Jochen Wierich holds a dual appointment as Associate Professor at Aquinas College
and as Curator of Sculpture and Sculpture Exhibitions at Frederik Meijer Gardens &
Sculpture Park.
He studied Art History and American Studies at the Heinrich Heine University in Düsseldorf
and at the Goethe University of Frankfurt am Main and received his Ph.D. in American
Studies at the College of William & Mary in Virginia. His teaching appointments in
art history include Vanderbilt University, Whitman College, Free University in Berlin,
and Belmont University.
As a museum professional, he has worked at the Terra Museum of American Art in Chicago,
the Northwest Museum of Arts & Culture in Spokane, Cheekwood Botanical Garden and
Museum of Art in Nashville, and the Mississippi Museum of Art in Jackson.
In addition to a Terra Foundation Senior Visiting Fellowship in Berlin, Wierich had
pre- and post-doctoral fellowships at the Smithsonian Institution as well as Winterthur
Museum, Garden, and Library. His publications include two books published by Penn
State Press: Emanuel Leutze, Washington Crossing the Delaware, and American History
Painting (2012) and Internationalizing the History of American Art: Views (2009),
an anthology co-edited with Barbara Groseclose. His essays cover a range of topics
and artists in American art, including Richard Caton Woodville, Lilly Martin Spencer,
Emanuel Leutze, Winslow Homer, the Taos Society of Artists, The Eight, Winold Reiss,
and Plantation images in the American South. Areas of research interest are contemporary
sculpture, historiography of American art, museum studies, art of the American West
and American South, ethnography in art.
Selected Publications
Emanuel Leutze, Washington Crossing the Delaware and American History Painting (Penn State Press,
2012)
Internationalizing American Art History: Views. Co-editor with Barbara Groseclose. (Penn State Press, 2009). "
War Spirit at Home‚': Lilly Martin Spencer, Domestic Painting, and Artistic Hierarchy,"
Winterthur Portfolio (Spring 2002)
Chief Editor and Contributing Author, Picturing Mississippi, 1817-2017: Land of Plenty,
Pain, and Promise, exhibition catalogue (Mississippi Museum of Art and University
of Mississippi Press, 2017)
Chief Editor and Contributing Author, Jaume Plensa: Human Landscape, exhibition catalogue (Cheekwood Botanical Garden & Museum of Art, 2015)
"Woodville and the Düsseldorf School" in New Eyes on America: Richard Caton Woodville, exhibition catalogue (The Walters Art Museum and Yale University
Press, 2013), 39-50.
“Against the Current: Washington Crossing the Delaware and the End of History Painting,” in The Düsseldorfer School of Painting and Its International Influence, 1819 –1918. Bettina Baumgärtel, ed., (Museum Kunstpalast, Düsseldorf, 2011).