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Arts Administration Faculty

Michelle Facos
Visiting Associate Professor
Arts Administration Faculty

Ph.D., Institute of Fine Arts,
New York University, 1989

Dr. Facos is visiting associate professor in the Arts Administration program at the School of Public and Environmental Affairs, Indiana University. She is also associate professor of the History of Art in the IU College of Arts and Sciences, where she has taught since 1995.

Prior to her arrival in Bloomington, Dr. Facos worked at Phillips Auctioneers in New York, an auction house specializing in fine and decorative arts and as a consulting curator at The Brooklyn Museum in New York, where she supervised the documentation and permanent installation of a major gift of Rodin sculpture by B. Gerald Cantor. She has organized and collaborated on exhibitions at The Cleveland Museum of Art, The Museum of Natural History (New York), the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, Hamilton College, Santani Gallery (Tokyo), Hyundai Gallery (Seoul), and the Swedish Emigrant Institute (Växjö, Sweden). She has worked as an appraiser, authenticator, and art dealer, helping American art museums to acquire outstanding examples of Scandinavian art.

From 1991 to 1995, she worked in Cleveland as a coordinator for Save Outdoor Sculpture (SOS), a government-funded project dedicated to the documentation and preservation of public sculpture in the U.S. The data collected by this project is deposited in the Inventory of American Sculpture at the Smithsonian American Art Museum.

In Spring 2005, Dr. Facos taught in the Cultural Administration Program at Växjö University in Sweden. Her class was responsible for organizing the summer exhibition at the City Museum of Borgholm, capital of the island of Öland, where the Swedish royal family spends its summers. Students were engaged in all facets of the project, which centered on Swedes who had emigrated to the U.S. and then returned. The exhibition was largely responsible for a three-fold increase in the number of museum visitors.

Dr. Facos has a longstanding interest in the documentation and preservation of cultural heritage and in the crucial role this plays in promoting democracy and integration in multi-ethnic societies.

Awards:
Fulbright
Alexander von Humboldt Foundation
American Philosophical Society
American Council of Learned Societies

Relevant Publications:
The Dawning of Northern Light: An Exhibition and Its Influence," A Fine Disregard: Essays in Memory of Kirk Varnedoe, Patricia Berman and Gertje Utley, eds. (Ashgate, 2008).

Art and National Identity at the Turn of the Century (Cambridge, 2003) coedited with Sharon Hirsh.

"Läsebökernas bild av den nordiska skogen," (Schoolbook Images of the Nordic Forest), Skogsliv. Kulturella processer I nordiska skogsbygder, Ingar Kaldal, Ella Johansson, Bo Fritzböger and Hanna Snellman, eds. (Lund: Historiska Media, 2000).

“The Larsson Home at Lilla Hyttnäs as a Witness of Local Identity,” Historic House Museums as Witnesses of National and Local Identities, Posanna Pavoni, ed. (Instituut Collectie Nederland, 2003).

“The Ideal Swedish Home: Carl Larsson’s Lilla Hyttnäs,” Not at Home: The Suppression of Domesticity in Modern Art and Architecture, Christopher Reed, ed. (Thames and Hudson, 1996).

“Open to the Public: Three Studio-Homes in Sweden,” Scandinavian Review, 1991.