In this partnered virtual event with The National Gallery, London, a panel of experts will discuss the development of both the Women and the Arts research strand at the National Gallery, Save Venice’s Women Artists of Venice (WAV) program, and the resulting initiatives and projects sharing new research about women in the arts. Featured speakers will include Dr. Diane Apostolos-Cappadona, Professor Emerita, Religious Art and Cultural History, Georgetown University; Dr. Susanna Avery-Quash, Lead Curator, The National Gallery, London; Melissa Conn, Director, Venice Office of Save Venice; and Dr. Tracy E. Cooper, Professor of Art History, Temple University.

Diane Apostolos-Cappadona is Professor Emerita of Religious Art and Cultural History and served as Haub Director for the Catholic Studies Program at Georgetown University. She received the Georgetown University Alumni Association Faculty Award for 2008 as well as both the Annual Award for Excellence in the Arts from The Newington-Cropsey Foundation and the Excellence in Teaching Faculty Award from Georgetown University in 2000. During 1996-97, she was a Senior Fellow at the Center for the Study of World Religions at Harvard University. Dr. Apostolos-Cappadona is the author of Mary Magdalene: A Visual History (2023), A Guide to Christian Art (2020), Encyclopedia of Women in Religious Art (1996); Dictionary of Christian Art (1994); and The Spirit and the Vision: The Influence of Christian Romanticism on the Development of 19th-century American Art (1995); and was guest editor and contributor to the special issue of Biblical Reception 5: Biblical Women in the Arts (2018).

Susanna Avery-Quash is Lead Curator, in charge of pre-1900 objects in the National Gallery’s Contextual Collection, and responsible for activities associated with the research strands, ‘Buying, Collecting and Display’ and ‘Art and Religion’ and the Women and the Arts Forum. Her research focuses on Sir Charles Eastlake, the first Director of the National Gallery and the history of the National Gallery, as well as wider histories of collecting and the art market. In terms of women and the arts projects, Susanna co-supervised the AHRC Collaborative Doctoral thesis with Birkbeck, University of London, of Dr Maria Alambritis, ‘Modern Mistresses on the Old Masters: women and the writing of art history, 1860–1915’ (2020). She co-edited the special issue ‘Old Masters – Modern Women’ in Birkbeck’s open-access journal, 19. Interdisciplinary Studies in the Long Nineteenth Century (2019), and co-authored ‘Two hundred years of women benefactors at the National Gallery: an exercise in mapping uncharted territory’, The Journal of Art Historiography (December 2020).

Melissa Conn is the Director of the Venice office of Save Venice and has been with the organization since 1989. With 35 years of experience in the field of Venetian art history and restoration, Melissa oversees all of the organization’s conservation projects in Venice and is responsible for Save Venice’s “Women Artists of Venice” conservation track. Conn regularly gives lectures in Italy and the United States on Save Venice’s projects. A long-time resident of Venice, she was born and raised in Ohio, and earned her B.A. in Art History from Wake Forest University in Winston-Salem, North Carolina.

Tracy E. Cooper specializes in Venetian and early modern cultural history and theory, with particular interests in architecture and urbanism, space and circulation and patronage and collecting studies. As a member of the board of directors for Save Venice, Inc. she is actively involved in conservation efforts and directs the research track Women Artists of Venice. She is best known for her award-winning book, Palladio’s Venice: Architecture and Society in a Renaissance Republic (Yale University Press]), which has had major interdisciplinary impact and been widely reviewed since publishing.

Image: Artemisia Gentileschi,  (1593 – 1654 or later), Self Portrait as Saint Catherine of Alexandria, about 1615-17. Oil on canvas, 71.4 × 69 cm. National Gallery.