I teach art history at St. Francis College, in Brooklyn, NY. My research interests include public art, and American art and material culture.
I wrote a book on World War I memorials, Sculpting Doughboys: Memory, Gender, and Taste in America’s World War I Memorials (2013), and articles and essays on World War I memorials, public art, and the domestic display of FDR portraits. I am on the editorial board of the journal Public Art Dialogue, which I co-edited for four years (2017-2020). I edited a volume, Teachable Monuments: Using Public Art to Spark Dialogue and Confront Controversy, with Sierra Rooney and Harriet F. Senie (March 2021; paperback, November 2022). I am currently working on a book, “At Home with Political Portraits: Photographs of the Domestic Display of United States Presidents” (under contract with Lexington Books).
At St. Francis College, I teach art history and American studies to undergraduate non-majors and I chair the Interdisciplinary Studies and the Arts department. My courses include American Art, Art in NYC, Public Art, American Culture and Conflict, and Art of Social Change. I especially enjoy bringing my students to museums, galleries, archives, artists’ estates, artists’ studios, and sites of public art around the city. I have written about teaching in two essays, including “(In)famous: Contemporary Lessons from History’s Heroes,” which is about teaching the two Henry Ward Beecher sculptures in Brooklyn Heights. The essay appears as a chapter in the Routledge Companion to Art in the Public Realm (2020) edited by Cameron Cartiere and Leon Tan.
My book reviews appear in a number of publications, including Woman’s Art Journal, Panorama: Journal of the Association of Historians of American Art, and the Journal of American History.
Contact me at jwingate@sfc.edu.