Toby Norris, Ph.D.

Professor of Art History

508-767-7417 Founders Hall - Room 025
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Professor Norris specializes in the art of the first half of the twentieth century in Europe. His book “Marginal to Mainstream: French Modernism Between the Wars,” which traces the emergence of modernism as the official art style of democratic capitalism, was published in 2023. He is now working on a book on the philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche and his influence on the avant-gardes of the early twentieth century.

Beyond this, he loves the fact that he can teach a wide range of courses at Assumption covering everything from seventeenth-century Dutch painting to the contemporary art scene. He particularly enjoys teaching “Art Ancient and Modern: The Question of Beauty,” which examines the ways that beauty has been understood in the visual arts from Ancient Greek times until the present day, and which serves as a gateway to the Core Texts and Enduring Questions program.

  • B.A. Magdalen College, Oxford University, 1989

    M. Phil., Glasgow University, 1993

    Postgraduate Diploma, Leicester University, 1994

    Ph.D., Northwestern University, 2005

  • ARH 125: History of Western Art

    ARH 160: Art Ancient & Modern – the Question of Beauty A

    RH 227: The Meaning of Modern Art

    ARH 229: Art Since 1945

    ARH 325: Nietzsche and the Avant-Garde

    ARH 350: Northern Renaissance Art: Van Eyck to Rembrandt

  • Faculty Development Grant, Assumption College, 2009, 2011, 2013, 2015.

    Northwestern University Dissertation Year Fellowship, 2003-2004.

    Bourse Chateaubriand en Sciences Sociales et Littérature, 2002-2003.

    Samuel H. Kress Foundation Travel Fellowship in the History of Art, 2001-2002.

  • “The Public Turn in French Art During the 1930s” in Natalie Adamson and Richard Taws (eds), A Companion to Art in France, 1789 to the Present, Wiley Blackwell (forthcoming)

    “Making American Architecture Great Again? Executive Order 13967” in Interrogating the Visual Culture of Trumpism, Grant Hamming and Natalie E. Phillips (eds), Routledge, 2024

    Marginal to Mainstream: French Modernism Between the Wars, Fairleigh Dickinson University Press/Rowman & Littlefield, 2023

    Co-editor of “The Hand and the Machine: Tensions in Interwar Design,” Volume 13, Issue 3 of the Journal of Modern Craft (with Rachael Barron-Duncan, Central Michigan University), 2020

    “Le goût personnel n’implique pas une politique: Louis Hautecœur, le Musée du Luxembourg et le Musée national d’art moderne,” in Tricia Meehan and Patrice Gourbin (eds), Relire Louis Hautecoeur, Rouen : Point de Vues, 2019

    Toby Norris, Al Muñiz and Gary Fine, “Marketing Artistic Careers: Pablo Picasso as Brand Manager,” European Journal of Marketing, Vol. 48, Issue 1/2, 2014

    Natalie Adamson & Toby Norris (editors), Academics, Pompiers, Official Artists and the Arrière-Garde: Defining Modern and Traditional in France 1900-1960, Newcastle-upon-Tyne: Cambridge Scholars Press, 2010

  • “Nietzsche, Marinetti, and the World’s Only Hygiene” at the 9th Conference of the European Network for Avant-Garde and Modernism Studies, Krakow, Poland, September 2024

    “A French Perspective on the 1923 Czech State Purchase” in the conference “Centennial of the Czech State Purchase of French Art,” National Gallery Prague/Charles University, November 2023

    “Making America Beautiful Again: Executive Order 13967,” in the session “Interrogating the Visual Culture of Trumpism,” Southeastern College Art Conference, Baltimore, MD, October 2022

    “The Landscape of Locke’s Thought,” Association of Core Texts and Courses Annual Conference, Framingham, MA, April 2018

    “The Personal is not Political: Louis Hautecoeur, the Musée du Luxembourg and the Musée National d’Art Moderne,” in the colloquium “Relire Louis Hautecoeur,” Rouen, France, May 2017

    “Brussels 1935: The Lost World’s Fair,” Clark University (invited lecture), March 2015

    Co-Chair of Session “The Hand and the Machine: Tensions in Interwar Design” (with Rachael Barron-Duncan, Central Michigan University) at Southeastern College Art Conference, Sarasota, FL, October 2014

    “War by Other Means: France and Germany at the World’s Fairs of the 1930s,” Conference of the Society for French Historical Studies, Montreal, QC, April 2014

    “Shaping an Art of Democracy,” Annual Conference of the Southeastern College Art Conference, Greensboro, NC, October 2013

    “Leisure Left and Right at the 1937 Paris Exposition,” Annual Conference of The Space Between: Literature and Culture 1914-1945, Chicago, IL, June 2013

    “Competing Visions: Modern Art at the 1937 Paris World’s Fair,” Annual Conference of the Southeastern College Art Conference, Savannah, GA, November 2011

    “Autonomy or Engagement: French Artists and Writers in the Crucible of Politics,” 1935: The Reality and the Promise, Hofstra University, NY, April 2011

    “Underwriting Independence: The Art Market in France in the 1920s” Association of Art Historians Annual Conference, Manchester, England, April 2009