Art, Art History, and Film Faculty
Nancy Netzer
Professor, Art History
Inaugural Robert L. and Judith T. Winston Director, McMullen Museum of Art
Professor by Courtesy in History
Nancy Netzer
Ph.D.
Contact
McMullen Museum of Art
Telephone: 617-552-2378
Email: nancy.netzer@bc.edu
ORCID 0000-0003-4042-541X
Education
- B.A., Connecticut College
- Ph.D., Harvard University
Courses
Early Medieval Art in Ireland and Britain
Museum of Art: History, Philosophy, and Practice
Loot: Collecting Art in Italy
Research Interests
Illuminated manuscripts, metalwork, sculpture, and material culture of the first millenium
Historical archaeology
Reception, collecting and display of medieval art
Nineteenth-century medievalism
History of collections and museums
Biography
Professor Netzer teaches courses on European medieval art of the first millennium and the history and philosophy of museums from the classical period to the present. Her research focuses on illuminated manuscripts and metalwork of Britain, Ireland, and the Continent in the early medieval period and on the reception, collecting, publication, and display of medieval art from the early modern period to the present. She is currently working on the art historical commentary for publications of two Insular manuscripts. She is a Fellow of the Society of Antiquaries of London; in 2000, she received an honorary Doctor of Letters from the University of Ulster in recognition of her contribution to the study of Irish art. Currently, she heads the Museum Studies concentration within the department’s Art History major.
Professor Netzer has received fellowships from the Whiting Foundation and the American Council for Learned Societies, as well as numerous grants from the National Endowment for the Arts. She has served as chair of the board of Mass Humanities, the state affiliate of the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH), and remains a member of the foundation’s advisory board. In 2018 she received the foundation’s Massachusetts Governor’s Award for contributions to public humanities enhancing civic life in the Commonwealth.
Publications
Books
Editor with Jeffrey Hamburger, William Stoneman, Anne-Marie Eze, and Lisa Fagin Davis. Beyond Words: Illuminated Manuscripts in Boston Collections, Chestnut Hill, MA, 2016.
Editor, Secular/Sacred, Chestnut Hill, 2006
Editor with Virginia Reinburg. Fragmented Devotion: Medieval Objects from the Schnutgen Museum in Cologne, Chestnut Hill, 2000.
Editor with Virginia Reinburg. Memory and the Middle Ages, Chestnut Hill, 1995.
Cultural Interplay in the Eighth Century: The Trier Gospels and the Making of a Scriptorium at Echternach, Cambridge University Press, 1994.
Medieval Objects in the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston: Metalwork. Boston, 1991.
With Hanns Swarzenski, Medieval Objects in the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston: Enamels and Glass, Boston, 1986.
Editor with Jeffrey Hamburger, Anne-Marie Eze, Lisa Fagin Davis, and William Stoneman, Beyond Words: New Research on Manuscripts in Boston Collections, PIMS, University of Toronto Press, 2021.
Articles and Book Chapters
“The Book of Durrow and the Lindisfarne Gospels” in The Lindisfarne Gospels, New perspectives, Richard Gameson, ed. Leiden, 2017, pp. 166-182.
"Cloths of Ireland's New 'Golden Age': Creating Textiles for the Honan Chapel" in V. Kreilkamp, ed., The Arts and Crafts Movement: Making it Irish, Chestnut Hill, MA, 2016, pp. 101-116.
"Displaying Roman Britain in the British Museum" in Roman in the Provinces: Art on the Periphery of Empire, Lisa R. Brody and Gail L. Hoffman, eds., Chestnut Hill, MA, 2014, pp. 195-214.
“The Design and Decoration of Insular Gospel-Books and other Liturgical Manuscripts” in The Cambridge History of the Book in Britain, volume I c. 400-c. 1100, Richard Gameson, ed., Cambridge University Press, 2012, pp. 225-243.
“New Finds Versus the Beginning of the Narrative on Insular Gospel Books”, in Insular and Anglo-Saxon Art and Thought in the Early Medieval Period, Index of Christian Art Princeton University, Occasional Papers, 13, Colum Hourihane, ed., Princeton, 2011, pp. 3-13.
“The ‘Celtic’ Bronzes from Dura Europos: Connections to Britain,” in Dura Europos: Crossroads of Antiquity, Lisa Brody and Gail Hoffman, eds., Chestnut Hill, MA, 2011, pp. 283-294.
“Framing the Book of Durrow inside/outside the Anglo-Saxon World”, in Shaping Understanding: Form and Order in the Anglo-Saxon World, ed. L. Webster., Anglo-Saxon Studies in Archaeology and History, 16, 2009, Oxford, pp. 65-78.
“The Rise of the Study of the History of Christian Art” in M Brown, The Lion Companion to Christian Art, Oxford, 2007, pp. 297-299.
“Insular and Islamic Cosmophilic Responses to the Classical Past” in S. Blair and J. Bloom, Cosmophilia: Islamic Art from the David Collection, Copenhagen, Chestnut Hill, MA, 2006, pp. 39-44.
“Secular” and “Sacred” Objects from the Middle Ages: Illuminating the History of Classification” in Secular/Sacred: 11th – 16th Century Works from the Boston Public Library and the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, ed. Nancy Netzer, Chestnut Hill, MA, 2006, pp. 11-18.
"Art Full Ground: Unearthing an Irish Past," in Vera Kreilkamp, ed. Eire/Land, Chestnut Hill, MA, 2003, pp. 49-56.
"Style: A history of uses and abuses in the study of Insular Art," in Redknap, Edwards, Youngs, Lane and Knight, eds. Pattern and Purpose in Insular Art, Oxford, 2002, pp. 169-177.
"Collecting, Re/collecting, Contextualizing and Recontextualizing: Devotion to Fragments of the Middle Ages," Fragmented Devotion: Medieval Objects from the Schnütgen Museum, Cologne, Chestnut Hill, MA, 2000, pp. 17-30.
"Die Arbeitsmethoden der insularen Scriptorien Zwei Fallstudien: Lindisfarne und Echternach," in J. Schroeder, ed. Die Abtei Echternach 698-1998, Luxembourg, 1999, pp. 65-83.
"The Book of Durrow: The Northumbrian Connection," in J. Hawkes ed. The Golden Age of Northumbria, Newcastle-upon-Tyne, 1999.