Rachel Hunter Himes

Rachel Hunter Himes (she/her), PhD candidate

Department and School
Art History and Archaeology, Arts & Sciences

Advisor Name
Meredith Gamer, Associate Professor of Art History and Archaeology

Bio
Rachel Hunter Himes joined the PhD program in 2020. Her dissertation, tentatively titled Black Luxuries: Race, Slavery, and Abolition in French Decorative Art, 1794-1848 explores the decorative arts of eighteenth- and nineteenth-century France as sites for the development and maintenance of racial ideology. Her research has been supported by the Decorative Arts Trust, The Huntington Library and Museum, the Dr. Lee MacCormick Edwards Foundation, and Columbia's Office of the Provost. She was a 2025 Center for Curatorial Leadership/Mellon Foundation Seminar in Curatorial Practice participant.

Rachel graduated magna cum laude with a BA in Religious Studies from Brown University and a BFA in Illustration from the Rhode Island School of Design. She has held positions at The Frick Collection, the Cleveland Museum of Art, and the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Her writing has appeared in n+1, The Nation, the New York Review of Architecture, Apollo, and the Journal of Museum Education.

What is your favorite hangout on or off campus?
The Brooklyn Botanic Garden

What is your recommended book/podcast?
Aesthetics of Resistance, Vol. I

What is your favorite study spot?
Avery Library