Natasha Staller
Natasha Staller | |
|---|---|
| Occupation | Art historian |
| Spouse | Gary Ruvkun |
| Children | 1 |
| Awards | Guggenheim Fellowship (2005) |
| Academic background | |
| Alma mater | |
| Thesis | Toward 'the total image': The Thematic Origins of Cubism (1983) |
| Academic work | |
| Discipline | Art history |
| Sub-discipline | Pablo Picasso |
| Institutions | Amherst College |
Natasha Elena Staller[1] is an American art historian. She is Professor of the History of Art at Amherst College.[2] She wrote A Sum of Destructions: Picasso’s Cultures and the Creation of Cubism (2001) and is a 2005 Guggenheim Fellow.
Biography
Staller was raised in Glencoe, Illinois, and as a child attended the School of the Art Institute of Chicago on a scholarship.[3] She spent her last year in high school as an exchange student in Mexico.[3] She obtained her BA from Wellesley College, where "art history was [her] eighth declared major".[3][2] She also studied harpsichord with Lola Odiaga and photography with Minor White.[2]
Staller obtained her PhD from Harvard University in 1983; her doctoral dissertation was titled Toward 'the total image': The Thematic Origins of Cubism.[1][4] After visiting positions at the University of Chicago and Princeton University, he joined the Amherst College faculty in 1992.[2][3]
Staller was a contributor to the catalog for the 1997 National Gallery of Art exhibition Picasso: The Early Years 1892-1906.[5] In 2001, she published A Sum of Destructions: Picasso's Cultures and the Creation of Cubism,[3] where she argued that Picasso's earlier career was connected to his Cubism style at a larger extent than previously thought.[6] The book was a finalist for the 2003 Charles Rufus Morey Book Award,[7] and the Society for Iberian Global Art awarded it and Jesús Escobar's The Plaza Mayor and the Shaping of Baroque Madrid the 2004 Eleanor Tufts Book Award.[6] Choice also named the book an Outstanding Academic Title of the Year.[2] In 2005, she was awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship.[8] She has also appeared as a featured expert in several documentary works like Annenberg Learner's Art Through Time: A Global View,[9] Picasso and Braque Go to the Movies, and The Private Life of a Masterpiece.[2]
Staller is married to Gary Ruvkun; they have one daughter.[3] She lives in Newton, Massachusetts.[3]
Works
References
- ^ a b "Toward "the total image" :the thematic origins of cubism". HOLLIS. Retrieved 2026-03-02.
- ^ a b c d e f "Staller, Natasha | Faculty & Staff". Amherst College. Retrieved 2026-03-02.
- ^ a b c d e f g "My Life: Natasha Staller". Amherst Magazine. No. Summer 2009. Retrieved 2026-03-02.
- ^ "Graduate Alumni | Department of History of Art and Architecture". haa.fas.harvard.edu. Retrieved 2026-03-02.
- ^ "Picasso: The Early Years 1892-1906". Jeff Hirsch Books. Retrieved 2026-03-02.
- ^ a b "2004". Society for Iberian Global Art. Retrieved 2026-03-02.
- ^ "MOREY AND BARR AWARD FINALISTS CHOSEN" (PDF). CAA ews. Vol. 28, no. 1. January 2003. p. 15.
- ^ "Natasha Staller". Guggenheim Fellowships. Retrieved 2026-03-02.
- ^ "Dreams and Visions". Annenberg Learner. Retrieved 2026-03-02.
- ^ Florman, Lisa (2004). "Review of Picasso: Style and Meaning; Picasso and the Invention of Cubism; A Sum of Destructions: Picasso's Cultures and the Creation of Cubism; Picasso: The Cubist Portraits of Fernande Olivier". The Art Bulletin. 86 (3): 614–620. doi:10.2307/4134451. ISSN 0004-3079. JSTOR 4134451.
- ^ Hamilton, Jeanne (2002-09-01). "Cumbersome but ambitious work paints Picasso as creator-destroyer". The Commercial Appeal. p. F2 – via Newspapers.com.