Lisa Reilly

Education

Institute of Fine Arts, New York University, PhD in Art History
Centre for Medieval Studies, York University, Master of Arts in Medieval Studies
Vassar College, Bachelor of Arts in Economics

Biography

Lisa Reilly's chief research interest is in medieval visual culture. Her most recent book, The Invention of Norman Visual Culture: Art, Politics, and Dynastic Ambition, published by Cambridge University Press, establishes a new interpretive paradigm for the eleventh and twelfth-century art and architecture of the Norman world in France, England, and Sicily She and Kevin Murphy co-edited a collection of essays, Skyscraper Gothic, which was published by UVA press which led to a related exhibit at the Fralin Museum in fall 2020. Lisa Reilly has previously published books on Peterborough Cathedral and Vassar College (with colleague Karen Van Lengen).  She is currently writing a Corpus Vitrearum volume on the stained glass of the late medieval parish church, St. Michael le Belfrey, together with Mary Shepard. Ms. Reilly is a leading early user of digital humanities technology. She was a fellow at the Institute for Advanced Technology in the Humanities at the University of Virginia (2006-08). Her research project investigated the medieval design process using digital analysis. More recently, she has been overseeing a project analyzing the letters of the Anne Spencer House and Garden Museum which is creating a database of these unedited letters as well as a digital project representing how they inform us about the vibrant community of Black intellectuals and artists who gathered at the poet's house. 

In 2018 she was awarded the Jefferson Scholars Foundation Award for Excellence in Teaching. Ms. Reilly held the NEH/Horace Goldsmith Distinguished Teaching Chair of Art and Architectural History (1999-2002) and frequently offers workshops on teaching. She was awarded a hybrid challenge grant by the Office of the President to redesign the architectural history survey using digital tools. Students in her course On Hajj with Ibn Jubayr: Reconstructing the 12th Century Mediterranean, created digital exhibitions using Neatline.   “The Visible Past," a graduate course, which is part of  the Digital Humanities (DH) certificate, explored what was visible at different historical moments throughout medieval Europe through a study of textual and visual evidence from the past with the aim of considering how more localized antique remains and their presentation may have influenced art and architectural production. Students produced digital projects using Storymaps to present their research some of which have been posted to the public site, which is in the early stages of development. She has also the required digital humanities course for M.A. students in architectural history. In spring 2017 she taught an innovative new course, Strategies of Interpretation: Highland in which an interdisciplinary group of students developed interpretation proposals for James Monroe’s house, Highland. Together with Matthew McLendon, director and chief curator at the Fralin Museum of Art , she offered a course in spring 2020 on museum collecting with the support of a fellowship from the Jefferson Trust.