Ph.D., New York University, 2000
Assistant Professor of Art History and Archaeology
Professor Crenshaw’s main field of research and teaching is Dutch art of the 17th century. He also teaches the Introduction to Western Art, Baroque art in general, Northern Renaissance art, and seminars that focus on artists such as Rembrandt, Vermeer, and Artemisia Gentileschi as well as broader themes such as “Science, Faith and Meaning,” or “Art about Art.” He teaches a variety of methodological approaches, and incorporates primary objects into his courses whenever possible. His Vermeer seminar visited New York for a major exhibition in 2001, and the 2002 Gentileschi and 2006 Rembrandt seminars were organized to coincide with shows at the St. Louis Art Museum. Professor Crenshaw was recognized for Excellence in Mentoring by the Graduate School of Arts & Sciences Student Council in 2007.

Professor Crenshaw’s first book, Rembrandt’s Bankruptcy: The Artist, His Patrons, and the Art World in Seventeenth-Century Netherlands, was published by Cambridge University Press in 2006. This was the topic of his doctoral thesis completed at New York University’s Institute of Fine Arts in 2000. He gave a associated paper at the Isabella Stuart Gardner Museum of Art in Boston and published several related articles on the subject.

In the Fall of 2006 the exhibition Rembrandt: Master Etchings from St. Louis Collections was held at the St. Louis Art Museum to celebrate the artist’s four-hundredth anniversary.  The excellent holdings of Rembrandt prints in St. Louis were brought together for the exhibition and catalogue co-authored by Prof. Crenshaw and Francesca Herndon-Consagra, Curator of Prints, Drawings and Photographs at the St. Louis Art Museum. 

Prof. Crenshaw co-authored the catalogue to the exhibition Rembrandt, Beyond the Brush, Master Prints from the Weil Collection at the Montgomery (Ala.) Museum of Fine Arts in 1999.

Professor Crenshaw’s current project is a book entitled Calumny: Themes of Patronage and Criticism in Rembrandt’s work.  This book will include new interpretations of the artist’s major paintings for the Sicilian patron Don Antonio Ruffo, as well as new findings on several other important works by Rembrandt. He has delivered two papers related to this project at the annual College Art Association meetings, and one at the Frick Collection in New York.

Prof. Crenshaw is the lead author of the book Secrets & Symbols: Decoding the Great Masters, to be published by Rizzoli in 2008.  This book examines the phenomenon of creation and reception of symbolic formulas, primarily in the Renaissance and Baroque period.

Professor Crenshaw may be contacted at crenshaw@wustl.edu