About

RESEARCH INTERESTS:

  • Louis XIV
  • French art, 1500-1900
  • The history of collecting
  • Antiquarianism
  • Material culture
  • Cross-cultural exchange in the early-modern period
  • Digital art history and cultural heritage

SELECTED PUBLICATIONS:

Digital:

Choix de Chansons: a digital critical edition. Editors: Christina Clark, Nicholas Cronk, Erin Helyard, Mark Ledbury, Glenn Roe, (Canberra; Oxford; Paris; Sydney: online publication, forthcoming 2020)

Books:

The Versailles Effect: Objects, lives and afterlives of the domaine.Co-edited with Mark Ledbury (Bloomsbury Academic, 2020).

Antiquarianism and the Visual Histories of Louis XIV: Artifacts for a future past. Single author monograph (Ashgate: 2015)

Articles and book chapters:

“American Versailles: from the Gilded Age to Generation Wealth,” in Mark Ledbury and Robert Wellington (eds), The Versailles Effect: objects, lives, and afterlives of the domain (Bloomsbury Academic, 2020).

“Metadata, material culture, and global art history,” in The Routledge Companion to Digital Humanities and Art History (Routledge, 2020).

“Médailles en mouvement: la réception des médailles de Louis XIV à la croisée des cultures,” in Yvan Loskutoff (dir.) Le Médailles de Louis XIV et Leur Livre, trans. Y. Loskutoff, (Mont-Saint-Aignan, PURH, 2016).

“Lines of Sight: Israël Silvestre and the axial symbolism of Louis XIV’s gardens at Versailles,” Studies in the History of Gardens and Designed Landscapes (November, 2016).

“Louis XIV’s Medals Cabinet at Versailles,” The Medal 67 (Autumn, 2015).

“The cartographic origins or Adam-Franz van der Meulen’s Marly Cycle,” in Print Quarterly 28, 2 (June, 2011).

New media:

“If I could go anywhere: Boughton House, ‘the English Versailles’ and its shimmering treasures,” The Conversation (14 August, 2021): https://theconversation.com/if-i-could-go-anywhere-boughton-house-the-english-versailles-and-its-shimmering-treasures-157598

“Friday essay: In defence of beauty in art,” The Conversation (15 March, 2018): https://theconversation.com/friday-essay-in-defence-of-beauty-in-art-89921

“Going for Gold, Trump, Louis XIV, and interior design,” The Conversation (23 January, 2017): https://theconversation.com/going-for-gold-trump-louis-xiv-and-interior-design-71698

Radio Interview: “Versailles and Trump,” Mornings with Genevieve Jacobs, ABC Radio 666 (2 March, 2017): http://www.abc.net.au/radio/canberra/programs/mornings/dr-robert-wellington—versailles-and-trump/8322252

” ‘A poor person’s idea of a rich person:’ Donald Trump’s gaudy taste” Sydney Morning Herald (13 March, 2017): http://www.smh.com.au/comment/a-poor-persons-idea-of-a-rich-person-donald-trumps-gaudy-taste-20170309-guuwbl.html

“Trump’s display of wealth, power falls short,” Canberra Times (13 March, 2017), 17.

Siobhan Heanue, “Donald Trump’s decor inspired by French king Louis XIV and the palace of Versailles,” ABC News (17 March 2017): http://www.abc.net.au/news/2017-03-17/donald-trump-decor-is-inspired-by-french-king-louis-xiv/8364220

FELLOWSHIPS:

Chercheur invité, Centre André Chastel, Paris. January-December, 2018.

Visiting Reasearch fellow, The Getty Research Institute Library, February-March, 2018.

Visualizing Venice Summer School, 5th edition. Digital Visualization Training Workshop 2016: the Ghetto of Venice Mapping and Modelling the Venice Ghetto, June 8-20, 2016. (Travel and accommodation fully funded)

Visiting Scholar, Yale Center for British Art, New Haven, January 2014. Project title: A War of Visual Histories: British appropriations of French triumphal imagery at Marlborough House. (Travel and accommodation fully funded)

The Power Institute Studio Residency, Cité Internationale des Arts, Paris, Oct – Dec 2011. Project title: The Visual Histories of Louis XIV.

