EDUCATION
University of York
Doctor of Philosophy in History of Art, viva 16 April, 2018; conferred 28 July, 2018
Eating the Lotus: New Critical Approaches to Neoclassical Sculpture
University of California, Davis
Master of Arts in Art History, September 2011
State University of New York at Buffalo
Bachelor of Arts in Art History, June 2009
EMPLOYMENT
Current
Curator of British Art, National Museums Liverpool, August 2023-present
Former
Lecturer, Art History and Theory, University of Essex
Collection Online Early Career Research Fellow (Mythological Subjects), Watts Gallery–Artists' Village, Compton, October 2021-April 2022
Tutor, History of Art, University of York September 2020 – June 2021
Henry Moore Postdoctoral Research Fellow, September 2018–August 2020, Re-imagining Neoclassicisms
Art Institute of Chicago, Chicago, Illinois
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Exhibition Research Associate, Prints and Drawings, August 2012 – August 2014
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Prints and Drawings Volunteer, January 2012 – July 2012
University of California, Davis, Davis, California
Teaching Assistant and Reader, January 2010 – June 2011
PUBLICATIONS
Peer-Reviewed Articles
2024
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'"Death, like a sculptor": archaeology, materials and text in Harriet Hosmer's Pompeian Sentinel,' Sculpture Journal, Vol 33, No.1, pp. 47-70. https://doi.org/10.3828/sj.2024.33.1.04
2023
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'"What Are Men to Rocks and Mountains?" Mythology and Geology in Chaos by GF Watts (1817-1904),' British Art Journal, Vol XXIV, No. 1, pp. 96-104. https://www.jstor.org/stable/48760503
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"Do 'Sleeping Shepherds' Dream of 3D-Printed Sheep: John Gibson, Oliver Laric, and Digital Neoclassicism", British Art Studies, Iss. 24. https://doi.org/10.17658/issn.2058-5462/issue-24/mgustin
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'"This Lotus Spell is Intenser": Sources and Selections in Emma Stebbins’s The Lotus-Eater,’ Word & Image Vol. 38 Iss. 04 (Feb. 2023) pp. 478-498. https://doi.org/10.1080/02666286.2022.2068310
2022
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'G.F. Watts’ Satan and the Monte Cavallo Horse Tamers,' The Burlington Magazine, Vol. 164 (July 2022).
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'The Funerary Forms and Cemetery Citations of Harriet Hosmer's Medusa,' Markers, Vol. 38 (2022), pp. 6-42.
2021
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'"Corps a Corps": Martyrs, Models, and Myths in Harriet Hosmer's Beatrice Cenci,' Art History (Sept. 2021) https://doi.org/10.1111/1467-8365.12589
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'"Two Styles More Opposed": Harriet Hosmer's Classicisms between Winckelmann and Bernini,' Journal of Latin and Cosmopolitan European Literatures, Winckelmann’s Victims special edition (Dec. 2021) https://jolcel.ugent.be/issue/view/2696/1246
2019
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'Canova’s copper head of Medusa,' The Burlington Magazine vol. 161, no. 1400, November 2019, pp. 916–23.
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'Culture Capitalism: Emma Stebbins’s Allegories from the Braccio Nuovo,' Nineteenth Century Magazine, vol. 39, no. 2, November 2019, pp. 12–18.
Reviews
2023
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"'Rossettis: Radical Romantics, or, DANTE GABRIEL ROSSETTI and Some Other People I Guess.' Review, The Rossettis, Tate Britain, 6 April – 24 September 2023. Curated by Carol Jacobi and James Finch; organized by Tate Britain with Delaware Art Museum. Journal of Victorian Culture, vcad025, https://doi.org/10.1093/jvcult/vcad025
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'"Ophelia's Bathtub Boogaloo.' Review, Pre-Raphaelite Sisters: edited by Glenda Youde and Robert Wilkes & Muse by Ruth Millington.' Journal of Victorian Culture, Journal of Victorian Culture, vcad026, https://doi.org/10.1093/jvcult/vcad026.
