Biography
Mary-Ann Middelkoop is an Affiliated Lecturer in the Department of History of Art, Cambridge and a Researcher on the AHRC/DFG-funded project ‘The Restitution of Knowledge’ at the Pitt Rivers Museum as well as a Research Fellow in History of Art at St Peter’s College, Oxford. She completed her PhD ‘Art and Foreign Cultural Policy in Weimar Germany, 1917-1933’ at Peterhouse, the University of Cambridge in 2019. Prior to becoming a Researcher at the Pitt Rivers Museum, Mary-Ann was a Teaching Associate in Modern and Contemporary Art in the Department of History of Art, Cambridge, and Junior Research Fellow in History at Wolfson College, Cambridge, working on the project ‘A Thing of Fragile Beauty: Porcelain, War and Plunder in the Third Reich, 1939-1949’. She has previously worked as a researcher at the Commission for Looted Art in Europe, London.
Mary-Ann lectures in the Part I course 'The Meaning of Art', the Part IIA course ‘Approaches to the History of Art and Architecture’ and Part IIB course ‘The Display of Art’ and 'Politics of Display'. She also teaches on the MPhil in History of Art and Architecture.
Research
Mary-Ann's research interests include German Modernism, Weimar Culture and politics, Dada, Nazi-era looted art and restitution, and the history of African art and artefacts and punitive expeditions in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century. She takes a particular interest in the comparative history and theory of provenance research, Raubkunst and cultural ownership.
She is co-convenor of the DAAD Cambridge funded workshop series ‘Thinking Provenance, Thinking Restitution’ and co-founder with Dr Amy Tobin of the Cambridge Modern and Contemporary Art Seminar Series.
Publications
- Bianca Gaudenzi, Astrid Swenson and Mary-Ann Middelkoop (guest eds.), ‘The Restitution of Looted Art in the Twentieth Century: Transnational and Global Perspectives’, Special Issue of the Journal of Contemporary History Vol. 52, No. 3 (July, 2017).
- Christina von Hodenberg (ed.), Forum with contributions by Geoff Eley, Neil Gregor, Mary-Ann Middelkoop, Maiken Umbach, ‘Is There a British Approach to German History?’, Journal of Modern European History Vol. 14, No. 3 (2016), pp. 297-313.
- Mary-Ann Middelkoop, ‘A Wilsonian Moment? Dutch Nationalism and Belgian Territorial Claims in the Aftermath of World War I’, Dutch Crossing: Journal of Low Countries Studies, Vol. 34, No. 3 (November, 2010), pp. 195-214.
