Emily Braun (born 1957) is a Canadian-born art historian,

curator A curator (from la, cura, meaning "to take care") is a manager or overseer. When working with cultural organizations, a curator is typically a "collections curator" or an "exhibitions curator", and has multifaceted tasks dependent on the parti ...

and Distinguished Professor of Art History at

Hunter College Hunter College is a public university in New York City. It is one of the constituent colleges of the City University of New York and offers studies in more than one hundred undergraduate and postgraduate fields across five schools. It also adm ...

and the

Graduate Center The Graduate School and University Center of the City University of New York (CUNY Graduate Center) is a public In public relations and communication science, publics are groups of individual people, and the public (a.k.a. the general public ...

of the

City University of New York The City University of New York ( CUNY; , ) is the public university system of New York City. It is the largest urban university system in the United States, comprising 25 campuses: eleven senior colleges, seven community colleges and seven pr ...

. Braun is a specialist in the history of modern European art and is known for her contributions to the study of

Italian modernism Modernism is both a philosophy, philosophical and arts movement that arose from broad transformations in Western world, Western society during the late 19th and early 20th centuries. The movement reflected a desire for the creation of new fo ...

and

Cubism Cubism is an early-20th-century avant-garde art movement that revolutionized European painting and sculpture, and inspired related movements in music, literature and architecture. In Cubist artwork, objects are analyzed, broken up and reassemble ...

. In addition to her academic work, Braun serves as the Curator of the

Leonard A. Lauder Leonard Alan Lauder (born March 19, 1933) is an American billionaire, philanthropist, art collector. He and his brother, Ronald Lauder, are the sole heirs to the Estée Lauder Companies cosmetics fortune, founded by their parents, Estée Laude ...

Collection of Cubist Art.

Biography

Braun received her Ph.D. in

art history Art history is the study of aesthetic objects and visual expression in historical and stylistic context. Traditionally, the discipline of art history emphasized painting, drawing, sculpture, architecture, ceramics and decorative arts; yet today, ...

from The Institute of Fine Arts, NYU in 1991. Her academic work examines the interaction between

political ideologies An ideology is a set of beliefs or philosophies attributed to a person or group of persons, especially those held for reasons that are not purely epistemic, in which "practical elements are as prominent as theoretical ones." Formerly applied prim ...

and visual representation in Europe, theories of viewer reception, the ideas of gender and otherness in

art criticism Art criticism is the discussion or evaluation of visual art. Art critics usually criticize art in the context of aesthetics or the theory of beauty. A goal of art criticism is the pursuit of a rational basis for art appreciation but it is ques ...

, history of exhibitions and history of collecting, as well as the relationship between

and

popular culture Popular culture (also called mass culture or pop culture) is generally recognized by members of a society as a set of practices, beliefs, artistic output (also known as, popular art or mass art) and objects that are dominant or prevalent in ...

. She has written extensively on the work of European modern artists, including

Gustav Klimt Gustav Klimt (July 14, 1862 – February 6, 1918) was an Austrian symbolist painter and one of the most prominent members of the Vienna Secession movement. Klimt is noted for his paintings, murals, sketches, and other objets d'art. Klimt's p ...

Georges Braque Georges Braque ( , ; 13 May 1882 – 31 August 1963) was a major 20th-century List of French artists, French painter, Collage, collagist, Drawing, draughtsman, printmaker and sculpture, sculptor. His most notable contributions were in his all ...

Pablo Picasso Pablo Ruiz Picasso (25 October 1881 – 8 April 1973) was a Spanish painter, sculptor, printmaker, ceramicist and theatre designer who spent most of his adult life in France. One of the most influential artists of the 20th century, he is ...

, and

Alberto Burri Alberto Burri (12 March 191513 February 1995; ) was an Italian visual artist, painter, sculptor, and physician based in Città di Castello. He is associated with the matterism of the European informal art movement and described his style as a ...

among others. She is the author of ''Mario Sironi and Italian Modernism: Art and Politics under Fascism'', published by Cambridge University Press in 2000, which

The Journal of Modern History ''The Journal of Modern History'' is a quarterly peer-reviewed academic journal covering European intellectual, political, and cultural history, published by the University of Chicago Press. Established in 1929, the journal covers events from appro ...

described as "a work that is as indispensable for cultural historians of twentieth-century Europe as it is for historians of the visual arts”. Emily Braun has also been active as a curator. Her exhibitions include ''Alberto Burri: The Trauma of Painting'' at the

Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum The Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, often referred to as The Guggenheim, is an art museum at 1071 Fifth Avenue on the corner of East 89th Street on the Upper East Side of Manhattan in New York City. It is the permanent home of a continuously exp ...

, which was honored with the 2016 Dedalus Foundation Exhibition Catalogue Award, ''The Power of Conversation: Jewish Women and Their Salons'' (co-curator, 2005,

The Jewish Museum The Jewish Museum is an art museum and repository of cultural artifacts, housed at 1109 Fifth Avenue, in the former Felix M. Warburg House, along Museum Mile on the Upper East Side of Manhattan, New York City. The first Jewish museum in the ...

, New York), which received a National Jewish Book Award, ''Gardens and Ghettos: The Art of Jewish Life in Italy'' (co-curator, 1989, The Jewish Museum, New York) and ''De Chirico and America'' (1996, Bertha and Karl Leubsdorf Gallery, Hunter College) which she organized with her graduate students at Hunter College.

Leonard A. Lauder Collection of Cubist Art

Braun has served as the Curator of the

Collection of Cubist Art since 1987. In 2014, she co-organized the exhibition of Lauder's holdings of Cubism at

The Metropolitan Museum of Art The Metropolitan Museum of Art of New York City, colloquially "the Met", is the largest art museum in the Americas. Its permanent collection contains over two million works, divided among 17 curatorial departments. The main building at 1000 ...

in New York together with Rebecca Rabinow. Dubbed by

The New York Times ''The New York Times'' (''the Times'', ''NYT'', or the Gray Lady) is a daily newspaper based in New York City with a worldwide readership reported in 2020 to comprise a declining 840,000 paid print subscribers, and a growing 6 million paid ...

as "one of the world's greatest collections of Cubist art," it includes 81 works by

Fernand Léger Joseph Fernand Henri Léger (; February 4, 1881 – August 17, 1955) was a French painter, sculptor, and filmmaker. In his early works he created a personal form of cubism (known as "tubism") which he gradually modified into a more figurative, po ...

, and

Juan Gris José Victoriano González-Pérez (23 March 1887 – 11 May 1927), better known as Juan Gris (; ), was a Spanish painter born in Madrid who lived and worked in France for most of his active period. Closely connected to the innovative artistic ge ...

. In 2013, Lauder promised the collection as a gift to the Met. Valued at over $1 billion, Lauder's contribution constitutes one of the largest gifts in the museum’s history.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Braun, Emily 1957 births Living people Canadian art historians Canadian art curators Hunter College faculty New York University Institute of Fine Arts alumni Canadian women curators