About
Elaine Gazda (BA Marietta College, MA University of Pennsylvania, PhD Harvard University) is professor emerita of Classical art and archaeology in the Department of the History of Art and curator emerita of Hellenistic and Roman Collections at the Kelsey Museum. She was director of the Kelsey Museum from 1986 to 1997, director of the Interdepartmental Program in Classical Art and Archaeology from 2006 to 2009, and head curator for the installation of the Kelsey’s William E. Upjohn Exhibit Wing in 2009.
For eighteen years she served as a Trustee and frequent visiting scholar at the American Academy in Rome, where she co-directed an NEH Summer Seminar for College Teachers on the “Roman Art of Emulation,” and she continues to serve on the Trustee’s Publication Committee. She was a staff member of the Harvard-Cornell Archaeological Exploration of Sardis in Turkey and a member of the American Academy in Rome harbor excavation team at Cosa.
She is co-author of The Roman Port and Fishery at Cosa, a Center of Ancient Trade (1987), editor of Roman Art in the Private Sphere (1991; 2nd ed. 2010), The Ancient Art of Emulation: Studies in Artistic Originality and Tradition from the Present to Classical Antiquity (2002), and was consulting editor for The Oxford Handbook of Roman Sculpture (2015). She is also co-author, editor, or co-editor of numerous exhibition catalogues including, among others, Roman Portraiture: Ancient and Modern Revivals (1977), Guardians of the Nile: Sculptures from Karanis in the Fayoum, c. 250 B.C.–A.D. 450 (1978), Karanis: An Egyptian Town in Roman Times (1983; 2nd ed. 2005), Images of Empire: Flavian Fragments in Rome and Ann Arbor Rejoined (1996), The Villa of the Mysteries in Pompeii: Ancient Ritual, Modern Muse (2000), Building a New Rome: The Imperial Colony of Pisidian Antioch (2011), and Leisure and Luxury in the Age of Nero: The Villas of Oplontis near Pompeii (2016). In addition, she has published a wide range of articles on Roman sculpture, wall painting, and construction techniques. Her current research focuses on Roman domestic interiors, especially Roman villas on the Bay of Naples, and on the Greek and Roman sculpture collections in the Kelsey Museum of Archaeology.
