Art Department

Karen Lucic

Karen Lucic joined the Vassar faculty in 1986 and was awarded her Ph.D. from Yale University in 1988. Under the name Karen Davies, she curated and wrote the catalogue for an exhibition, “At Home in Manhattan: Modern Decorative Arts, 1925 to the Depression," held at the Yale University Art Gallery in 1983. In 1991 she authored Charles Sheeler and the Cult of the Machine, published by Harvard University Press. She was the curator and wrote the catalogue for “Charles Sheeler in Doylestown: American Modernism and the Pennsylvania Tradition," an exhibition that traveled to the Allentown Art Museum, the Amon Carter Museum and the Cincinnati Museum in 1997-98. She was co-curator of “Humanizing Landscapes: Geography, Culture and the Magoon Collection,” at the Frances Lehman Loeb Art Center in 2000 and also contributed an essay to the catalogue. In 2006, she organized “Forms of Exchange: Art of Native Peoples from the Edward J. Guarino Collection,” with Vassar students for the Lehman Loeb Art Center. Lucic has published articles on Edward Hopper, Paul Strand, Winslow Homer, Navajo weaving, and other topics in early twentieth-century American painting, photography and design. Her most recent publication appeared in The Journal of the Southwest in 2008, “In Pursuit of the Ceremonial: The Laboratory of Anthropology’s ‘Master Collection’ of Zuni Pottery.” As an advisor to the Thomas Cole National Historic Site, she is supervising the construction of an interactive website that explores Cole’s work and impact on early nineteenth-century American culture.