About
Margaret Samu works on 18th- and 19th-century European art and design with a special interest in the intersection between Russian and Western cultures. She earned her Ph.D. at New York University’s Institute of Fine Arts after receiving her Bachelor’s degree from Wellesley College in Art History and French. Her work has been published internationally, in journals such as
Искусствознание,
Nineteenth-Century Studies, and
Эксперимент/Experiment, as well as a volume she co-edited,
From Realism to the Silver Age (Northern Illinois University Press, 2014). She has presented lectures and conference papers on her work in Russia, England, the United States, and Canada, and has received grants from the Mellon Foundation, the Fulbright Program, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, and the Library of Congress, among other institutions. Dr. Samu is currently working on a book-length project titled
Russian Venus. She served as president of the
Society of Historians of East European, Eurasian, and Russian Art and Architecture (SHERA) from 2013 until 2015.
Education
Ph.D. Institute of Fine Arts, New York University
M.A. Institute of Fine Arts, New York University
B.A. in Art History and French, Wellesley College Publications
“Modelos en academias de bellas artes y en estudios privados.” In
La Tradición Académica/
Академическая традиция, exh. cat., edited by Semyon Mikhailovsky, 54-65. Madrid: Real Academia de Bellas Artes de San Fernando; St. Petersburg: Academy of Arts, 2017. In Spanish and Russian.
“Peter the Great’s Roman Venus: Problems of Research and Interpretation.” In Petrine Monuments of Russia and Europe: Research, Preservation, Cultural Tourism, edited by A.V. Kobak, 624-634. St. Petersburg: Evropeiskii Dom, 2016. In Russian.
“Exhibiting Westernization: Aleksei Venetsianov’s Nudes and the Russian Art Market 1820-1850.” Nineteenth-Century Studies 25 (2015). 131-147.
“ ‘Serving Art’: The Artist’s Model in the 19th-century Russian Art World.” Искусствознание [Art History] 3-4 (Autumn 2014). 434-447. In Russian.
From Realism to the Silver Age: New Studies in Russian Artistic Culture, edited by Rosalind Blakesley and Margaret Samu, 44-58. DeKalb, IL: Northern Illinois University Press, 2014. Introduction (co-authored with R.P. Blakesley)
“Making a Case for Realism: The Female Nude in Russian Satirical Images of the 1860s.”
Reviews:
· The Slavic and East European Journal 59, no. 4 (Winter 2015): 642-44.
· The Russian Review 75, no. 1 (Jan. 2016): 142-44.
“The Nude in Eighteenth- and Nineteenth-Century Russian Sculpture.” In “The Third Dimension: New Perspectives on Russian Sculpture,” edited by Musya Glants, Marie Lampard, and Wendy Salmond, special issue, Experiment/Эксперимент 18 (2012). 33-60.
“The Butter Sculpture of Caroline S. Brooks (1840-1913),” co-authored with Rebecca Bedell. In Women and Things, 1750-1950: Gendered Material Strategies, edited by Maureen Daly Goggin and Beth Fowkes Tobin, 205-225. Aldershot, Burlington: Ashgate, 2009.
“Evelyn Beatrice Longman: Establishing a Career in Public Sculpture.” Woman’s Art Journal 25, no. 2 (Fall 2004/Winter 2005). 8-15.
Memberships
19v Working Group on Russian Culture, Literature, and the Arts
Association for Slavic, East European and Eurasian Studies
Association of Historians of Nineteenth-Century Art
College Art Association
Historians of Eighteenth-Century Art and Architecture
Nineteenth-Century Studies Association
Society of Historians of East European, Eurasian, and Russian Art and Architecture
Society for the History of Collecting
