Alessandra Comini
Alessandra Comini (born November 24, 1934) is an American art historian and curator. She is University Distinguished Professor of Art History Emerita at Southern Methodist University in University Park, Texas. Proficient in music and languages as well as art history, Comini brought an interdisciplinary approach to her study of the arts in Austria and Germany at the turn of the 20th century, an approach particularly suited to the integrated art forms of "fin-de-siècle" Vienna. Early and personal life. Alessandra Comini was born the daughter of Megan Laird and Raiberto Comini in Winona, Minnesota. Her earliest years  were spent in Barcelona, Milan, and Dallas. Comini received her B.A. from Barnard College (1956), her M.A, from the University of California, Berkeley (1964), and her Ph.D. from Columbia University (1969). Her dissertation, written under Theodore Reff, on the topic of Egon Schiele's portraiture. In 1974 she started working with art historian Eleanor Tufts at Southern Methodist University. Career. While teaching at Columbia between 1965 and 1974, Comini became one of the founders of the Women's Caucus for Art in 1972. She taught at Southern Methodist University from 1974 until 2005. And she guest taught at the University  of California, Berkeley (1967) and Yale University (1973). Voted outstanding professor sixteen times by her students, Comini served as the Alfred Hodder Resident Humanist at Princeton University (1972–1973) and was named Distinguished Visiting Lecturer at Oxford University's European Humanities Research Centre (1996). Celebrated for her witty, erudite, and compelling public lectures, Comini has been in demand as a guest speaker nationally and internationally. As an interdisciplinary speaker, Comini lectured repeatedly at the Leipzig Gewandhaus symposia, The Santa Fe Opera, and for the Indianapolis and Dallas Symphony Orchestras. In 1990 Comini was awarded the Grand Decoration of Honour for Services  to the Republic of Austria in recognition of her contributions to Germanic culture. In 2014 Comini turned to fiction writing and has published nine art history murder mystery novels since in the Megan Crespi Series. The Neue Galerie Museum for German and Austrian Art, New York, commissioned Comini to curate its blockbuster exhibition Egon Schiele's Portraits (2014–15). Honors and awards. Comini's book "Egon Schiele’s Portraits" (1974) was nominated for a National Book Award (1975) and received the College Art Association's Charles Rufus Morey Book Award (1976). Comini's book "The Changing Image of Beethoven: A Study  in Mythmaking" (1987) was a pioneer application of reception history to imagery. Selected publications. In a statistical overview derived from writings by and about Alessandra Comini, OCLC/WorldCat OCLC/WorldCat (retrieved June 21, 2016) encompasses about 200 works.