Eleanore Neumann

PhD Candidate


Eleanore is a doctoral candidate in art and architectural history in the McIntire Department of Art. She studies the intersection of landscape, gender, and empire in eighteenth- and nineteenth-century British art and visual culture with a particular focus on drawings, prints, and their intermedial relationships. Her interests also extend to the legacy of empire, including contemporary Indigenous art from Australia. Under the direction of Professor Douglas Fordham, she is writing the dissertation The Global Landscapes of Maria Graham (1785-1842). It examines the art and writing produced by Graham as she traveled to Bombay, Rome, Valparaíso, Rio de Janeiro, and London in the early-nineteenth century.

After receiving a B.A. in art history and Hispanic studies from Vassar College, she pursued an M.A. in art history from the Courtauld Institute of Art that focused on British and French drawings of the global eighteenth century. She subsequently worked at a variety of art institutions, including the Terra Foundation for American Art. As the Suzanne Andrée Curatorial Fellow in the Department of Prints, Drawings, and Photographs at the Philadelphia Museum of Art, she organized the exhibition Breaking Ground: Printmaking in the U.S., 1940-1960. 

At the University of Virginia, Eleanore worked with eight other graduate students to curate the exhibition Beyond Dreamings: The Rise of Indigenous Australian Art in the United States and publish the related catalogue. She has received the Edgar Shannon Fellowship from the Jefferson Scholars Foundation and the Praxis Program Fellowship in Digital Humanities from the Scholars’ Lab in the University of Virginia Library, in addition to other grants and fellowships. As a teaching assistant, she has led discussion sections for the courses “Art Since 1945” and “Art and Money.”