Degrees:
Ph.D., Univ. of California, Berkeley
M.A., Goldsmiths, Univ. of London
B.A., Washington Univ. in St. Louis
C. Oliver O’Donnell is a historian of modern art and intellectual history with a particular focus on US-American traditions of modernity. He has taught at the Courtauld Institute of Art in London, at the University of Basel in Switzerland, and at St. John’s University in New York. At Trinity, he teaches a seminar on Impressionism and American Collecting, which is hosted by Hill-Stead Museum.
A recipient of research grants and fellowships from many institutions, he has been a Research Associate and Dissertation Supervisor at the Warburg Institute in London and a Postdoctoral Fellow at the Kunsthistorisches Institut in Florenz – Max-Planck-Institut. He is the author of Meyer Schapiro’s Critical Debates (Penn State Univ. Press, 2019), which was awarded the 2019 Willibald Sauerländler Prize from the Zentralinstitut für Kunstgeschichte in Munich, and Portraits of Empiricism: Art Histories from an Intellectual Tradition (Penn State Univ. Press, 2026). His ongoing research, which focuses on the Ashcan School of painting, is currently being supported by the NOMIS Foundation and the University of California, Berkeley, where is a Senior Research Fellow (remote).
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Modern art
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Art of the United States
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Art Criticism and Historiography
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History of Museums
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AHIS-361
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Seminar on Impressionism: Impressionism and American Collecting
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Ashcan painting
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Reception history
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Portraiture
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Pragmatism and Empiricism
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Nationalism and Empire
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Books
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Portraits of Empiricism: Art Histories from an Intellectual Tradition. (University Park: Penn State University Press, 2026).
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Meyer Schapiro’s Critical Debates: Art Through a Modern American Mind. (University Park: Penn State University Press, 2019).
Edited Volumes and Special Issues
- Ex-Artists in America," a section of Panorama: Journal of the Association of Historians of American Art, issue 10.1 (June 2024).
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Art History Before English: Negotiating a European Lingua Franca from Vasari to the Present, co-edited with Robert Brennan, Marco Mascolo, and Alessandro Nova (Milan: Officina Libraria, 2022).
Journal Articles
- "The Armory Show, Walt Kuhn, and Settler Modernism," Archives of American Art Journal vol. 64, no. 2 (Fall 2025).
- "Peirce, Bierstadt, and the Topographic Imagination in 19th-Century North America," The Art Bulletin vol.103, no.1 (June 2021).
- "Two Modes of Mid-Century Iconology," History of Humanities vol.3, no.1 (Spring 2018).
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- Morgan-Menil Fellowship, Morgan Library and Menil Collection, 2024 (declined).
- Willibald Sauerländer Award, Zentralinstitut für Kunstgeschichte, Munich, 2019.
- Postdoctoral Fellowship, Kunsthistorisches Institut in Florenz, Max-Planck-Institut, 2016.
- Postdoctoral Fellowship, Center for Cultural Analysis, Rutgers University, 2016 (declined).
- Outstanding Graduate Student Instructor Award, University of California, Berkeley, 2013.
- Losos Fellowship, Washington University in St. Louis, 2005.
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