Paul Staiti

  • Professor of Fine Arts on the Alum Foundation
Paul Staiti, Faculty

Paul Staiti teaches courses in Western art, American art, history painting, and the history of cinema. He has published work on Samuel F.B. Morse, William Michael Harnett, and Winslow Homer, and has co-curated an exhibition on John Singleton Copley at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York and the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston. His 2018 book, Of Arms and Artists tells the story of five painters—Copley, Benjamin West, Charles WIllson Peale, John Trumbull, and Gilbert Stuart—whose lives and careers were radically altered by the American Revolution. His new book, The Killing of Jane McCrea: An American Tragedy on the Revolutionary Frontier, charts the emergence of the most famous female martyr of the American Revolution. A new project involves the mammoth picture that Copley painted on the subject of the British defeat of the Spanish at Gibraltar; the picture was made for the Corporation of London.

Areas of Expertise

American art; cultural history; film studies

Education

  • Ph.D., University of Pennsylvania
  • M.A., University of Massachusetts
  • B.A., University of Michigan

Happening at Mount Holyoke

Recent Campus News

The placement of Donald Trump’s presidential image invites “heated conversation,” says Mount Holyoke art professor Paul Staiti.

View the new paintings of Barack and Michelle Obama through the eyes of 91Ƶappƽ Paul Staiti, an expert on presidential portraits.

Art historian and portrait expert Paul Staiti says the Obamas’ selection of African-American artists for their official portraits is a political choice.

Recent Honors

Has been named to the Advisory Board of the Gilder-Lehrman Institute of American History.

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