Dr. Lauren S. Weingarden, Emeritus, Ph.D., M.A., B.A.
Dr. Lauren S. Weingarden was a Professor of Art History at Florida State University in Tallahassee, Florida, United States, from 1983–2020. She became Professor Emerita in 2021. Weingarden specializes in modern and contemporary art, architecture, critical theory, and word-and-image studies.
Weingarden has been granted the title Professor Emeritus after 37 years of innovative and inspiring teaching. Read the announcement article here: “Add Emeritus to Professor Weingarden’s Titles”.
Research and Publications
Weingarden is the author of several books and articles on the late nineteenth-century American architect Louis H. Sullivan. She has published and presented extensively in the United States and internationally. Her single-authored books include Louis H. Sullivan: The Banks (MIT Press, 1987), Louis H. Sullivan: A System of Architectural Ornament (Wasmuth and The Art Institute of Chicago, 1990), and Louis H. Sullivan and a 19th–Century Poetics of Naturalized Architecture (Ashgate, 2009).
Weingarden has also authored numerous articles on nineteenth-century French modernity, as defined by Charles Baudelaire and represented by Edouard Manet. She is currently completing a book based on this research titled, A Neuroarthistory of the Painters of Modern Life: Embodying Baudelairean Modernity (Routledge). She has also extended a Baudelairean trajectory to Installation art. In 2011–12 she received a Fulbright Core Scholar grant for her project, “Trajectories of Baudelairean Modernity: Brazil’s Inhotim in Context,” the topic of the seminar she concurrently taught at the Federal University of Minas Gerais. Dr. Weingarden is currently developing an experiential model of neuroaesthetics. This model extends scientific brain research to an aesthetic of rupture and the embodied, temporal dimension of experiencing Installation art. In her book, A Neuroarthistory of the Painters of Modern Life, Weingarden adapts this model to the nineteenth-century experience of rupture and fragmentation, as codified in Baudelaire’s “The Painter of Modern Life” (1862), embodied during Baron Haussmann’s demolition and rebuilding of Paris (1852-70), and represented in the paintings of Baudelaire’s artistic followers.
“[In Louis H. Sullivan and a 19th–Century Poetics of Naturalized Architecture]. . .Weingarden convincingly argues that Sullivan was indeed a great deal more than the functionalist he was typecast as by the middle of the twentieth century. . .Weingarden successfully refutes his rationalist-mechanistic tag, illuminating the dense and diverse motives that contributed to modern American architecture.”
Debra Schafter
Professor, Department of Fine Arts, San Antonio College
Fellowships and Grants
Weingarden’s research grants and fellowships also include the Dedalus Foundation Senior Research Fellowship for Studies in Modernism, Visiting Scholar at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, NJ, and the J. Paul Getty Postdoctoral Fellowship in Art History and the Humanities, held at the University of Michigan. In 2010 she held the IEAT/FUNDEP Chair in Humanities, Letters and Arts, at the Institute for Advanced Transdisciplinary Studies, Federal University of Minas Gerais, in recognition of her expertise in Word & Image Studies. Since 1990 Weingarden has served on the Advisory Board of the International Association of Word & Image Studies (IAWIS). More recently, she has served on the executive Committees of Nineteenth-Century French Studies (NCFS; 2018-21) and Interdisciplinary Nineteenth-Century Studies (INCS; 2018-2021).
Teaching and Study Abroad
While at FSU Weingarden offered undergraduate and graduate courses in 19th- and 20th-century art and architecture, Word & Image Studies, methods of art history, Installation art and neuroaesthetics. She has served as director of fourteen PhD dissertations and twenty Master’s theses. Weingarden was an active contributor to FSU’s International Programs. She taught art history and museum studies at the FSU London Study Center. She also directed the FSU study abroad Paris Art & Culture program, in which she taught “Paris Avant-Garde” and “Museums of Paris.”
“I want [my students] to have fun learning! I want to share my passion and love for art history and the thrill of going to the museums. I always tell the students, “I want to teach you enough that, when you go to the museum with your family or friends, people are going to stand around listening to YOU because YOU know how to describe that painting!”
Lauren Weingarden
“My academic life has been international! But I had advantages here [at FSU] that I could have had nowhere else – I could teach what I wanted to teach, be a part of growing the Study Abroad programs, and take advantage of grants and travel.“
LAUREN WEINGARDEN
Dr. Lauren S. Weingarden, Emeritus, Ph.D. 