Kimberly Smith’s research focuses on 20th c. German and Austrian art, and the intellectual history of art history. At Southwestern, Smith teaches courses on art in Europe and the United States from the 18th century to the present, feminism and art history, and theory and methods of art history.

Universities and Degrees

Ph.D., History of Art, Yale University

M.A. and M.Phil., History of Art, Yale University 

B.A., Art History, Duke University

Smith’s first book, entitled Between Ruin and Renewal: Egon Schiele’s Landscapes (Yale University Press, 2004) analyzes the ways in which Schiele’s Expressionist landscapes register and respond to the alienating effects of modernity, the problematic nature of selfhood, the eroding coherence of the imperial state, and other anxieties of his era, yet simultaneously offer solutions to the very crises his images present. 

Smith is also the editor of The Expressionist Turn in Art History: A Critical Anthology (Ashgate, 2014). This book was published in Ashgate’s “Studies in Art Historiography” series, and offers a cross-section of noteworthy art history texts written in German between 1912 and 1933 which have been described as expressionist. Translated here for the first time, these primary texts are accompanied by critical commentaries by an international group of scholars which, along with Smith’s historigraphic introduction, offer insight into the development of art history in the context of early twentieth-century modern art and culture.

In addition, Smith has published essays on central European visual culture in the journals Art History, Austrian History Yearbook, and elsewhere, on topics such as Egon Schiele’s painting, avant-garde Viennese fashion and Jewish identity, the art historian Alois Riegl’s theoretical relationship to modern art, and Germany’s imperialist imagination as manifested in Expressionist postcards.

Books

The Expressionist Turn in Art History: A Critical Anthology, edited and with an introduction by Kimberly A. Smith. Burlington, VT: Ashgate Publishing, 2014.

Between Ruin and Renewal: Egon Schiele’s Landscapes. New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 2004.

Articles and Book Chapters

“Austria’s Dilemma: Wartime Politics and Propaganda in Schiele’s Landscapes.” In Egon Schiele: Living Landscapes, ed. Christian Bauer, 74-93. Munich, London, New York: Prestel Verlag, 2024. Published in conjunction with an exhibition of the same name at the Neue Galerie: Museum for German and Austrian Art, New York, October 17, 2024 - January 13, 2025.

“The French Connection,” “Else Lasker-Schüler and Franz Marc’s Mail Art,” “Reiterinnen: Women Riders,” and “Fritz Burger: The Art Historical Connection.” In Expressionists: Kandinsky, Münter and the Blue Rider, ed. Natalia Sidlina, 86-91, 94-95. London: Tate Publishing, 2024. Published in conjunction with an exhibition of the same name at the Tate Modern, London, April 25 - October 20, 2024.

“Maria Marc’s Letters.” In Marianne Werefkin and the Women Artists in Her Circle, eds. Malycheva Tanja and Isabel Wünsche, 154-64. Leiden and Boston: Brill, 2017.

“Colonial Utopia: Cultural Ambivalence in Franz Marc and Else Lasker-Schüler’s Postcards.” In Postcards: Ephemeral Histories of Modernity, eds. Jordana Mendelson and David Prochaska, 70-84. University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 2010.

“Real Style: Riegl and Early 20th-Century European Art.” In “Theory and Methodology,” guest editor Christopher Long. Special issue, Centropa: Journal of Central European Art and Architecture 5, no. 1 (January 2005): 16-25.
• Republished in The Journal for Art Historiography, no. 5 (December 2011).

“Egon Schieles Landschaften: Von der Baumlandschaft bis zur Stadtansicht.” [“Egon Schiele’s Landscapes: From Treescapes to Urban Views.”] In Egon Schiele, exhibition catalogue, edited by Rudy Chiappini, 79-105. Lugano: Museo d’Arte Moderna, 2003.

“The Tactics of Fashion: Jewish Women in Fin-de-Siècle Vienna.” Aurora: the Journal of the History of Art 4 (2003): 135-154.

“Egon Schiele’s Landscapes and the Allure of the Natural Nation.” Austrian History Yearbook 33 (2002): 163-205.

“Egon Schiele’s Treescapes. Work and World: Unframing the Autonomous Landscape.” Art History 23, no. 2 (June 2000): 233-261.

Book Reviews

Review of The Subject in Art: Portraiture and the Birth of the Modern, by Catherine M. Soussloff. Centropa: Journal of Central European Art and Architecture 8, n. 3 (2008): 294-297.

Review of Against Fashion: Clothing As Art, 1850-1930, by Radu Stern. Aurora: the Journal of the History of Art 5 (November 2004): 154-160.

Review of The Order of Ornament, the Structure of Style: Theoretical Foundations of Modern Art and Architecture, by Debra Schafter. Centropa: Journal of Central European Art and Architecture 4, n. 2 (May 2004): 179-181.

