Jochen Wierich

Jochen Wierich holds a dual appointment as Associate Professor at Aquinas College and as Curator of Sculpture and Sculpture Exhibitions at Frederik Meijer Gardens & Sculpture Park.

He studied Art History and American Studies at the Heinrich Heine University in Düsseldorf and at the Goethe University of Frankfurt am Main and received his Ph.D. in American Studies at the College of William & Mary in Virginia. His teaching appointments in art history include Vanderbilt University, Whitman College, Free University in Berlin, and Belmont University.

As a museum professional, he has worked at the Terra Museum of American Art in Chicago, the Northwest Museum of Arts & Culture in Spokane, Cheekwood Botanical Garden and Museum of Art in Nashville, and the Mississippi Museum of Art in Jackson.

In addition to a Terra Foundation Senior Visiting Fellowship in Berlin, Wierich had pre- and post-doctoral fellowships at the Smithsonian Institution as well as Winterthur Museum, Garden, and Library. His publications include two books published by Penn State Press: Emanuel Leutze, Washington Crossing the Delaware, and American History Painting (2012) and Internationalizing the History of American Art: Views (2009), an anthology co-edited with Barbara Groseclose. His essays cover a range of topics and artists in American art, including Richard Caton Woodville, Lilly Martin Spencer, Emanuel Leutze, Winslow Homer, the Taos Society of Artists, The Eight, Winold Reiss, and Plantation images in the American South. Areas of research interest are contemporary sculpture, historiography of American art, museum studies, art of the American West and American South, ethnography in art.