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Prof. dr. A.J.S. (Hanneke) Grootenboer

Faculty of Humanities
Capaciteitsgroep Kunstgeschiedenis
Photographer: Kirsten van Santen

Visiting address
  • Oude Turfmarkt 143
Postal address
  • Postbus 94551
    1090 GN Amsterdam
  • Profile

    Hanneke Grootenboer (PhD, Rochester NY, 2001) is Professor of Early Modern Art and Visual Culture at the University of Amsterdam.  Prior, she was Professor of Art History at Radboud University and University Lecturer and later Professor the History of Art at the University of Oxford, where she also served as the Head of the Ruskin School of Art. Her scholarship on early modern Dutch visual and material culture critically engages with literature and philosophy, addressing topics such as intimacy, interiority, affect and miniaturization.  She works in a transhistorical fashion, looking at early modern art through the lens of contemporary art practice while writing on current trends and exhibitions informed by the arts of the past. She is the recipient of numerous fellowships, including from the NIAS, the Clark Art Institute and the Leverhulme Trust. In 2019, she was a Visiting Professor at the Freie Universität, Berlin, and in the Fall of 2021, she delivered the Erasmus Lectures at Harvard University. She is a member of the editorial board of the Netherlands Yearbook for the History of Art and of the general council of De Witte Raaf.

    Her publications include The Rhetoric of Perspective: Realism and Illusionism in Seventeenth-Century Dutch Still Life Painting (University of Chicago Press, 2005, paperback 2006), Treasuring the Gaze: Intimate Vision in Late Eighteenth-Century Eye Miniatures (University of Chicago Press, 2012, Kenshur Prize for best interdisciplinary work). Her most recent books are The Pensive Image: Art as a Form of Thinking (Chicago University Press, 2020, paperback 2023, Outstanding Monograph Prize of the American Association of Aesthetics) and the co-authored Conchophilia: Shells, Art and Curiosity in the Early Modern Period (Princeton University Press, 2021, paperback 2023).  Articles have been published in The Art Bulletin, Art History and the Oxford Art Journal, among other venues.  She is currently working on a book on art, craft and thought.

  • Books

    The Pensive Image: Art as a Form of Thinking (University of Chicago Press, 2020, paperback 2023).

    • Reviews: CAA Reviews, Apollo, Phenomenological Reviews, Sixteenth-Century Studies Journal, Beiträge zur Kunstgeschichte und Visuellen Kultur, Hyperallergic 
    • Awards: 2022 Outstanding Monograph Prize American Association for Aesthetics; 2021 Outstanding Research Prize, RICH; REF Grant.


    Conchophilia: Shells, Art and Curiosity in Early Modern Europe, co-authored with Marisa Bass, Claudia Swan and Anne Goldgar (Princeton University Press, 2021, paperback 2023).

    • Reviews: New York Times, De Witte Raaf, Early Modern Low Countries, Hyperallergic, American Conchologist


    Treasuring the Gaze: Intimacy and Extremity of Vision Eye Miniature Portraits (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2012). 

    • Reviews: The Art Bulletin, Art History, Kunstchronik, Apollo, Choice, CAAreviews, ISIS Journal for the History of Science.
    • Awards: 2013 Kenshur Prize; Getty Foundation Grant; Paul Mellon Publisher and Author Grant.


    The Rhetoric of Perspective: Realism and Illusionism in Seventeenth-Century Dutch Still Life Painting (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2005; paperback, 2006)

