I am a technical art historian with a specialisation in modern and contemporary painting practice and teach the MA Special Option in Art History "Painters at Work: Material Reinventions of a Medium, 1945 to Now."

I hold a BA in art history from Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität, Munich (1994), a Postgraduate Diploma in the Conservation of Easel Paintings from The Courtauld (1997) and a PhD in art technology from Technische Universität München (2004). Before joining The Courtauld, I worked as a researcher, paintings conservator and curator: I was a Senior Research Specialist at the Getty, Los Angeles (2015-17) and a paintings conservator at Tate (2013-14), the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York (2003-05), The Menil Collection, Houston (1998-2000), and at the Harvard Art Museums, Cambridge (1997-98). My curatorial and research experiences include collection management for private collectors in Europe, as well as appointments/grants as a Getty Conservation Guest Scholar (2021), Caroline Villers Research Fellow in Technical Art History at The Courtauld (2012-13), Associate Curator at Pinakothek der Moderne, Munich (2011-12), Assistant Fine Arts Director at the German Academy Villa Massimo in Rome (2009-10), and Postdoc Research Fellow at Bibliotheca Hertziana, Max-Planck-Institut für Kunstgeschichte, Rome (2005-7).

My publications explore the relationship between an artist’s subject, materials, and methods, for which I often interview artists. Current research focuses on collage (as nominator and contributor to Phaidon's upcoming Vitamin C+ volume, ed. Yuval Etgar), Pino Pascali and the Brazilian painter Eleonore Koch. I am the author of monographs on Palermo and Lucio Fontana, the co-editor and author of books on North American sculpture and drawing from the 1960s as well as Latin American art, and have written essays on the painting practices of a variety of contemporary European, North and South American artists. A new book project for Getty Publications examines the role of tools in contemporary painting and will include artists from Argentina, Austria, Brazil, China, France, Germany, Guyana, Hungary, Iran, Italy, Japan, Korea, Mexico, Nigeria, Spain, Ukraine, the US, and Zimbabwe.