Caroline M. Riley, Ph.D.
Caroline Riley has served as Research Associate in the Art and Art History Department at the University of California, Davis, since 2019.
She is currently working on her next book, Thérèse Bonney and the Power of Global Syndicated Photography (under contract at the University of California Press). Her first book was MoMA Goes to Paris in 1938: Building and Politicizing American Art (University of California Press, 2023)
Caroline has taught courses on contemporary art, modern architecture, decorative arts, the cultural history of museums, and design history. She specializes in the visual culture of the 18th century to the present, with a focus on Europe and the Americas. Her research spans topics including Pictorialist photography, 19th-century portrait painters, American craft, American vernacular art in Paris, the formation of the American art canon, and the politicization of American art in Europe.
Her first book, MoMA Goes to Paris in 1938: Building and Politicizing American Art (University of California Press, 2023), examines the powerful role museums play in constructing national art historical narratives, focusing on MoMA's Three Centuries of American Art exhibition in Paris. Her second book, Thérèse Bonney and the Power of Global Syndicated Photography, will be the first comprehensive study of Thérèse Bonney’s (1894–1978) career, exploring the impact of transportation innovations on the spread of modernism, modernity, and global news between 1920 and 1955. The book has received nine external grants and is under contract with the University of California Press.
Over the past five years, Caroline has been awarded five consecutive postdoctoral academic research fellowships. Most recently, she served as a National Endowment for the Humanities Fellow (2023–24). She has also held the Terra Postdoctoral Fellowship at the Smithsonian American Art Museum (2019–20), the Judith B. and Burton P. Resnick Postdoctoral Fellowship at the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum (2020–21), the John W. Kluge Center Fellowship at the Library of Congress (2021–22), and a NEH Long-Term Fellowship at the New York Public Library (2022–23).
Caroline has served as Co-Chair of Photography Network and on several committees, including the College Art Association's Services to Historians of Visual Arts Committee. She has been a Board Member for the journal Panorama, on the Board of the Association of Historians of American Art and served on an external fellowship review committee. Additionally, she has peer-reviewed submissions for Bloomsbury Publishing, AfterImage, Feminist Studies, The Journal of Curatorial Studies, The Journal of Transnational American Studies, and Word & Image.