Katherine Smith

Katherine Smith is Professor of Art History at Agnes Scott College in Decatur/Atlanta, GA, where she has taught courses in modern and contemporary art and architecture since 2003. Her approach to teaching draws directly on the interdisciplinary nature of her research, which focuses on thinking across media to demonstrate how the skills and content of art history can help us respond to and intervene in our current landscapes—geographical, political, cultural, and intellectual.

Most of Smith’s projects have probed intersections in American art and architecture from the 1960s to the present, with emphases on sculpture and urbanism. Her publications address the influence of pop art on architects Robert Venturi and Denise Scott Brown’s built and planned projects, pedagogical practices, and theoretical writings and consider the position of Claes Oldenburg's sculptures in discourses on public art, contemporary architecture, and urban design. She has lectured on these topics at conferences internally and written articles for Public Art Dialogue and Archives of American Art Journal and book chapters for Eyes That Saw (Scheidegger & Spiess, 2020) and Relearning from Las Vegas (University of Minnesota Press, 2008). Her first book, The Accidental Possibilities of the City: Claes Oldenburg Urbanism in Postwar America, will be published by University of California Press in 2021.

Smith holds a Master’s and doctorate from the Institute of Fine Arts, New York University and an undergraduate degree from the University of Georgia, all in the history of art. She lives in Decatur with her husband and two sons, and enjoys following their burgeoning interests in architecture and their developing talents in photography. Her family enjoys visiting Chicago and New York at every opportunity and exploring each city’s art institutions, outdoor sculptures, and public buildings.