Ert History: Episode 1

The St.Claire presents Ert History.  For this ongoing video segment, art historian, Nicole Restaino, will bring her academic and aesthetic eye to works of art that live outside the museum and in the heart of the public sphere.  Whether it is a painting in a Denny’s or a sculpture in a hotel lobby, Restaino will reconnect these pieces of visual “muzak” to the lineage of themes and ideas running through art history and interpret their role in their public homes. 

Nicole Restaino is an art historian and arts administrator with experience in museums and non-profits in New York City, Philadelphia, Boston, and Providence, RI. She currently runs the Beyond the Page cultural programming series at Temple University Libraries, and serves as a researcher, writer and co-curator for the library’s rotating series of exhibitions. Her research focuses on art and its intersections with its public(s)-the ways that aesthetics are interpreted through criticism, exhibition, market transaction and even popular culture, and how art intersects with/creates social and political meanings, particularly those generated by public display. Her daily work as an arts administrator and ongoing scholarly pursuits give her particular insights to the politics, theories, and practical administration of art and culture.