All People

Kay Wells

  • Associate Professor, American Art and Architecture, Art History

Education

  • PhD, History of Art, University of Southern California
  • MA, History of Art, University of Wisconsin-Madison
  • BA, History of Art, Barnard College, Columbia University

Teaching Schedule

Course Num Title Meets
ARTHIST 102-401 Renaissance to Modern Art and Architecture TR 11:30am-12:20pm
ARTHIST 102-601 Renaissance to Modern Art and Architecture T 10:30am-11:20am
ARTHIST 102-602 Renaissance to Modern Art and Architecture T 12:30pm-1:20pm
ARTHIST 102-603 Renaissance to Modern Art and Architecture R 10:30am-11:20am
ARTHIST 102-604 Renaissance to Modern Art and Architecture R 12:30pm-1:20pm
ARTHIST 353-201 American Art: Colonial Period - 1870 No Meeting Pattern
ARTHIST 353G-201 American Art: Colonial Period - 1870 No Meeting Pattern

Courses Taught

  • ARTHIST 102 - Renaissance to Modern Art and Architecture
  • ARTHIST 250 - Introduction to American Art
  • ARTHIST 368 - History of Modern Design
  • ARTHIST 353 - American Art: Colonial Period-1870
  • ARTHIST 354 - American Art: 1870 - Present
  • ARTHIST 355 - American Folk Art
  • ARTHIST 356 - American Architecture
  • ARTHIST 462 - Frank Lloyd Wright
  • ARTHIST 501 - Colloquium in Method and Theory
  • ARTHIST 750 - Revival! Visualizing the American Past
  • ARTHIST 750 - Japonisme—Japan and America in Artistic Encounter

Research Interests

  • American art and architecture
  • Modern design, craft, and decorative arts
  • Material and visual culture studies
  • Politics of artistic revivals

 

 

Books

Wells, K. L. H. Uncanny Revivals: Designing an American Identity. Yale University Press, 2026. 
Wells, K. L. H. Weaving Modernism: Postwar Tapestry between Paris and New York. Yale University Press, 2019. 

Selected Publications

Wells, K. L. H. "Publishing the Index of American Design." Source: Notes in the History of Art 44, no. 3 (Spring 2025): 152-162.
Wells, K. L. H. "Looming Large: Presentations of textile art in Washington, DC; New York; and Chicago." Arforum 63, no. 1 (September 2024): 138-145.
Wells, K. L. H. "Indexing Whiteness to American Design." American Art 36, no. 3 (Fall 2022): 10-14.
Wells, K. L. H. "Reading Feminism in Modern Tapestry's Archive." Archives of American Art Journal 60, no. 1 (Spring 2021): 24-43.
Wells, K. L. H. “Laboring Under Globalization: Tapestries by Contemporary Artists” Art Journal 77, no. 4 (Winter 2018): 26-45.
Wells, K. L. H. “Rockefeller's Guernica and the Collection of Modern Copies” Journal of the History of Collections 27, no. 2 (2015): 255-277.
Wells, K. L. H. “Serpentine Sideboards, Hogarth’s Analysis, and the Beautiful Self” Eighteenth-Century Studies 46, no. 3 (Spring 2013): 399-413.