Catherine Lusheck

Catherine Lusheck specializes in early modern European art and curatorial practice. Author of Rubens and the Eloquence of Drawing (Routledge, 2017), her research interests include Renaissance drawings culture, early modern visual rhetoric and the classical tradition, and artistic emulation and self-representation in the art of Peter Paul Rubens (Flemish, 1577-1640). Her current book project examines Leonardo's da Vinci's artistic and theoretical afterlife in Rubens's drawings. 

A recipient of the University’s Distinguished Teaching Award, Professor Lusheck teaches in USF’s Art History & Museum Studies program which she directed for six years, the Getty Honors College, the St. Ignatius Institute, and the M.A. in Museum Studies program that she helped found. She teaches a variety of undergraduate seminars in Renaissance and Baroque art, Rubens vs. Rembrandt, Early Modern Art & Science, and Early Jesuits arts, as well as Museum Studies and a graduate Curatorial Practicum. She regularly curates exhibitions in USF's Thacher Gallery and Donohue Rare Book Room along with her students. 

Professor Lusheck’s recent appointments include serving for three years as Chair of the Department of Art + Architecture, serving on the Arts Visioning Committee for USF’s new Ann Getty Institute of Art and Design, and as Arts Faculty Chair for the University’s Honors College. Her research has been supported at various junctures by the Rubeniaum (Antwerp, Belgium), the Jesuit Foundation, the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH), the Center for Advanced Study in the Visual Arts (CASVA), the Belgian-American Educational Foundation (BAEF), the Metropolitan Museum of Art, and the Getty. Most recently, she was a visiting scholar in the Department of Art & Archaeology at Princeton University.

• Peter Paul Rubens
• Leonardo da Vinci's Artistic Afterlife
• Early Modern Works on Paper
• Renaissance Humanism & the Classical Tradition
• Renaissance Art Theory

• Arts Representative (elected), Joint University Curriculum Committee (2022-25)
• Department Chair, Art + Architecture (2020-2024; on leave 2021-22)
• Program Director, Art History & Museum Studies (2023-24; 2014-19)
• Chair, Core Redesign Advisory Group (2023-2024)
• Inaugural Faculty Chair Arts, Getty Honors College (2018-21)
• Interim Academic Director, M.A. in Museum Studies (2017-18)
• NEH/Humanities Advisory Board (2010-2024)

• PhD, History of Art, University of California, Berkeley (December 2000)
• MA, History of Art, University of California, Berkeley (May 1992)
• BA, Political Science, magna cum laude, DePauw University (May 1987)

• Adjunct Faculty, Art History, Santa Clara University (2005-2008)
• Associate Curator, European Art, Crocker Art Museum (2003-2004)
• Fine Arts Specialist, Bonhams and Butterfields (2001-2002) 
• Chester Dale & Theodore Rousseau Pre-Doctoral Curatorial Fellow, Drawings, Metropolitan Museum of Art (1994-1995)
• Graduate Curatorial Intern, Department of European Drawings, J. Paul Getty Museum (1992-1993)
• Private Art Consultant (1992-2004)

• Princeton University,  Guest Scholar, Department of Art & Archaeology (2024-25)
• Rubenianum library and archives  (Antwerp, Belgium), Scholar-in-Residence (2022)
• Jesuit Foundation Research and Pedagogy Grants (2021, 2016)
• University of San Francisco Distinguished Teaching Award (2013)
• NEH Summer Institute Scholar (Leonardo da Vinci: Between Art & Science; dir. Francesca Fiorani), Florence, Italy (2012)
• Provost's Faculty Innovation Award, USF (2011-12)
• Center for Advanced Study in the Visual Arts (CASVA),  Robert H. and Clarice Smith Dissertation Fellow (1996-97)
• Belgian-American Educational Foundation (BAEF), Brussels/New Haven, Pre-Doctoral Fellow (1995-96)

Monograph

•  Rubens and the Eloquence of Drawing. Visual Culture in Early Modernity series, ed., Kelley Helmstutler di Dio. Aldershot/New York: Routledge/Ashgate, 2017

Book Chapters

• “Laboring Bodies, Laboring Artist: Rubens and the Virtues of Intellectual and Painterly Work.” In  Rubens in Italian Culture 1600-1608.  Eds. Raffaella Morselli and Cecilia Paolini. Rome: Viella, 2020: 247-271
• “Leonardo’s Brambles and their Afterlife in Rubens’s Studies of Nature.” In  Leonardo Studies, vol. 2: Leonardo da Vinci - Nature and Architecture. Eds. Constance Moffatt and Sara Taglialagamba. Leiden: Brill, 2019: 123-167

Reviews

• The Jesuit Church of Antwerp, by Ria Fabri and Piet Lombaerde, based on a manuscript by Frans Baudouin. Corpus Rubenianum Ludwig Burchard. London: Harvey Miller, 2017.  Renaissance Quarterly LXXIII, no. 1 (March 2020): 221-222
• Early Rubens, by Sasha Suda and Kirk Nickel. Art Gallery of Ontario, Toronto and FAMSF, San Francisco. Munich/London/New York: DelMonico Books, Prestel, 2019. CAA.reviews, December 2019
• Life of Christ Before the Passion, The Ministry of Christ, by Koen Bulckens. Corpus Rubenianum Ludwig Burchard, V, 2. London: Harvey Miller. Historians of Netherlandish Art online, March 2018
• St. Jacob’s Antwerp Art and Counter Reformation in Rubens’s Parish Church, by Jeffrey Muller. Brill’s Studies in Intellectual History 253; Brill’s Studies on Art, History, and Intellectual History 13. Leiden: Brill, 2016.  Renaissance Quarterly LXX/4 (Winter 2017): 1514-15

• Piranesi's Rome and the Classical Imaginary, Thacher Gallery, University of San Francisco, December 4, 2025 - February 15, 2026
• Stitching Communities & the AIDS Memorial Quilt. Thacher Gallery, University of San Francisco, December 1, 2022 - February 17, 2023
• Quiet Spaces: Picturing Sanctuary in the Illustrated Book. Thacher Gallery, University of San Francisco. November 29, 2018 – February 10, 2019
• The Depravities of War: Sandow Birk and the Art of Social Critique. Thacher Gallery, University of San Francisco. November 10, 2016 – February 29, 2017
• Mapping ‘The East’: Envisioning Asia in the Age of Exploration. Manresa Gallery (in conjunction with the Ricci Institute for East-West Studies), San Francisco, March 30 – May 22, 2016 (co-curated with Madeline E. Warner, Art History, B.A. ‘15)
• Reformations: Dürer & the New Age of Print. Thacher Gallery and the Donohue Rare Book Room, University of San Francisco, January 26 – February 22, 2015