PhD

Dominique DeLuca is a specialist in medieval art, who received her PhD in 2020, after defending a dissertation that explored images of shadows in fifteenth-century secular manuscripts. Among her publications are Shades of Meaning: Shadows in Medieval Manuscript Illumination (Brill, 2025); “Bonum est mortis meditari: Meanings and Functions of the Medieval Double Macabre Portrait,” in a volume edited by Albrecht Classen, Death in the Middle Ages and Early Modern Times: The Material and Spiritual Conditions of the Culture of Death; and entries in Myth and Mystique: Cleveland’s French Gothic Table Fountain exhibition catalogue, edited by Elina Gertsman and Stephen Fliegel. Dominique has worked extensively with objects and staff from the Cleveland Museum of Art. She was a curatorial intern in the Indian and Southeast Asian Art department where she was involved in the development of the 2016 exhibition Art and Stories from Mughal India and its catalogue, and a curatorial intern with the department of Medieval Art. In 2018, she participated in the Mellon Summer Institute in French Paleography at the Newberry Library, and was a recipient of the Etienne Gilson Dissertation Grant from the Medieval Academy of America. In 2019-20 she was a Mellon Fellow in the Department of Education and Academic Affairs at the CMA. After working as a researcher at Les Enluminures, the New York- and Paris-based gallery that specializes in manuscripts and miniatures from the Middle Ages and the Renaissance, Nikki accepted a full-time teaching position at the University of Vermont.

Kylie Fisher is a specialist in early modern Italian art. Her dissertation, partially supported by the Walter Read Hovey Memorial Fund scholarship from The Pittsburgh Foundation, explored the formidable role that engravings played in how ancient Rome was understood, imagined, and remembered in the sixteenth century. Kylie has held several museum internships, including one in the Department of Prints and Drawings at the Cleveland Museum of Art, where she researched the permanent collection of Italian drawings. She also worked as the IFPDA Foundation Curatorial Intern at the Allen Memorial Art Museum at Oberlin College, where she helped to organize the centennial show, A Century of Women in Prints, 1917-2017 as well as Lines of Inquiry: Learning from Rembrandt’s Etchings, for which she contributed to the exhibition catalogue. Kylie has presented her research at the annual conferences of the Midwest Art History Society and Sixteenth Century Society and Conference. Her article, “Drawing from Mantegna: Engaging with Engraving in Cinquecento Northern Italian Art,” was published in Athanor 35.

Lauryn Smith received her PhD in 2022 in early modern Netherlandish paintings and European decorative arts. Her dissertation examined the cabinets of Amalia van Solms-Braunfels (1602-1675), Princess of Orange, to illuminate instances of innovation and exchange in her collecting practices and patronage. She presented her research internationally, including at the Dressing the Early Modern Network (Abegg-Stiftung, Switzerland), Association for Art History, and Netherlandish Society for Seventeenth-Century Studies conferences. Additionally, Lauryn co-organized numerous panels and conferences, notably an international music and visual culture conference at the University of Toronto (2016). Her research was supported by the Samuel H. Kress Foundation, the Decorative Arts Trust, and the Historians of Netherlandish Art. An aspiring curator, Lauryn was selected for the 2021 CCL/Mellon Foundation Seminar in Curatorial Practice cohort. Additionally, she completed internships in North America and the UK at the Cuming Museum, Christie’s, and the Cleveland Museum of Art, among others. In 2017, she co-founded an international technical art history collaboration that was one of 17 projects funded by the CWRU’s Provost’s Office (2019). For the 2021-2022 academic year, Lauryn was the inaugural Frick Collection and Frick Art Reference Library Digital Art History Fellow.

Angelica Verduci is a specialist in medieval art who defended her dissertation, “Mors Triumphans in Medieval Italian Murals: From Allegory to Performance,” in 2023. Angelica’s research interests lie at the intersections of macabre and eschatological imagery, performance, pastoral theology, and vernacular culture. Angelica received her M.A. in Art History at Università Cattolica del Sacro Cuore in Milan, and a diploma in Archive Administration, Paleography and Diplomatics from the Milan Archivio di Stato. In 2018, Angelica co-chaired the 44th Cleveland Symposium, and was a teaching assistant for Art History 101, for which she received the 2019 Graduate Dean’s Instructional Excellence Award. Angelica served as one of the 2019-20 representatives of the Graduate Art History Association (GAHA), and worked as an intern in the CMA Department of Prints and Drawings under the supervision of Dr. Emily Peters. In the summers of 2020 and 2021, she taught Art History I: Pyramids to Pagodas and Art History II: Michelangelo to Maya Lin at Case Western Reserve University. She is currently working on several articles on Italian Triumph of Death and Dance of Death imagery. Her dissertation research has been supported by the International Center of Medieval Art. She teaches courses at the Università Cattolica in Milan, does archival work at the Archivio di Stato of Milan, and leads tours for Ad Artem at Palazzo Reale, MUDEC/Museum of Cultures, Pinacoteca Ambrosiana, Museo del ‘900, and Castello Sforzesco.

