PhD in Art History

Rachel Vorsanger

Rachel Vorsanger (she/her) studies modern art from Europe and the United States. Her research examines the role of gender and displacement in the works of women abstract artists with a focus on Madrid, Barcelona, and New York City as sites of international art making from the late nineteenth to the mid-twentieth centuries.    

She graduated summa cum laude, Phi Beta Kappa from The George Washington University in 2011 and received her Master’s in Art History and Archaeology from the Institute of Fine Arts at New York University in 2017. For three years between these degrees, Rachel lived in Spain where she taught English to school students and working professionals, and conducted collections research at the Picasso Museum Barcelona. She also achieved an advanced level of Spanish fluency, obtaining a C1 Level Language Diploma from Spain’s Ministry of Education. 

Rachel’s professional experience includes object-based and archival research and collections and archives management, most recently at the Betty Parsons Foundation in Manhattan and while interning at the Barnes Foundation in Philadelphia. She compiled and edited the Betty Parsons Catalogue Raisonné which was published online in July 2022, and her forthcoming article about Edith Dimock will be published by the Barnes in 2024. 

As a scholarly extension of her professional work at these cultural institutions, Rachel’s research aims to preserve, contextualize, and promote the legacies of historically marginalized artists. 
 

MA, Art History and Archaeology, Institute of Fine Arts at New York University, 2017 
BA, The George Washington University, 2011 

Primary Advisor: Alpesh Patel, PhD