Oliver Wunsch
Associate Professor, 18th and 19th Century Art
Biography
Oliver Wunsch’s 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 “aesthetic redemption” 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.