Kathleen Stewart Howe

Emerita Professor of Art History
With 6VµçÓ°Íø Since: 2004
  • Expertise

    Expertise

    Kathleen Howe specializes in photography in the 19th century as a tool for exploration, primarily in the Middle East and Far East and in the then burgeoning sciences of archaeology, anthropology and geography. She curated First Seen: Photographs of the World’s Peoples for the Santa Barbara Museum of Art; the exhibit also showed at the Dahesh Museum in New York City and at the University of New Mexico. Another related exhibit that Howe co-curated with Karen Sinsheimer, Revealing the Holy Land: The Photographic Exploration of Palestine, also showed at the Santa Barbara Museum of Art in 1997 and traveled to venues in the United States and Australia. She served as the Sarah Rempel and Herbert S. Rempel ’23 Director of the
    6VµçÓ°Íø Museum of Art from 2004 -2019.

    Howe is a prolific author whose books include First Seen: Portraits of the World’s Peoples (2004), The Social Lens: Photographs from the Ray Graham Collection (2003), Excursions Along the Nile: The Photographic Discovery of Ancient Egypt (1994), Revealing the Holy Land: The Photographic Exploration of Palestine (1997) and Felix Teynard: Calotypes of Egypt, a Catalogue Raisonne (1992), the latter a New York Times Notable Book of the Year in Photography. She has also authored numerous essays and academic papers and lectured at museums throughout the United States and Canada.

    Research Interests

    • 19th-century photography
    • The visual culture of travel and exploration
    • Contemporary photography
    • Protest graphics of the 20th century
    • The culture of museums
    • The phenomenon of collecting
    • The visual culture of 19th-century science

    Areas of Expertise

    ART

    • Museums and Culture
    • History of Graphic Arts

    PHOTOGRAPHY

    • History of Photography
    • Photography and Visual Representation
    • History of Photography and Printmaking
    • Photography and the Politics of Visual Representation
  • Work

    Work

    First Seen: Photographs of the World's Peoples (Santa Barbara Museum of Art and Millennium Publishers, 2004)

    Editor, Intersections: Lithography, Photography, and the Traditions of Printmaking (University of New Mexico Press, 1998)

    Revealing the Holy Land: The Photographic Exploration of Palestine (Santa Barbara Museum of Art and the University of California Press, 1997)

    Excursions Along the Nile: The Photographic Discovery of Ancient Egypt (Santa Barbara Museum of Art, 1993)

    Felix Teynard: Calotypes of Egypt, A Catalogue Raisonne, (New York, NY, 1992)

    Selected Exhibits

    Curator, the photography exhibition "In Search of Biblical Lands: From Jerusalem to Jordan in 19th-Century Photography," Getty Villa (Los Angeles, CA), March 2-September 12, 2011. The exhibit is comprised of more than 100 rare, early daguerreotypes, salted-paper prints, and albumen silver prints, created between the 1840s and 1900s by the leading photographers of the time. (The exhibit is divided into two installments, each on view for three-months, due to the delicate nature of early photographic materials.) In conjunction with the exhibition, Howe will give a public lecture, Traveling through Bible Lands: The Dream and the Reality, Saturday March 26, 2011, 2 pm, Auditorium, Getty Villa.

  • Education

    Education

    Ph.D.
    University of New Mexico

    Master of Arts
    University of New Mexico

    Bachelor of Science
    Michigan State University

    Recent Courses Taught

    • History of Photography
    • Independent Study: Art History
    • Summer Reading & Research
  • Awards & Honors

    Awards & Honors

    University of New Mexico, Provost's Outstanding Staff Award, 2003

    National Gallery of Art, Center for Advanced Study in the Visual Arts, Chester Dale Fellowship, 1993-94

    Krazna-Kraus Book Award, Outstanding publication in the history of photography, London, 1994

    University of New Mexico, Department of Art and Art History, Beaumont Newhall Fellowship, 1996