UMass Boston

Devotional art of the late Middle Ages and Northern Renaissance; early printmaking in Europe; twentieth-century printmaking, especially the prints of Sol LeWitt

PhD, Art History, Northwestern University, 2001
MA, Art History, Florida State University, 1995
BA, English, Longwood College, 1985

• La nave e lo scheletro: Le stampe di Jacopo Rubieri alla Biblioteca Classense di Ravenna. Bologna: Bononia University Press, 2017.
• The Art of Empathy: The Mother of Sorrows in Northern Renaissance Art and Devotion. Jacksonville, FL: Cummer Museum of Art; and London: Giles, Ltd., 2013.
• The Viewer and the Printed Image in Late Medieval Europe. Burlington, VT: Ashgate, 2010.
• Origins of European Printmaking: Fifteenth-Century Woodcuts and Their Public. Coauthored with Peter Parshall, Rainer Schoch, Peter Schmidt, and Richard Field. Washington: National Gallery of Art; and New Haven: Yale University Press, 2005.
• Excavating the Medieval Image: Manuscripts, Artists, Audiences. Co-edited with Nina A. Rowe. Burlington, VT: Ashgate, 2004.

David S. Areford is a specialist in late-medieval European devotional art, especially early printmaking. More recently, he has extended his interest in the history of printmaking to include twentieth-century America, specifically the prints of Sol LeWitt. He has published books, book chapters, and journal articles on fifteenth-century woodcuts and metalcuts, as well as manuscript illumination and panel painting. His book The Viewer and the Printed Image in Late Medieval Europe  received honorable mention from the International Fine Print Dealers Association Book Awards in 2011; and his co-authored exhibition catalog Origins of European Printmaking: Fifteenth-Century Woodcuts and Their Public was a finalist for the Alfred H. Barr, Jr. Award for Museum Scholarship in 2007. His exhibition catalog The Art of Empathy: The Mother of Sorrows in Northern Renaissance Art and Devotion was partly funded through a grant from the National Endowment for the Arts ("Art Works" program) in 2013.

Professor Areford's current research and curatorial projects include "Strict Beauty: Sol LeWitt Prints," an exhibition and catalog; "Locating LeWitt: Between the Mind and the Body," an edited collection of essays by various LeWitt scholars; and several articles exploring varied topics -- Sol LeWitt's printmaking, fifteenth-century woodcuts of the Christ Child, and the Maulbronn Altarpiece of 1432.

Professor Areford's fellowships and awards include a Fulbright Fellowship for research in Germany (1998-1999), a Post-Doctoral Curatorial Fellowship at the National Gallery of Art in Washington, DC (2001-2002), and the Newberry Library's Weiss/Brown Publication Subvention Award (2001). In 2009, he was elected to the Board of Directors (3-year term) of the International Center of Medieval Art.

Art 101: Ancient and Medieval Art
Art 207L: Queer Visual Culture
Art 305: Early Medieval Art
Art 306: Romanesque and Gothic Art
Art 309: Northern Renaissance Art