Qualifications
B.A. (Yale University), M.A. (Cambridge University), Ph.D. (Harvard University)
Academic Background
Prof. Johnson received a B.A. in Comparative Literature from Yale University, an M.A. in Art History from Cambridge University, and a Ph.D. in History of Art from Harvard University. She has held a number of prestigious fellowships, including a Junior Fellowship at the Harvard Society of Fellows, a Henry Moore Fellowship at University College London, a Kress Fellowship at Harvard's Center for Italian Renaissance Studies at Villa i Tatti in Florence, and a Leverhulme Trust Fellowship at Oxford University.
Prof. Johnson is an Associate Professor in History of Art and Tutor in History of Art at Christ Church. She has been Head of the Department of History of Art at Oxford University, in addition to serving as Senior Censor, Junior Censor and Tutor for Admissions at Christ Church. She has also been an Associate Head of Oxford’s Humanities Division and recently completed a four-year term as an elected member of Council, the University’s executive governing body.
Undergraduate Teaching
Prof. Johnson helped to found Oxford's History of Art undergraduate degree, which admitted its first cohort in 2004. She has been the co-ordinator of the History of Art undergraduate and Master’s degrees and is Tutor in History of Art at Christ Church. Her undergraduate and graduate teaching includes the historiography and methodologies of Art History, the art and architecture of Early Modern Europe, and women and the visual arts.
Research Interests
Prof. Johnson has published widely on the history of sculpture from the late Medieval period to the present day; on women and the visual arts in Renaissance and Baroque Europe; on the history of photography, with a particular focus on the photography of sculpture; and on the historiography of Art History as a discipline.
Publications include:
Articles in peer-reviewed journals including: The Art Bulletin, Burlington Magazine, Art History, Renaissance Quarterly, and The Sculpture Journal.
Co- Editor (with Sarah Matthews Grieco): Picturing Women in Renaissance and Baroque Italy (Cambridge University Press, 1997).
Editor: Sculpture and Photography: Envisioning the Third Dimension (Cambridge University Press, 1998).
Author: Renaissance Art: A Very Short Introduction (Oxford University Press, 2005).
Author: The Sound of Marble: The Materiality and Immateriality of Italian Renaissance Art (Cambridge University Press, in progress).
Author: Photography and Sculpture (Reaktion Books, in progress).
Editor: A Companion to the Theories and Methods of Art History (Wiley-Blackwell, in progress).
Editor: Crossing Continents: Exile and Expatriate History of Art (under review).
Co-Editor (with Deborah Schultz): Photo Archives and the Place of Photography (Bloomsbury, in progress)