Judith Wechsler

Professor Emerita, Tufts University

Judith Wechsler is an art historian primarily of 19th century French art, who has engaged in interdisciplinary studies: the intersection of art and theater, art and film, caricature and physiognomy, art and science. Her book, A Human Comedy: Physiognomy and Caricature in 19th Century Paris, focuses on Daumier in a political and historical context. She has published articles and catalogue essays on Daumier including “Gender and Gesture in Daumier,” “Movement in the Drawings of Daumier: Still and Still Moving,” and two films on Daumier, “Daumier Paris and the Spectator,” directed with Charles Eames and “Daumier. One Must be of One’s Time,” made for the Daumier exhibition in Paris and broadcast in France and the US. Her books, The Interpretation of Cézanne and Cézanne in Perspective (ed and intro) have been widely used. More recently she has written on “Sensation and Perception in Cézanne.” Her 1999 book Le Cabinet des dessins, was published by Flammarion. Her film on drawing was commissioned by the Louvre, “Dessiner, la main qui pense,” “Drawing the Thinking Hand“ (in its English version.)

From her years at MIT, Wechsler edited a book On Aesthetics in Science, which has gone through several editions and translations. She has written a catalogue essay “Caricature of medicine,“ and “Lavater, Stereotype and Prejudice,” on anti-semitic attitudes in physiognomic theory. Wechsler has explored relationships between art and theater in the 19th century, in her essay, ”Ophelia and the Representation of Madness,” and curated an exhibition in Paris on the actress Rachel, co-edited the catalogue and contributed an essay on the representations of Rachel. In collaboration with La Comédie Francaise, she directed a film on Rachel. In France, she has lectured and/or presented her films lectures at the Louvre, the Musée d’Orsay, the Centre Pompidou, the Comédie Francaise, Musee de l’Orangerie, Musee d’art et d’histoire du judaisme, and L’Institut national de l’histoire de l’art.

Wechsler has made some 28 films on art, informed by her scholarship. The French government awarded her a Chevalier de l’ordre des arts et des letters. In 2010 she was a Fellow at the American Academy in Berlin in 2010. She has been the recipient of 7 NEH grants, 2 NEA grants, and a Mellon faculty fellowship. In addition to teaching 7 years at MIT, she has been professor of art history at the Rhode Island School of Design, and was the NEH Professor at Tufts from 1989-2010. She has been visiting professor at Harvard,The Hebrew University in Jerusalem, The Ecole Normale Superieure, in Paris and The University of Paris. In 2012, she was Senior Visiting Fellow at the Van Leer Institute, Jerusalem and a Fellow at the Bogliasco Foundation in Italy.

WEBSITE:
judithwechsler.com