Annelise K. Madsen

Annelise K. Madsen, Gilda and Henry Buchbinder Associate Curator, Arts of the Americas, joined the Art Institute of Chicago in 2011 and specializes in US painting, sculpture, and visual culture. She is particularly interested in elevating historical women artists—studying artworks in the permanent collection, stewarding acquisitions, developing exhibitions and programming, and presenting new research in an effort to recover and revalue the contributions and stories of female makers. With Sarah Kelly Oehler, Annelise is working on the forthcoming exhibition Georgia O’Keeffe: “My New Yorks” (2024–25). She is also preparing an exhibition on Theresa Bernstein. In 2018 she curated John Singer Sargent and Chicago’s Gilded Age and authored its accompanying catalogue. She co-curated America after the Fall: Painting in the 1930s (2016–17) and Art and Appetite: American Painting, Culture, and Cuisine (2013–14). In addition to exhibition catalogues, Annelise has contributed essays to numerous publications, including Women Building History: Public Art at the 1893 Columbian Exposition (2011), American Art, and Winterthur Portfolio. In 2014–17 she served on the board of the Association of Historians of American Art. She holds a PhD in art history from Stanford University and a BA from Washington University in St. Louis.
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Bessie Potter Vonnoh, Trailblazing Chicago Sculptor
Curator Annelise K. Madsen remembers the career of the turn of the 20th-century sculptor, her training and robust support in Chicago, and her evolution from working in plaster to casting her pieces in bronze.
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Multiple Modernisms in the Americas: Old Favorites and New Stories
Four curators share their favorite elements of the newly reimagined galleries and the deeper, richer, more entwined narratives they tell.
Elizabeth McGoey, Andrew James Hamilton, Annelise K. Madsen, and Sarah Kelly Oehler -
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Fernand Lungren, Illuminated: In the Café and the City of Lights
Curator Annelise K. Madsen sheds lights on an American artist who captured the spirit of a changing Paris.
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Air as Sustenance: Four Artworks That Celebrate Breath
Four writers select works from four continents in an exploration of the involuntary but essential act of taking in air.
Madhuvanti Ghose, Annelise K. Madsen, Carl Fuldner, and Janet M. Purdy -
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Stilled Life: The Hands and Face of Abraham Lincoln by Leonard Volk
Curator Annelise K. Madsen ponders how the life casts of Abraham Lincoln’s face and hands—objects with an uncanny presence—offer an opportunity to rethink and reimagine our collective past.
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In Good Company: Theresa Bernstein’s The Milliners
Curator Annelise K. Madsen discusses a painting by an artist whose large, bold pictures drew uncommon attention when first displayed.
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Cassatt’s Modern Vision of the Everyday: The Child’s Bath
Curator Annelise K. Madsen explores how Mary Cassatt created one of the era’s most recognizable icons.
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Redefining American Art: Scraping the Sky in Gallery 271
Our trio of American art curators continues our tour through the reinstalled galleries.
Sarah Kelly Oehler, Elizabeth McGoey, and Annelise K. Madsen -
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Reconfiguring American Art: Gazelles in Gallery 272
There were multiple approaches to experiments leading up to modernism.
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Rethinking American Art: Swooning in Gallery 273
A gallery reinstallation that has been years in the planning and the subject of countless hours of conversations and thought.
Sarah Kelly Oehler, Elizabeth McGoey, and Annelise K. Madsen -
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To Sargent, Forever on the Go
Annelise K. Madsen