Book Talk with Dr Olivia Gruber Florek: “Sissi in New York: T. J. Wilcox and the Tragedy of Celebrity”

The Rutgers Art History Graduate Student Organization Professional Development Committee is happy to announce a book talk with Rutgers alumna Dr Olivia Gruber Florek on Friday, April 28th from 3:30 – 5:00 pm, with a reception following. Zoom links for the talk are attached.

Dr Gruber Florek’s talk will revolve around her most recent book project, The Celebrity Monarch: Empress Elisabeth and the Modern Female Portrait, and how portraits of the famously beautiful Empress Elisabeth of Austria (1837-1898, also known as “Sissi”) transformed monarchs from divinely-appointed sovereigns to public personalities whose daily lives were consumed by spectators.

Dr Olivia Gruber Florek is an Associate Professor of Art History at Delaware County Community College in Media, Pennsylvania, where she also curates an annual exhibition of contemporary art. Her research focuses on celebrity portraiture in nineteenth-century Europe, and she has received funding from the American Council of Learned Societies, the Social Science Research Council, and the Fulbright Commission. In February 2023, she published The Celebrity Monarch: Empress Elisabeth and the Modern Female Portrait with the University of Delaware Press. She earned her PhD from Rutgers, the State University of New Jersey in 2012.