    • Reviews: TLS, Seventeenth-Century News, Sehepunkte, Kunstform, Art Libraries Society of North America; De Zeventiende Eeuw. 
    • Awards: 2005 ASCA Book Award; Milliard Meiss Publication Fund Grant.
  • Articles - selection
    • ‘Visualising Thought’ in Visualization – A Critical Survey of the Concept, ed. Erna Fiorentini (forthcoming, Berlin: LIT Verlag, 2024).
    • ‘Wiertz’s Philosophical Paintings’ in: Antoine Wiertz (1806-1865), ed. by Stijn Bussels, Caroline van Eck and Bram van Oostveldt. XIX. Studies in Nineteenth-Century Art and Visual Culture, Brepols, 2024.
    • ‘Small Things in Proportion,’ Small Things in the Eighteenth-Century, eds. Chloe Wigston-Smith and Beth Tobin (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2022).
    • ‘Thinking with Shells in Petronella Oortman’s Dollhouse’, in: Conchophilia: Shells, Art and Curiosity in Early Modern Europe, co-edited with Marisa Bass, Claudia Swan and Anne Goldgar, (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2021).
    • ‘Arresting What Would Otherwise Slip Away: The Waiting Images of Jacob Vrel,’ in: Time in the History of Art: Temporality, Chronology, and Anachrony, ed. Dan Karlholm and Keith Moxey (London: Routledge, 2018). 
    • ‘Sublime Still Life: On Adriaen Coorte, Elias van den Broeck, and the Je ne sais quoi of Painting’, in ‘The Sublime in the Seventeenth Century’, special issue ed. by Stijn Bussels and Bram van Oostveldt, special issue of Journal of the History of Netherlandish Art 8:2 (June 2016).
    • ‘A Clock Picture as a Philosophical Experiment: The Tableau Mécanique in the Physics Cabinet of Bonnier de La Mosson’, in ‘Art and Technology in Early Modern Europe’, special issue ed. by Richard Taws and Genevieve Warwick, Art History 39, no. 2 (April 2016): 340–55. Has also been published as an Art History book.
    •  ‘The Substance of Wax’, introduction to ‘Theorizing Wax: On the Meaning of a Dissapearing Medium’, co-edited with Allison Goudie, Special Issue of the Oxford Art Journal, vol. 36:1 (March 2013).
  • Publications for a General Audience - selection
    • ‘Maria Schalcken: Self-Portrait in Her Studio’, Dutch Art in a Global Age, Boston, Museum of Fine Art, 2023, 132-37.
    • ‘A Closer Look,’ in: In Focus: A Closer Look at Photorealism, catalogus Centraal Museum & W-Books 2024.
    • ‘Van de schaduw en de spiegel: Fiona Tan’s wandelgangen door tijds- en denkbeelden’, Fiona Tan: Mountains and Moleshills, Eye Filmmuseum & Nai010 uitgevers, 2022)
    • ‘Intieme ruimtes: Denken in zeventiende-eeuwse kunst’, in De Witte Raaf 217 (May/June 2022)
    • ‘Visual Thinking,’ The Philosopher, Special Issue on Thinking Otherwise (Autumn 2021): 36-44. 
    • ‘Weaving Thought,’ in: Migration: The Journey of Objects, exh. Cat., Röhsska Museum of Design and Craft, Gothenburg, Sweden (2021), 189-99.
    • ‘Beyond Landscape: On the Paintings of Charlotte Caspers’, EENWERK, Amsterdam, May 2021. 
    • Tradescant’s Orchard, co-authored with Barrie Juniper (commission, Oxford: Bodleian Library Publishing, 2013).
  • Publications

    2007

    • Grootenboer, A. J. S. (2007). Reading the Annunciation, or the Navel of the Painting. In D. Cherry (Ed.), Art History, Special Issue About Mieke Ball Blackwell Publishers.

    2006

    • Grootenboer, A. J. S. (2006). Treasuring the Gaze; Late-Eighteenth-Century Eye Miniature Painting. The Art Bulletin, 88(3). [details]

    2005

    • Grootenboer, A. J. S. (2005). The Rhetoric of Perspective, Realism and Illusionism in Seventeenth-Century Dutch Still Life Painting. University of Chicago Press. [details]
    • Grootenboer, A. J. S. (2005). The Rhetoric of Perspective. Realism and Illusionism in Seventeenth-Century Dutch Still-Life Painting. Chicago, Londen: The University of Chicago Press. [details]

    2007

    Prize / grant

    • Grootenboer, A. J. S. (2008). Residential Fellowship.

    Journal editor

    Talk / presentation

    • Grootenboer, A. J. S. (speaker) (1-8-2007). Iconography Today, Summer Workshop Clark Art Institute, Williamstown, MA.
    • Grootenboer, A. J. S. (speaker) (2007). The Rhetoric of Transparency, or Jan van Huysums's Water Drops, Symposium; 'Showing: The Rhetoric of the Visible', National Competence Center for Research/Iconic Criticism, Basel.

    Others

    • Grootenboer, A. J. S. (participant) (1-2-2007). 2007 Annual Conference, New York. The thinking image: Beyond interpretation (participating in a conference, workshop, ...).
    • Grootenboer, A. J. S. (participant) (1-1-2007). Symposium, Amsterdam. Vision as Painting (participating in a conference, workshop, ...).
    This list of publications is extracted from the UvA-Current Research Information System. Questions? Ask the library or the Pure staff of your faculty / institute. Log in to Pure to edit your publications. Log in to Personal Page Publication Selection tool to manage the visibility of your publications on this list.
  • Ancillary activities
    No ancillary activities