Heather Hole
Professor, disciplines of Museum Studies and Art History
Professor Heather Hole teaches museum studies and art history in the School of Library and Information Science. She is a former Chair of the Department of Art and Music and Director of the Arts Administration Program. Before Simmons, Dr. Hole was a curator at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston and the Georgia O'Keeffe Museum. She is the author of the book Marsden Hartley and the West: The Search for an American Modernism, published by Yale University Press, and the curator of the traveling exhibition of the same name. Dr. Hole received her PhD from Princeton University and her BA from Smith College.
Education
- PhD, Art History, from Princeton University
- BA, Art History, from Smith College
Courses
- ART 100 Objects and Ideas
- ART 245 American Art
- LIS 431/AADM 234 Introduction to Museum Studies
- LIS 432 Concepts in Cultural Heritage Informatics
- LIS 436/ART 347 Art of the Gardner Museum
Research/Special Projects
Professor Hole researches the history, theory, and practice of art curation in the United States. One article, “‘Stain’d with Divers Paints’: Transatlantic Slavery in John Smibert’s Boston Studio, 1737,” explores a portrait painted by Smibert of a wealthy Salem merchant in the same year he advertised a reward for the return of an enslaved Black man named Cuffee. Countering the erasure of Cuffee’s experiences in the archive, this article reconsiders Smibert’s painting as a material manifestation of the transatlantic trade in enslaved people, the fabulous wealth it created, and the culture it funded. Another, “The Home-Coming: Nativism and the Period Rooms of Wanamaker’s New York and the Metropolitan Museum of Art, 1919-1925,” examines the Colonial American period rooms created at a time when mass immigration set off the xenophobic anxiety codified in the National Origins Act of 1924. Together, these spaces advanced a larger common goal of creating citizen consumers with a shared, fictional narrative of American history, American identity, and American life defined through the furnishing of the home.
Awards
- 2022 Best Advisor Award, Student Government Association, Simmons University
Shout-outs from Students and Alums
Discovering Purpose and Community through Art, Service, and Song
Arts Administration major Calla Savelson ’24 shares how she gained professional experience and build a community for herself during her time at Simmons.
Jane Carney ’17 Supports Living Artists as Art Consultant at Boston Art, Inc.
Arts Administration major Jane Carney '17 on her pivot from auctioning "old master's" art at Christie's New York to selling the work of living artists at Boston Art, Inc.
Bailey Hilt '18 Uses Arts Administration Skills in Marketing and Photography Position
Bailey Hilt '18 is a Marketing and Photography Specialist at Elkus Manfredi Architects in Boston, MA. She spoke to us about the Arts Administration skills she learned from Simmons, her past internship experiences, and how she applies this knowledge in...
Ifill Scholar Anek Yen ’24 Finds her Passion in Arts Administration from a PR Perspective
Congratulations to Anek Yen '24, recipient of the Ifill Scholarship! We spoke with Anek about how she plans to use her PR skills to support her passion for art and art museums. What are you studying at Simmons? I'm studying...