Margaret Hanni completed her bachelor's degree in art at Simmons and her master's degree and PhD in art history at Boston University. Simmons is a wonderful place to teach or take art history because we are surrounded by amazing museums and galleries. Two world-class museums, the Museum of Fine Arts and the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, are five minutes from campus, so she takes full advantage of this for every course she teaches, taking students to the museums regularly for looking and discussion as part of class. She introduces the professionals who work in these organizations to Simmons students interested in art and culture to help them understand the many options open to them as they pursue a meaningful career. She works with museums to match students' interests with the many excellent internship opportunities nearby.
Research/Creative Activities
Hanni's research interests include baroque and eighteenth-century portraiture in general, and the marriage portrait in Georgian England, in particular, and women art collectors and patrons. Her essay on the 18th equestrian marriage portrait in England is published in Breaking New Ground in Art History: A Festschrift in Honor of Alicia Craig Faxon (Washington D.C. New Academia, 2014). Her interest in the history of collecting in England has led her to develop an unusual undergraduate course on the history of art collecting that is taught in London and uses the city's museums and the English country house as sites for study.
The history of American museums and collectors is another research interest, and she has published work on Mary Cassatt's role as an advisor to American women collectors. She lectures on various topics connected to The Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, and working with the museum, has designed a unique upper level seminar for Simmons called Art of the Gardner. This course studies the founder, Isabella Gardner, and her role in American collecting, the treasures on view at the museum, as well as the organization, mission and programs of the museum today.