About

I am an architecture and design historian, curator, and educator working on modern European and US cultural history, with a specialization in design, material culture, and the built environment of the 19th & 20th centuries. My research and publications center of the history of exhibiting modern design and interiors in museums, university galleries, and commercial settings. I currently serve as Curator of Rare Books at Smithsonian Libraries and Archives | Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian National Design Museum Library in New York City.

My book with Oxford University Press (2024) explores the constellation of debates surrounding both rejections and revisions of modernist ideals in exhibitions of Viennese interior design and housing between 1918 and 1938. My research examines critical challenges to western European paradigms of modernity, especially reconsiderations of “universal” aesthetics and rhetoric in future-oriented examples of modern architecture and interiors. You can learn more about my publications here.

Teaching

In the classroom, I take a cultural history approach, exploring objects and the built environment within the frameworks of material and visual cultures as well as political and economic histories. My areas of teaching have ranged broadly across the history of modern architecture, interiors, and design in Europe and the Americas, including the history of industrial design, revivalism, cultural memory, design and the literary imagination, modern design pedagogy, glass history, women in architecture and design, and design archives and historic preservation. You can learn more here.

Archives & Special Collections

I have been active as an archivist and curator of special collections specializing in twentieth-century design and architecture, with over seven years of experience leading archival collections management projects, records conservation, digitization, appraisals, acquisitions, and educational outreach and programming, as well as providing research services in university settings. You can learn more about my work in archives & special collections here.

Email