By Jovana Jovanovska ’23
Staff Writer
Ann Roberts has been an art history professor at the College for 25 years. She grew up in and around Baltimore, Maryland. Roberts attended Johns Hopkins University for her undergraduate degree and the University of Pennsylvania for her master’s and PhD degree. She was in the first class of women admitted to the then all-male Johns Hopkins University when there were about 25 women in the first-year class of 500. She is the James D. Vail III Professor of Art, Chair of the Art and Art History Department, and Chair of Museum Studies.
Stentor: What are you passionate about?
Roberts: I am passionate about reading (I always have a new book on my Kindle), cooking (I bring Renaissance foods to one of my classes), traveling, visiting museums, my family, and my discipline.
Stentor: How did you decide what to study in college?
Roberts: As a clueless first-year student at Hopkins, with no advisor helping me, I took (and bombed) calculus, but also took a course called Introduction to the History of Art. That course changed my life! I was hooked by the combination of visual arts, history, religious history, literary history, [and] anthropological investigation. Then I got to study languages, too! Win, win, win!
At Hopkins, I was a member of a small department in a larger university, in a department where the faculty nurtured the undergrads. When I applied to grad school and had to decide which one to attend, I recall many faculty in the department giving me advice about the decision. I am still in touch with some of those professors. I like to think we do the same for our majors here at Lake Forest College.
Stentor: If you were to choose another profession, what would you like to do and why?
Roberts: When I started college, I expected to study English literature, because that was my favorite class in high school. So that might have been one direction I might have traveled. But because I enjoyed reading, history, cultural issues, etc., I might have gone to law school, had I not gone on to do a PhD. I am very interested in social justice issues and I came of age in the second wave of feminism in the 1970s and 80s.
But as an art historian, I have been able to travel to many different places in North and South America and especially in Europe. I am not sure how I would have pulled that off if I had become a lawyer.
Stentor: What is something you have learned from teaching at Lake Forest College?
Roberts: I have learned never to make assumptions about students. I am always surprised and impressed by what our students know and care about, and sometimes I am impressed by what struggles they have faced and overcome. I have taught elsewhere (in a Big 10 university, among other institutions), but the chance I have to get to know students here is something I really treasure.
Stentor: What is your current research on?
Roberts: Did I mention I am a feminist? My research area is the early modern period otherwise known as the Renaissance in Europe. I have done a book about nuns as artists and patrons, and am currently working on a study that examines how one Renaissance duchess changed the course of history, and then how she was portrayed at various times since the Renaissance.
Stentor: Do you have any advice for Lake Forest College students?
Roberts: Given our current circumstances, this piece of advice is something that really sounds odd: but GO TO CLASS! (Even now, with our virtual class sessions, it is really important to ATTEND CLASS.) You never know what you will miss! You are in college to go to class! So GO!
