Art, Art History, and Film Faculty

Oliver Wunsch

Associate Professor, 18th and 19th Century Art

Director of Undergraduate Studies, Art History

Photo of Oliver Wunsch

Oliver Wunsch

Ph.D.

Contact

Devlin Hall 433聽聽聽聽

Email: oliver.wunsch@bc.edu

ORCID

Education

  • B.A., Haverford College
  • M.A., Williams College
  • Ph.D., Harvard University

Courses

  • Nineteenth-Century Art
  • Art: Renaissance to Modern Times
  • Contested Monuments
  • A History of Color
  • Art History Research Seminar
  • History of Scientific Illustration
  • The Medium Shapes the Message

Research Interests

  • Materiality of art
  • Temporality
  • Race and visual representation
  • Art markets
  • Art theory
  • History of taste
  • Reception history

Profile

Oliver Wunsch鈥檚 research and teaching focus on European and American art in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. He has a background as a painter and printmaker, and much of his research deals with the history of artistic techniques.

His first book, A Delicate Matter: Art, Fragility, and Consumption in Eighteenth-Century France, was published by Pennsylvania State University Press in 2024. It examines the unprecedented proliferation of physically unstable art in eighteenth-century France, from oil paintings that cracked within years of their creation to pastel portraits that were vulnerable to the slightest vibration. The book links these material practices to the commercial forces that enabled them, revealing how the rise of consumer culture fundamentally transformed the relationship between art, time, and value. The book was short-listed for the 2025 Kenshur Prize.

Wunsch is currently developing a second book about the trope of 鈥渁esthetic redemption鈥� in the reception of European artworks representing Black subjects. A portion of this project was published in Art History in 2025.

His research has been supported by fellowships from the Center for Advanced Study in the Visual Arts at the National Gallery in Washington, the Sterling and Francine Clark Art Institute, the American Council of Learned Societies, and the Bibliotheca Hertziana in Rome.

Publications

Books

A Delicate Matter: Art, Fragility, and Consumption in Eighteenth-Century France聽(University Park, PA: Pennsylvania State University Press, 2024).

聽Journal Articles

鈥淭he Aesthetic Redemption of the Black Body in Eighteenth-Century France,鈥� Art History 48, no. 1 (February 2025): 14鈥�44, .听

鈥淒iscriminating Taste: Skin Color and Connoisseurship in Eighteenth-Century France,鈥� H-France Salon 14, no. 8 (2022): 1鈥�12, .

聽鈥淩osalba Carriera鈥檚 Four Continents and the Commerce of Skin,鈥� Journal18, no. 10 (2020), .

鈥淗enri de Toulouse-Lautrec鈥檚 鈥楤lack Countess鈥� Identified,鈥� The Burlington Magazine 161, no. 1398 (October 2019): 828鈥�833.听 聽

鈥淲atteau, through the Cracks,鈥� The Art Bulletin 100, no. 2 (June 2018): 37鈥�60.

鈥淒iderot and the Materiality of Posterity,鈥� Early Modern French Studies 40, no. 1 (2018): 63鈥�78.

Book Chapters

鈥淚magine Watteau,鈥� in Breaking the Silence: Methods of Writing Art History, ed. Caroline Fowler (Clark Art Institute / Yale University Press, 2025), 240鈥�49.

鈥淢aking up Race: Whiteness, Pinkness, and Pompadour,鈥� in Madame de Pompadour: Painted Pink, ed. A. Cassandra Albinson (Harvard Art Museums / Yale University Press, 2022), 74鈥�85.

鈥淒ecay,鈥� in The Philosophy Chamber: Art and Science in Harvard鈥檚 Teaching Cabinet, 1766鈥�1820, ed. Ethan Lasser (Cambridge, MA and New Haven, CT: Harvard Art Museums and Yale University Press, 2017), 211鈥�21.

聽鈥淭ime,鈥� in Drawing: The Invention of a Modern Medium, ed. Ewa Lajer-Burcharth and Elizabeth Rudy, (Cambridge, MA: Harvard Art Museums, 2017), 162鈥�71.

Book Reviews

鈥淢aurice-Quentin de La Tour,鈥澛�Master Drawings聽(Winter 2023), 549鈥�52,聽.

鈥淒are to Know: A Review,鈥澛�Journal18聽(December 2022),聽.

聽鈥淎rt, Science, and the Body in Early Romanticism,鈥� CAA Reviews, .

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