SELECTED GRANTS, AWARDS, AND PRIZES:

Australian Research Council Discovery Early Career Researcher Award for Art and Cultural Diplomacy ($413,745), 2019-2022.

Australian Government Endeavour Mobility Grant for Art of the European Courts, 1500-1815 ($25,000), 2018.

Australian Research Council 2018 Discovery Early Career Researcher Award for Multiple Lives: Louis XIV prints, medals and global exchange ($391,574) [recommended by the ARC Council of Experts, but vetoed by education minister, Simon Birmingham].

Australian Council of Art and Design Schools (ACUADS), Innovative Research Award, September 2017.

Australian Research Council Discovery Project for Performing Transdisciplinarity (with Glenn Roe, Erin Helyard, Mark Ledbury, and Nicholas Cronk) ($249,000), November 2016.

ANU, Humanities Research Centre conference funding grant for Enchanted Isles, Fatal Shores: Living Versailles, National Gallery of Australia, March 2017 ($10,000). 2016.

University of Sydney Power Institute conference funding grant for Enchanted Isles, Fatal Shores: Living Versailles, National Gallery of Australia, March 2017 ($10,000). 2016

Australian Government Endeavour Mobility Grant for Art of the European Courts, 1500-1815 ($20,000). 2016.

Australian Academy of the Humanities, Publication Subsidy Scheme Grant ($2,000). 2015.

ANU RSHA Visiting Scholars grant for Digital Approaches in the Study of Early Modern Culture, November 2015 ($10,000). 2015.

University of Sydney Power Institute conference funding grant for Digital Approaches in the Study of Early Modern Culture, November 2015 ($10,000). 2015.

University of Sydney Power Institute conference funding grant for Gallipoli/Gelibolu, May 2015 ($10,000). 2015.

SELECTED PUBLIC LECTURES:

“What’s it worth? European Art at the Persian Court,” The Courtauld Institute of Art, London, November 2018.

“Quand la tête de Louis XIV pendait au cou des autochtones,’ Conférence du GRHAM (Groupe de Recherche en Histoire de l’Art Moderne), INHA, Paris, October 2018.

“Medals of the Sun King,” Bowdoin College Museum of Art, July 2018.

“Tanned by the Sun King: Donald Trump and Louis XIV,” The Metropolitan Museum of Art, April 2018.

“Les médailles architecturales de Louis XIV,” Centre André Chastel, Paris, April 2018.

“Onontio’s Reward: When Louis XIV’s head hung from Native American necks,” University of California, Santa Barbara, March 2018.

“Onontio’s Reward: When Louis XIV’s head hung from Native American necks,” University of Southern California-Huntington Early Modern Studies Institute, February 2018.

“On the Love of Beautiful Things,” The Last Lecture, 2017, Australian National University, November 2017.

“Bernini and the King’s Forehead,” National Gallery of Australia, Canberra, March 2017.

“Antiquarianism and the Visual Histories of Louis XIV,” Staatliche Münzsammlung, Munich, September 2016.

“Sun King to Moon King: Emulating the Grand Siècle in the 18th and 19th Centuries,”  The Françoise and Georges Selz Lectures on 18th- and 19th-CenturyFrench Decorative Arts and Culture, Bard Graduate Centre, New York, January 2016.

“A War of Visual Histories: British appropriations of French triumphal imagery at Marlborough House,” Yale Center for British Art staff and scholars seminar, January 2014.

CONFERENCES AND SYMPOSIA:

Enchanted Isles, Fatal Shores: Living Versailles, National Gallery of Australia, 17-18 March 2017.

The Work of Art, Art Association of Australia and New Zealand Annual Conference, Australian National University, 1-3 December 2016.

Versailles in the World, New York University, 29 January 2016.

Recasting the Question: Digital Approaches in the Study of Art History,  Australian National University and The University of Sydney, 2-5 November 2015.

Gallipoli/Gelibolu, Art Gallery of New South Wales, 22 May 2015.

COURSES TAUGHT:

  • ARTH1006: Art and Design Histories: Form and Space
  • ARTH1007: Art and Design Histories: Making and Meaning
  • ARTH2080/6080 Art and Visual of the Long Eighteenth Century, 1660-1815
  • ARTH2081/6081 Art of the European Courts, 1500-1800
  • ARTH4018/8013 East-West Interactions in Art
  • ARTH4017/8012 Methodologies of Art History