Bing Wang concentrates on global photography 1839–1939, with focus on East, South, and Southeast Asia. Bing received her PhD in 2022 with the dissertation entitled “William Pryor Floyd: The Art and Business of Photography in Nineteenth-Century Hong Kong.” In her third year, as a curatorial intern under the supervision of Dr. Barbara Tannenbaum, Curator of Photography at the Cleveland Museum of Art, she worked on standardizing the terminology used to describe media/process in the CMA photographic collection and researched an album of photographs by one of the most celebrated 19th-century Indian photographers, Raja Deen Dayal (1844–1905). From her fourth year on, as a curatorial assistant in the Peabody Essex Museum, Salem, MA, she has been working on the upcoming exhibition on Chinese photography. After she earned a bachelor’s degree in Museology from China, she joined the Film and Photography Preservation and Collections Management (F+PPCM) Master of Arts, a collaborative program between Ryerson University, Toronto, and George Eastman Museum in Rochester, New York, and completed both the photography and film tracks. She has recently presented her research at the annual conferences of the Midwest Art History Society and of the Nineteenth Century Studies Association. (LinkedIn page: www.linkedin.com/in/bing-wang-35a51866).

MA

Shayla Croteau received her MA in Art History in 2022. Shayla is particularly interested in the intersections of anatomy and depiction of the human figure in Italian Renaissance and Baroque art. She now works as art registrar and Capitol educator at the Michigan State Capital.

Sarah Frisbie received her MA in Art History in 2025 and is pursuing her PhD in medieval art at CWRU with Elina Gertsman. Please see her bio on the current graduate students page.

Mia Hafer received her MA in Art History in 2020 and is pursuing her PhD in medieval art at the University of Kansas with Anne D. Hedeman. Her research interests include representations of identity and otherness, and how markers of gender, sexuality, religion, and nationality inform medieval secular imagery. Mia has previously served as the Collections Management intern for the CWRU Putnam Sculpture Collection.

Luke Hester received his MA in Art History in 2023 and is pursuing his PhD in Byzantine art at CWRU with Elizabeth Bolman. Please see his bio on the current graduate students page.

Laurén Kozlowski  earned an MA in History and Museum Studies in 2022. She is now a cataloguer and a librarian at the Cranbrook Academy of Art.

Kate Hublou received an MA in Art History and Museum Studies in 2019. Kate’s interest lies in Scandinavian art and design of the long nineteenth century While in the CWRU program, Kate co-curated with Stephen Harrison, Color and Comfort: Swedish Modern Design – an exhibition proposed by the 2019 cohort of museum studies students. She is currently pursuing a doctoral degree at MIT.

Julia LaPlaca received her MA in Art History and Museum Studies from CWRU in 2019. Currently she is pursuing a PhD in Late Medieval/Early Modern European Art with an additional interest in Museum Studies at the University of Michigan.  During her studies at CWRU, Julia interned at the Cleveland Museum of Art in the textile conservation department and contributed curatorial research to textile and prints & drawing exhibitions at the CMA.

Emma Lazerson, who received her MA in Art History in 2024, is currently pursuing her PhD in early modern art at Boston University.

Cameron McConnell received an MA in Art History MA student in 2022. She is primarily interested in the intersection of politics and religion in the medieval world and the development and veneration of religious imagery. She is now the Program Coordinator in the department of Collection and Exhibitions at the Cleveland Museum of Art.

Julie Polsinelli earned her MA in Art History and Museum Studies in 2022. Her focus is modern and contemporary art, exploring identity through race and gender. She is now Assistant Director & Gallery Manager at the Valley Art Center.

Laura Rybicki received an MA in Art History in 2024, and is now pursuing a doctoral degree in medieval art at Northwestern University.

Portia Silver received her MA in Art History in 2024. She is now an institutional giving and stewardship coordinator at the Peabody Essex Museum in Boston.

Sydney Slacas received her dual degree (MA/JD) in Art History and Museum Studies program and a JD in 2022. Her research interests include art and museum law as well as modern and contemporary art history. She is a stewardship specialist at the Cleveland Museum of Art.

Erica Spilger received her MA in Art History and Museum Studies in 2020. Her interests include cross cultural exchanges of people, ideas, and objects, and the power dynamics at hand in the Spanish colonization of the Americas and Asia. As a CMA Fellow, she has worked with the museum’s photography curator Barbara Tannenbaum. Erica is now Local History Librarian at the Greene County Public Library.

Kali Steinberg received her MA in art history in 2021. Her primary focus was in medieval art. She is now assistant curator at the Colgate University’s Picker Art Gallery.

Rebekah Utian received her MA in Art History in 2024. She is now a Program and Marketing Manager at the Tremont West Development Corporation.

Rebecca Woodruff received her MA in the Art History and Museum Studies program in 2020. Rebecca is primarily interested in examining the long eighteenth century through the lenses of material culture, reception theory, and social history. She is now the Curator of History at Historic Columbia.