Laura Coyle: Universal Patriot

Laura Coyle's talk explores the reasons for the widespread popularity of Joan of Arc's image in the United States between the 1890s and 1914. She will discuss how individuals and groups created visual and literary representations of Joan of Arc to achieve a variety of social,political, and economic ends, using as examples images related to Mark Twain's novel, Personal Recollections of Joan of Arc, the American Suffrage Movement, Ringling Brothers Circus, and the outbreak of World War I.
Laura Coyle is Curator of European Art at the Corcoran Gallery of Art (Washington), overseeing a collection of more than 1,000 works in various media from Greek antiquities to Picasso paintings. A scholar of 19th- and early 20th-century European art, her special interest is in European post-Impressionism. She has published her research on Vincent van Gogh, Henri Matisse, Joan Miró, Portuguese modernism and the Armory Show, and American and European still-life painting, and she is completing her dissertation on the still-life paintings of Vincent van Gogh.

Her exhibitions for the Corcoran include an extensive presentation of the museum’s William A. Clark Collection, Amadeo de Souza Cardoso’s paintings (c. 1906-1918), Joan Miró’s painted sculpture and Italian Renaissance ceramics. She is currently organizing a major exhibition on the image of Joan of Arc in French and American art.

Laura Coyle expects to receive a Ph.D. from Princeton University (2005); she holds an M.A. from Williams College and a B.A. from Georgetown University.

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