2022
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'Two Exhibitions in Rome.' The Classical Review, vol. 72, no. 1, March 2022. First view available https://doi.org/10.1017/S0009840X2100367X
2020
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'Jérôme Neutres, In the Volcano: Cai Guo-Qiang and Pompeii,' Sculpture Journal, 2020, vol. 29, no. 2 (2020) pp. 243–6. https://doi.org/10.3828/sj.2020.29.2.8
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'"The Victorian Gayze from Winckelmann to Michael Field." Review, Dustin Friedman, Before Queer Theory: Victorian Aestheticism and the Self,' Journal of Victorian Culture, Volume 25, Issue 3, July 2020, pp. 465–467. https://doi.org/10.1093/jvcult/vcaa014
2019
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Review: 'R. Warren, Art Nouveau and the Classical Tradition,' Journal of Hellenic Studies, vol. 139, November 2019, pp. 293–294.
Essays and Catalogues
2020
2018
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‘Pomegranates in Autumn: Ruminations on Rossetti’s Final Proserpine,’ Pre-Raphaelite Society Review, May 2018. Postgraduate Essay Prize, Second Place.
2013
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Suzanne Folds McCullagh, ed., with the assistance of Melissa L. Gustin. Dreams and Echoes: Drawings and Sculpture from the David and Celia Hilliard Collection, exh. cat. Yale University Press, 2013
CONFERENCES AND SYMPOSIA
Convened
2022
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Session, 'Non-Finito: New Studies on G F Watts's Sculpture,' British Association for Victorian Studies Annual Conference, University of Birmingham, September 1-3 2022
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Session, ‘Old is New: Classical Reception and Temporalities in Art 1800-Today,’ Association for Art History Annual Conference 2022, with Nicole Cochrane, April 6-8 2022
2021
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Breaking Boundaries: Nineteenth-Century Visual Culture in the Woke Age, digital symposium, British Association for Victorian Studies and Edge Hill, March 12, 2021
2020
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Black Lives Matter: Race, Imperialism, and Victorian Studies, digital symposium, July 21, 2020
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Cancelled, COVID-19 ‘Cyclical Classical: Rebirths, Renaissances, and Reinventions of Antiquity,’ Session at Association for Art History Annual Conference, Newcastle and Northumbria Universities, April 1–3, 2020
2019
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ORDER‽ Art, Classicism, and Discourse from 1755 to Today, Henry Moore Institute and Leeds Art Gallery, November 15–16, 2019
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New Sculptors, Old Masters: The Victorian Renaissance of Italian Sculpture, Henry Moore Institute and Leeds Art Gallery, March 8, 2019, with Charlotte Drew
2016
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The Leighton Network, University of York, Paul Mellon Centre, and Leighton House Museum, December 9, 2016, with Dr Ciarán Rua O’Neill and Dr Madeline Boden
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Past Time: Art, Anachronism, and Anachronisticism, University of York, November 18–20, 2016, with Ciarán Rua O’Neill and Meg Boulton. Keynote speakers, Professor Christopher Wood (NYU) and Dr Lambros Malafouris (Oxford)
Select Papers Given
2024
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“The Fragments that Remain’: Pheidias, Greece, and Temporality in G F Watts’s Classical Receptions,” INCSA The Nineteenth Century Today: Interdisciplinary, International, Intertemporal, Durham University, July 10-12, 2024.
2023
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“Secular Conversazione: G F Watts, Titian, and The Court of Death,” British Association for Victorian Studies Annual Conference, University of Surrey, August 30- Sept 2 2023.
2022
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“England’s Michelangelo? G F Watts’s Female Sculptures and the Reproduction of the Renaissance,” Non-Finito: New Studies in G F Watts's Sculpture, British Association for Victorian Studies Annual Conference, University of Birmingham, September 1-3 2022.
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“Writing Watts’s Absent Art: Text and the House of Life,” Image/Text: What/Next? University of York, June 24, 2022.
