Staff Profile
Head, Division of European and American Art, and Margaret S. Winthrop Curator of European Art
cassandra_albinson@harvard.edu / 617-496-0247
Ph.D., Yale University
M.A., Yale University
B.A., Wellesley College
Cassandra Albinson oversees the collection of European paintings, sculptures, and decorative arts from the medieval period through post-impressionism. She was formerly curator of paintings and sculpture at the Yale Center for British Art. Albinson specializes in British and French painting of the 18th and 19th centuries, with a particular focus on portraiture. Exhibitions Cassandra has organized include Mutiny: Works by Géricault (2018; Harvard Art Museums); The Critique of Reason: Romantic Art, 1760–1860 (2015; Yale University Art Gallery); and Thomas Lawrence: Regency Power & Brilliance (2010–11; National Portrait Gallery, London, and Yale Center for British Art).
Recent Publications
“Feminine Desire and Fragility: Pink in Eighteenth-Century Portraiture.” In Pink: The History of a Punk, Pretty, Powerful Color, ed. Valerie Steele. New York: Fashion Institute of Technology/Thames and Hudson, 2018.
Albinson, Cassandra, and Mark Hallett. “Cornucopia: Royal Female Portraiture and the Imperatives of Reproduction.” In Enlightened Princesses: Caroline, Augusta, Charlotte, and the Shaping of the Modern World, ed. Joanna Marschner with David Bindman and Lisa L. Ford. New Haven, Conn.: Yale Center for British Art/Yale University Press, 2017.
“Thomas Lawrence.” In Allgemeines Künstlerlexikon. Berlin: De Gruyter, 2014.
“Maximum Exposure: Modernizing the Grand Manner Portrait for the Edwardian Age.” In Edwardian Opulence: British Art at the Dawn of the Twentieth Century, ed. Angus Trumble and Andrea Wolk Rager, 77–97. New Haven, Conn.: Yale Center for British Art/Yale University Press, 2013.
“Debt and Drawing: Thomas Lawrence’s Family Portraits at the Cantor Art Center.” Cantor Art Center Journal 7 (2010–11; published 2013): 51–63.