Gwendolyn DuBois Shaw Named James and Nan Wagner Farquhar Professor of History of Art

Gwendolyn DuBois Shaw has been named James and Nan Wagner Farquhar Professor of History of Art. Shaw, who joined Penn’s Department of History of Art in 2005, served as the Class of 1940 Bicentennial Term Professor in the Department of the History of Art until being appointed to the Farquhar Professorship. She is also the inaugural and current faculty director of Penn’s Arthur Ross Gallery.

Professor Shaw’s main areas of research include portraiture and issues of representation in the art of the United States, Latin America, and the Caribbean, from the 1500s to the present day. Her writing, curating, and teaching centers on the history of American art, art collecting, and museums.

Author of the books The Art of Remembering, Essays on African American Art and History; Seeing the Unspeakable: The Art of Kara Walker; and First Ladies of the United States, Shaw has also published several recent articles and essays and contributed to numerous major exhibitions.

In addition to teaching and academic research, Shaw has curated several important art exhibitions, including "Portraits of a People: Picturing African Americans in the Nineteenth Century" for the Addison Gallery of American Art, "Represent: 200 Years of African American Art at the Philadelphia Museum of Art," "I Dream a World: Selections from Brian Lanker’s Portraits of Remarkable Black Women" at the National Portrait Gallery,” and most recently, "After Modernism: Selections from the Neumann Family Collection” at the Arthur Ross Gallery.

The late Nan and James Farquhar, LAR’39, both prominent supporters of art history at Penn, established this professorship in 1988. They wanted the professorship to support outstanding educators who would share insights and knowledge with students and forge links between art history and related disciplines.