Dr. Craig Hanson
Education
- MA, The University of Chicago
- PhD, The University of Chicago
Professional Experience
Associate Director of the Calvin Honors and Collegiate Scholars Programs.
Academic Interests
As an art historian, Craig Hanson is interested in how past and present interact in paintings, prints, decorative arts, buildings, and gardens. His research ranges from intersections of art, medicine, and antiquarianism (ca. 1600 to 1800); to the reception of rhinoceroses in early modern Europe; to French and British ideas about Chinese architecture. Central concerns include: collecting, patronage, national identity, art and fashion, and the history of taste.
Closer to home, Craig's intellectual passions include Frank Lloyd Wright and Bill Fyfe, the architect responsible for Calvin University's 1959 master plan who studied with Wright in the early 1930s as a fellow at Taliesin in Wisconsin. Craig is particularly enamored of historic houses and how they are interpreted for public audiences. He is a docent at the Sophie and Meyer May house here in Grand Rapids, one of the last Prairie style houses Wright designed (in 1909).
Professional Services
Member of the editorial board for J18: Journal of Eighteenth-Century Art and Culture (2016–present).
Founding editor of Enfilade, an online, serial newsletter for the Historians of Eighteenth-Century Art and Architecture with 1800 subscribers and 9,000+ hits each month (2009–present).
President of the Historians of British Art (2015–17); after serving as Treasurer, First Vice-President and Second Vice-President (2009–15).
American Society for Eighteenth-Century Studies Travel Grants Committee (2017), chair of the committee (2018).
Field Editor of Eighteenth-Century Art for caa.reviews (2012–16).
Reader for the College Board’s Advanced Placement Art History Exam (2006, 2008).
Book Reviewer for Choice: Current Reviews for Academic Libraries (2006–present).
Awards
Fellow of the Society of Antiquaries of London (2012–present).
Research Fellow at The Huntington Library, Art Museum, and Botanical Gardens in San Marino, California (January 2020).
Stewart Rosenblum Scholarship for tuition for the Attingham Royal Studies Program (2012).
The Paul Mellon Centre for Studies in British Art Research Support Grant (2011).
Dick Button Scholarship for tuition for the Attingham Study Program: The Dutch Historic House (2010).
McGregor Fellowship from Calvin (2009).
NEH Summer Stipend for From Leiden to London: Anglo-Dutch Relations and the Arts in Early Modern England (2007).
Historians of British Art Publication Grant to assist with illustrations fees for The English Virtuoso (2007).
Freeman Foundation Faculty Development Grant for travel in Asia in preparation for teaching an introductory course on Chinese art (2005).
Royal Oak Foundation Scholarship for tuition for the Attingham Summer School for the Study of British Country Houses (1999).
Edward Ryerson Fellowship in Archaeology from The University of Chicago for tuition for the summer program at the American School of Classical Studies in Athens (1998).
Publications
