About
Margaret Samu works on art and design of the Russian Empire in a global context. Her work has been published in scholarly journals such as The Art Bulletin, Iskusstvoznanie, Vivliofika, Nineteenth-Century Studies, and Experiment, as well as a volume she co-edited, From Realism to the Silver Age (Northern Illinois University Press, 2014). She has received grants from the Mellon Foundation, the Fulbright Program, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, and the Library of Congress, among other institutions. Her current book project is titled Russian Venus: The Female Nude in Art and Culture of the Imperial Era.
After serving as president of the Society of Historians of East European, Eurasian, and Russian Art and Architecture (SHERA) from 2013 until 2015, Margaret now serves on the Organizing Committee of the 19v Working Group on Russian Culture, Literature, and the Arts. Based in New York City, she teaches at Parsons School of Design and lectures at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Margaret earned her Ph.D. at New York University’s Institute of Fine Arts after receiving her Bachelor’s degree from Wellesley College in Art History and French.
Featured Work
From Realism to the Silver Age: New Studies in Russian Artistic Culture. Essays in Honor of Elizabeth Kridl Valkenier
This volume of thirteen essays presents rigorous new research by western and Russian scholars on Russian art of the nienteenth and early-twentieth centuries. More than three decades after the publication of Elizabeth Valkenier's pioneering monograph, Russian Realist Art, this impressive collection showcases the latest methodology and subjects of inquiry, expanding the parameters of what has become an area of enormous intellectual and popular appeal. Major artists including Ilia Repin, Valentin Serov, and Wassily Kandinsky are considered afresh, as are the Peredvizhnik and Mir iskusstva movements and the Abramtsevo community. The book also breaks new ground to embrace subjects such as Russian graphic satire and children's book illustration, as well as stimulating aspects of patronage and display.
Collectively, the essays include a range of approaches, from close textual readings to institutional critique. They also develop major themes inspired by Valkenier's work, among them: the emergence and evolution of cultural institutions, the development of aesthetic discourse and artistic terminology, debates between the Academy of Arts and its challengers, art criticism and the Russian press, and the resonance of various forms of nationalism within the art world. These and other questions engage multiple disciplines—those of art history, Slavic Russian studies, and cultural history, among others—and promise to fuel a vibrant and ascendant field.
