Smithsonian Journeys Experts

Kevin D. Murphy holds the Andrew W. Mellon Chair in the Humanities at Vanderbilt University where he is also Professor and Chair in the Dept. of History of Art. He is an architectural historian who has spoken and lectured widely on French art and architecture. His first book concerned the restoration, in the mid-nineteenth century, of the Church of the Madeleine at Vezelay, a famed Romanesque pilgrimage church in Burgundy. Also, Murphy has published articles on Le Corbusier and other modern French architects in the Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians and other academic journals and general-readership magazines.

Murphy knows France well. As an undergraduate, he lived for six months in Grenoble, and then as a doctoral candidate, for several years in Paris. He once hitchhiked from Nice to Bourdeaux and has made several tours of the Loire Valley to which he is anxious to return. Throughout his career, Murphy has taught onsite in the US and abroad. Recently, he traveled as a faculty expert on a trip to the Netherlands and Belgium. A former Fulbright Fellow, as well as Mary Davis Fellow at the Center for Advanced Study in the Visual Arts (National Gallery of Art, Washington), and Chester Dale Fellow at the Metropolitan Museum of Art (New York), Professor Murphy received his Ph.D. in Art History at Northwestern University, his M.A. in Preservation Studies from Boston University, and his B.A. in Art History from Swarthmore College.

(Photo © Daniel Dubois/Vanderbilt)