Italy's Lake District: A One-Week Stay in Stresa

Sheri Shaneyfelt is an art historian of the Italian Renaissance and a professor in Renaissance art at Vanderbilt University, where she is also director of undergraduate and graduate studies for the History of Art and Architecture department and director of the master’s program in liberal arts and science. An award-winning lecturer, Sheri also teaches courses in Northern European Renaissance and baroque art at Vanderbilt. She earned her PhD at Indiana University-Bloomington, with a master’s from Vanderbilt, both in the history of art. Sheri specializes in Central Italian art, particularly that of Umbria and Tuscany. She lived and worked in Italy for long periods of time, teaching for study abroad programs in Perugia and Florence. Her research has been published in top art history journals and in her book Renaissance Painting in Perugia: Perugino, Raphael, and their Circles. A seasoned Smithsonian Journeys expert, Sheri loves leading groups and lecturing on site, and emphasizes the role of art and architecture in context. 

Writer and lecturer Adam Tanner spent many years as a foreign correspondent for Reuters news agency, including as Balkans bureau chief; San Francisco bureau chief; and correspondent in Germany, Moscow, and Washington D.C. He has long studied colonialism, economic engagement, and globalization, with a particular interest in the enduring impact of Europe on Asia, Latin America, and Africa. He has appeared on CNN, MSNBC, Bloomberg TV, NPR, and the BBC, and written for publications such as Scientific America, Forbes, Fortune, Time, and Frommer’s guidebooks.  

Adam was a fellow and associate at Harvard University from 2011-26, initially at the Nieman Foundation, then the Institution of Quantitative Social Science, and most recently, the Shorenstein Center Shorenstein Center on Media, Politics and Public Policy at the Kennedy School of Government.  He has written two books on privacy and commerce: Our Bodies, Our Data and What Stays in Vegas.

Gary Radke is passionate about Italy. He first went to Florence as an undergraduate and ended up directing Syracuse University’s renowned Florence Graduate Program in Renaissance Art for 35 years.  He invites Smithsonian guests to join him in thinking about and enjoying Italy’s cultural treasures in new ways, tapping into his decades of experience studying and teaching Italian Renaissance art.

Radke is one of the world’s leading experts on Italian medieval and Renaissance art.  He curated major loan exhibitions throughout the United States on Italian Renaissance sculptors Lorenzo Ghiberti, Luca della Robbia, Andrea del Verrocchio, Michelangelo, and Leonardo da Vinci.  His widely distributed college textbook on Italian Renaissance art, co-authored with John Paoletti, has appeared in four editions and in Spanish and Chinese translations. 

Gary is also past president of the Italian Art Society and a fellow of the American Academy in Rome. He currently directs The Caravaggio Illumination Project, an international, multidisciplinary research and exhibition effort devoted to evaluating and reconstructing the original lighting conditions under which the dramatic religious works of renowned Italian painter Michelangelo Merisi da Caravaggio (1571-1610) were experienced during his lifetime.

In retirement from Syracuse University Professor Radke and his wife have settled into an historic home in Savannah, Georgia, where Gary advocates for historic preservation and enjoys kayaking along the Georgia coast.

Ashley Elston is an art historian who specializes in the art and architecture of early modern Europe. After teaching at Berea College as associate professor of art history for over a decade, with particular emphasis on 15th-century Italy and 17th-century Northern Europe, she now manages an art collection based in the US and Italy. She discovered her love of Italian art and culture as an undergraduate working on a degree in history and medieval studies at St. Olaf College when she participated in a study abroad course in Rome. She went on to complete a master’s and PhD in art history at the University of Kansas. A Fulbright grant allowed her to live in Italy while conducting her doctoral research in churches, archives, and museums, and her work has also been supported by competitive grants from the Renaissance Society of America and the Southeastern College Art Conference.

Ashley’s research interests include the history of ritual art, the development of the art market in the Netherlands, and American exhibitions of Italian Renaissance art. She has published in art history journals and academic volumes, and co-edited a book titled Hybridity in Early Modern Art.