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Cultural historian Margaretta Lovell works at the intersection of history, art/architectural history, and anthropology. She holds the Jay D. McEvoy, Jr., Chair in the History of American Art at the University of California Berkeley and studies material culture, painting, architecture and design in England, France and North America from the 17th century to the present.

She received her Ph.D. in American studies at Yale University and has taught as a visiting professor in the History of Art departments at Stanford, Harvard and the University of Michigan. Having begun her teaching career at Yale, she has also held the Dittman Chair in American Studies at the College of William and Mary and the Ednah Root Curatorial Chair for American Art at the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco.

Her most recent book, “Painting the Inhabited Landscape: Fitz H. Lane and the Global Reach of Antebellum America” concerns an artist deeply embedded in antebellum New England. It investigates the nature of his artmaking within the global perspectives of his culture’s links with China, Puerto Rico, Ireland and California. 

Her current research projects include an object biography of a pair of John Singleton Copley paintings involving global peregrinations of the Scottish diaspora in the wake of the defeat at Culloden and a book on the transatlantic Gilded Age with an emphasis on artists, photographers and architects whose work critiqued the dominant culture. She has also studied the work of painter Wayne Thiebaud and has investigated links between popular culture and photography today.

Underwritten by the Hixson-Lied Endowment with additional support from other sources, the series enriches the culture of the state by providing a way for Nebraskans to interact with luminaries in the fields of art, art history and design. Each visiting artist or scholar spends one to three days on campus to meet with classes, participate in critiques and give demonstrations.