Jessica J. Larson
Bio
I am an art and architectural historian based in New York City. Broadly, my work examines the social relationships formed and fractured by the built environment, how race, gender, and class mediate questions of poverty and labor, and how prejudice and benevolence are inscribed into architectural form. My dissertation analyzes the architecture of charitable and reform institutions designed and built in Manhattan for Black aid recipients between the Civil War and World War I, with a specific focus on how women directed these spatial programs.
I have a strong interest in visual culture and how architecture and space are represented graphically. I have held graduate curatorial internships in print rooms at the Metropolitan Museum of Art and the Princeton University Art Museum, and worked as a Research Associate at the Bruce Museum. I am currently working on a forthcoming publication on the topic of Blackness and the Ashcan School.
I received my undergraduate degrees in History (B.A.) and Art History (B.A., high honors) from the University of Michigan-Ann Arbor. I received my M.A. in Art History from the University of Delaware. I am now completing my Ph.D. in Art and Architectural History at the Graduate Center, CUNY with a projected Fall 2023 defense.
My scholarship and research has been supported by fellowships from the Smithsonian Institution, the American Council of Learned Societies, the Library of Congress, the New York Public Library, and others. For a full list, see my CV below.