Anne Higonnet

This information is accurate as of the fellowship year indicated for each fellow.

Anne Higonnet is a professor of art history at Barnard College of Columbia University and the author of several books and many essays on art since 1650, on childhood, and on collecting.

Higonnet is currently writing a book about the most sudden, extreme, and—as far as women were concerned—short revolution in clothing history. Thanks to a newly discovered archive of 1797–1804 fashion magazine plates and text, currently collected at https://stylerevolution.github.io/, Higonnet is able to ask how and why, for just one decade, women turned their underwear into outerwear, adopted Indian textiles, and invented the handbag—all while men elevated three-piece suits from country leisure to the business attire they still wear today.

Higonnet’s work has been supported by Getty, Guggenheim, and Social Science Research Council fellowships and by grants from the Andrew W. Mellon and Kress Foundations. She is a prize-winning teacher and has lectured widely, including at the MetLiveArts program of the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Most recently, she was on the advisory board of the Musée d’Orsay exhibition Black Models: From Géricault to Matisse, hailed in French national media as a breakthrough in the representation of race. Higonnet earned her PhD at Yale University.