Mimi Hellman

Skidmore College

July–August 2012

Mimi Hellman is an Associate Professor of Art History at Skidmore College who studies the social agency of decorative art in eighteenth-century France. Recent publications include essays in Paris: Life & Luxury in the Eighteenth Century (2011), The Cultural Aesthetics of Eighteenth-Century Porcelain (2010), Taking Shape: Finding Sculpture in the Decorative Arts (2008), andFurnishing the Eighteenth Century (2007). Her current project explores how the design and experience of the hôtel de Soubise shaped the identity of its aristocratic residents, simultaneously defending a contested dynastic persona and revealing its ideological and performative instability.