Prior to joining the art history faculty at LSU in 2003, Spieth served as Philip and Lynn Straus Curatorial Fellow at the Fogg Art Museum at Harvard University and worked for a commercial gallery dealing in Russian avant-garde art domiciled in Cologne, Germany, and Zug, Switzerland. A specialist in early modernism, Spieth focuses his scholarship on the interrelationships between art, intellectual history, and economics. Supported by a National Endowment for the Humanities grant, Spieth’s current research investigates art, auctions, and public spectacle in 19th-century Paris.