Caroline M. Riley

Caroline Riley has served as Research Associate in the Art and Art History Department at UC, Davis since 2019. She specializes in the visual culture of the 18th century to the present. She earned a Ph.D. from Boston University as the Adelson Fellow in American Art and a Master’s in American material culture from the University of Delaware’s Winterthur Program. Since 2019, she has served as a Paul Mellon Visiting Senior Fellow at the National Gallery of Art’s Center for the Advanced Study of Visual Arts; National Endowment for the Humanities Fellow; the Terra Postdoctoral Fellow at the Smithsonian American Art Museum; the Judith B. and Burton P. Resnick Postdoctoral Fellow at the US Holocaust Memorial Museum; a John W. Kluge Center Fellow at the Library of Congress; and a NEH Long-Term Fellow at the New York Public Library. She has taught courses on contemporary art, modern architecture, decorative arts, art and diplomacy, the cultural history of museums, and design history. Her research and publications focus on a variety of topics, including Pictorialist photography, 19th-century portrait painters, American craft, American vernacular art in Paris, the formation of the American art canon, and the politicization of American art in Europe.

Her first book, MoMA Goes to Paris in 1938: Building and Politicizing American Art (2023), is available through the University of California Press. Her next book, tentatively titled Thérèse Bonney and the Power of Global Syndicated Photography, is under contract with UC Press, slated for publication in 2028.

Selected publications:

Caroline M. Riley. MoMA Goes to Paris In 1938: Building and Politicizing American Art. University of California Press, 2023.

Caroline M. Riley. Craft & Modernity: Professional Women Artists In Boston (1890-1920) exh. cat. Boston University Art Gallery, 2014.

Valentina Abenavoli, Miyako Ishiuchi, Kristen Lubben ed. “Sexual Politics and Women Photobooks, 1975–1979, entries.” How We See: Photobooks by Women, edited by Valentina Abenavoli, Miyako Ishiuchi, Kristen Lubben ed., 10 x 10 Photobooks, 2020.

Caroline M. Riley. “Prêts en Temps de Guerre: la théorie des prêts et la première exposition internationale du MoMA au Musée du Jeu de Paume en 1938.” Histoires des prêts. Mémoires et enjeux des prêts dans les musées, 2024.

Caroline M. Riley. “Review of Earth Diplomacy: Indigenous American Art, Ecological Crisis, and the Cold War, by Jessica Horton.” caa.reviews (2025).

Caroline M. Riley. “Review of ‘The Art of Labor,’ San Jose Museum of Quilts & Textiles.” Surface Design Journal (2018).

Caroline M. Riley. “Review of Democratic Art: The New Deal’s Influence on American Culture, by Ann Musher.” Panorama (2016).

Caroline M. Riley, “Thérèse Bonney and the Picture Collection at the New York Public Library in the 1930s,” New York Public Library, 2024.

Caroline M. Riley, “MoMA’s First International Exhibition in 1938 and the Use of Ephemera in the Study of American Art,” Smithsonian Magazine, 2023.

Riley, Caroline M. “Thérèse Bonney, the Bonney Service and the Business of Syndicated Photography, 1922–45.” History of Photography (November 7, 2024): 1-27. DOI: 10.1080/03087298.2024.2409581.

Caroline M. Riley. “American Painting Wins Over London: The National Gallery of Art’s First International Exhibition in 1946.” Refiguring American Art (2018).

Caroline M. Riley. “Strengthening the Bonds: The United States on Display in 1938 France.” The Journal of Transnational American Studies (2017).

Caroline M. Riley. “The Pulpit and the Paintbrush: The Portraits of Jonas W. Holman (1805–1873).” Magazine Antiques (2016).

Caroline M. Riley. “American Vernacular Art in 1938 Paris: Its Categorization and Reception at MoMA’s Three Centuries of American Art Exhibition on Display in 1930s Paris.” Athanor (2015).

Caroline M. Riley. “Selling Pictorialist Photography as Craft: Alice Austin’s Artistic Production and Role in the Boston Society of Arts and Crafts between 1900 and 1933.” The Journal of Modern Craft (2015).

Caroline M. Riley, Introduction to Tracy Williams’s “Refocusing the Lens,” Gregory Miller, ed. Prized Writing, 2018.

Caroline M. Riley. “Ambassadors of Good Will.” PhD Dissertation, 2016.

Caroline M. Riley. “Portrait of a Painter: the Double-sided Life and Works of Jonas W. Holman (1805-1873).” MA Thesis, 2006.