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“England’s Michelangelo? G F Watts’s Female Sculptures and the Reproduction of the Renaissance,” Re-Considering British Art History: The ECRN and DRN Summer Symposium, Paul Mellon Centre for British Art, London, June 10, 2022.
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‘“A Nauseating Lissomness”: Medusa, Rome, and the Snake,’ De Morgan Foundation online talk, January 14, 2022
2021
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(Invited) ‘What Shall We Do with a Mermaid Fountain? Harriet Hosmer’s Mermaid’s Cradle Beyond the Binary,’ University of Strathclyde School of Humanities, November 24, 2021
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‘Victory Shall Be Mine: the Form, Fate, and Fortune of the Vittoria di Fossombrone and Napoleon as Mars Peacemaker,’ Imperial Material: Napoleon’s Legacy in Culture, Art, and Heritage, Sept 3, 2021
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The Emperor Has No Clothes: Antonio Canova's Napoleon as Mars the Peacemaker and the Failure of Memorialisation,' Leeds Art Fund Talk, March 10, 2021
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‘The Bones of a Story: Animating Absent Remains in The Last Days of Pompeii,’ Southampton Centre for Nineteenth Century Research, February 17, 2021
2020
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‘Sporegasbord: Jean-Léon Gérôme’s Tanagra and Mushroom Temporalities,’ New Directions in Eighteenth- and Nineteenth-Century Art digital seminar series, July 27, 2020
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‘“Can a man like you know peace?” Classical Allusion in John Wick Chapter 2,’ College Art Association Annual Conference, Chicago, February 12–16, 2020
2019
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‘American Psychopomp: Archaeology, Fake News, and the Pompeian Sentinel,’ SPAH Seminar Series, University of Essex, October 24, 2019
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‘Neo-PLAssicism: Two Sleeping Shepherds in Three Dimensions,’ Association for Art History Conference, University of Brighton, April 4–6, 2019
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‘Beatrice Cecilia: Stefano Maderno, Harriet Hosmer, and the Two-Body Problem,’ New Sculptors, Old Masters, Henry Moore Institute and Leeds Art Gallery, March 8, 2019
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‘“She’s a Maneater, Ooo”: Burne-Jones’s The Depths of the Sea and Contemporary Culture,’ Queer Conversations, The Courtauld Institute of Art, March 1, 2019
2018
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‘American Psychopomp: Harriet Hosmer's Pompeian Sentinel and Problems with Plaster,’ Classical Material Culture in the Nineteenth Century, Birkbeck, University of London, November 23, 2018
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‘Bogs and Pools: Bernini, Paragone, and the (anti?) Classical,’ RELICS Winckelmann’s Victims: The Classics: Norms, Exclusions and Prejudices, University of Ghent September 20–22, 2018
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‘STOP! It’s Lizard Time,’ BAVS 2018: Victorian Pattern, University of Exeter, August 29–31, 2018
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‘Mossy Grottoes: Harriet Hosmer’s Lesbian Fountains,’ Association For Art History Conference, Courtauld Institute of Art & King’s College London, April 7, 2018
2017
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‘Fifty Shades of Gay: Harriet Hosmer’s Early Sadistic Eroticisms and the Classical Female Nude,’ BAVS 2017: Victorians Unbound, Bishop Grosseteste University, August 22–24, 2017.
BLOG POSTS
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“Sporegasblog,” New Directions in Eighteenth- and Nineteenth-Century Art Blog
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Or, How I Learned to Love Contemporary Art as a Victorianist,” April 15, 2018, The Victorianist: BAVS Postgraduates Blog
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“Fishted Sisters: a re-reading of Evelyn's mermaid painting,” March 23, 2019, De Morgan Foundation Blog
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“The Sausage Machine of Embourgeoisement,” March 4, 2019, The Victorianist: BAVS Postgraduates Blog
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“BAVS Conference 2018: Where were the art historians?” September 10, 2018, The Victorianist: BAVS Postgraduate Blog
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“Make New Things Familiar: Presentation Pros and Cons,” September 11, 2017, The Victorianist: BAVS Postgraduate Blog
Melissa L. Gustin