Review of Borders in Art: Revisiting Kunstgeographie, ed. Katarzyna Murawska-Muthesius. Centropa: Journal of Central European Art and Architecture 4, n. 1 (January 2004): 90-91.

Interviews

Interview with Kimberly A. Smith, by Carla Carmona Escalera, in Egon Schiele Jahrbuch 1 (December 2011): 256-259.

Translations

Translation of excerpts from Fritz Novotny’s Cézanne und das Ende der wissenschaftlichen Perspektive (1938). In The Vienna School Reader: Politics and Art Historical Method in the 1930s, edited by Christopher S. Wood, 379-433. New York: Zone Books, 2000.

Conference Presentations and Invited Talks

2023 “Beyond Japonisme: Charlotte Berend’s Wartime Watercolors”
Feminist Art History Conference, American University (held virtually), October 2023

2020 “Modeling and Modernism: Charlotte Berend-Corinth’s Work”
SECAC (Southeastern College Art Conference), hosted virtually by
Virginia Commonwealth University School of the Arts, December 2020

2018 “Invisible Labor: German Modernist Art and Women’s Work”
Feminist Art History Conference, American University
Washington, D.C., September 2018

2016 “Becoming Human/Becoming Animal: Franz Marc and the Evolution of Perception”
German Studies Association Annual Conference, San Diego, CA, October 2016

2014 “Maria Marc’s Letters”
Marianne Werefkin and the Cosmopolitan Women Artists in her Circle
Paula Modersohn-Becker Museum; Humanities Research Center at Jacobs University
Bremen, Germany, September 2014

2014 “Learning to See: Franz Marc and Robert Delaunay” (invited)
Alessandra Comini Lecture Series, Department of Art History
Southern Methodist University, Dallas, TX, April 2014

2013 “Primitivism and Perception in the Work of Franz Marc” (invited)
German Expressionism Symposium
University of Oregon, Eugene, OR, May 2013

2012 “Franz Marc’s Abstractions: How to See Like An Animal” (invited)
“The Human Beast” exhibition symposium
San Diego Museum of Art, San Diego, California, September 2012

2011 “Ekphrasis, Empathy and the Critical Imagination in Art History”
German Studies Association Annual Conference, Louisville, Kentucky, September 2011

2010 “Vision and Primitivism in Franz Marc’s Slow Paintings”
Southeastern College Art Conference / Mid-America College Art Association Joint Conference, Richmond, Virginia, October 2010

2010 “Constructing Thebes: Text and Image in Franz Marc’s Postcards for Else Lasker-Schüler”
Annual Comparative Literature Conference, University of California, Long Beach, March 2010

2008 “The Postcard Friendship of Franz Marc and Else Lasker-Schüler”
German Studies Association Annual Conference, St. Paul, Minnesota, October 2008

2007 “Franz Marc’s ‘Authentic’ Animals”
American Culture Association / Popular Culture Association, Boston, Mass., April 2007

2006 “Expressionist Art History and the Return of the Repressed”
German Studies Association Annual Conference, Pittsburgh, Penn., September 2006

2004 “Egon Schiele’s Landscapes and the Viennese Culture of Crisis” (invited)
Sotheby’s Institute of Art, New York, NY, May 2004

2003 “Warhol’s Collecting and the Closet: Queer Readings” (invited)
Warhol Symposium, Austin Museum of Art, Austin, TX, October 2003

2003 “Hodler and Historiography”
Modernist Studies Association Annual Conference, Birmingham, U.K., September 2003

2002 “The Rhetoric of Expressionist Art and Art History”
International Association for Word & Image Studies Triennial Conference,
Hamburg, Germany, July 2002

2001 “Renger-Patzsch’s The World is Beautiful as Monadic Allegory”
Southeastern College Art Conference, Columbia, South Carolina, October 2001

2001 “The Meaning of Style: Form as Content”
College Art Association Annual Conference, Chicago, Illinois, February 2001

2000 “Riegl, Expressionism, and the Recovery of Painting”
German Studies Association Annual Conference, Houston, Texas, October 2000

1999 “Imagining Austria: Egon Schiele’s Landscapes and the Promise of National Community”
Bordering Europe Conference, Kent Institute for Advanced Studies in the Humanities
University of Kent, Canterbury, England, September 1999

1999 “The Tactics of Fashion: Jewish Women in Fin-de-Siècle Vienna”
Women Art Patrons and Collectors: Past and Present, New York, NY, March 1999

1998 “The Expressionist Critique of Modernity” (invited)
Whitney Humanities Center, Yale University, New Haven, CT, January 1998

1997 “Medievalism in the Landscapes of Egon Schiele”
College Art Association Annual Conference, New York, NY, February 1997

1996 “Loss and Renewal in the Landscapes of Egon Schiele”
International Conference on Despair and Desire, Atlanta, GA, October 1996

1994 The FRAME: Historical and Theoretical Considerations
Yale University, New Haven, CT, November 1994
Paper: “Egon Schiele’s Trees” (also conference co-organizer)