UMass Boston

Devotional art of the late Middle Ages and Northern Renaissance; early printmaking in Europe; twentieth-century printmaking; and the art of Sol LeWitt

PhD, Art History, Northwestern University, 2001

MA, Art History, Florida State University, 1995

BA, English, Longwood College, 1985

• Locating Sol LeWitt. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2021.
• “Introduction – For a Plural LeWitt,” in David S. Areford, ed., Locating Sol LeWitt. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2021, 1-9.
• “LeWitt Moves: Choreographing the Printed Image,” in David S. Areford, ed., Locating Sol LeWitt. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2021, 87-113.
  
•  “Voices beyond the Wall: On Sol LeWitt’s Jewish Art,” in David S. Areford, ed., Locating Sol LeWitt. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2021, 231-265
• Strict Beauty: Sol LeWitt Prints. Williamstown: Williams College Museum of Art; New Britain: New Britain Museum of American Art; and New Haven: Yale University Press, 2020.
• “Christ Child Creator,” in Quid est sacramentum? Visual Representation of Sacred Mysteries in Early Modern Europe, 1400-1700, eds. Walter Melion, Elizabeth Pastan, and Lee Palmer Wandel. London: Brill, 2020, 456-493.
• La nave e lo scheletro: Le stampe di Jacopo Rubieri alla Biblioteca Classense di Ravenna. Bologna: Bononia University Press, 2017.
• The Art of Empathy: The Mother of Sorrows in Northern Renaissance Art and Devotion. Jacksonville, FL: Cummer Museum of Art; and London: Giles, Ltd., 2013.
• “Print Trouble: Notes on a Medium In Between,” in From Minor to Major: The Minor Arts in Medieval Art History, ed. Colum Hourihane. Princeton: Index of Christian Art, Princeton University, 2012, 228-254.
• “Reception,” in Medieval Art History Today – Critical Terms, eds. Colum Hourihane and Nina A. Rowe, a special issue of Studies in Iconography 33 (2012): 73-88.
• The Viewer and the Printed Image in Late Medieval Europe. Burlington, VT: Ashgate, 2010.
• “Multiplying the Sacred: The Fifteenth-Century Woodcut as Reproduction, Surrogate, Simulation,” in The Woodcut in Fifteenth-Century Europe (Studies in the History of Art 75), ed. Peter Parshall. Washington, DC: CASVA; distributed by Yale University Press, 2009, 118-153.
• Origins of European Printmaking: Fifteenth-Century Woodcuts and Their Public. Coauthored with Peter Parshall, Rainer Schoch, Peter Schmidt, and Richard Field. Washington: National Gallery of Art; and New Haven: Yale University Press, 2005.
• Excavating the Medieval Image: Manuscripts, Artists, Audiences. Co-edited with Nina A. Rowe. Burlington, VT: Ashgate, 2004.
• "Toward an Archaeology of the Early Printed image," and “The Image in the Viewer’s Hands: The Reception of Early Prints in Europe,” Studies in Iconography 24 (2003): 1-42.
• “The Passion Measured: A Late-Medieval Diagram of the Body of Christ,” in The Broken Body: Passion Devotion in Late-Medieval Culture, eds. A. A. MacDonald and Bernhard Ridderbos. Groningen, The Netherlands: Egbert Forsten, 1998, 211-238.

David S. Areford is a specialist in late-medieval European devotional art, especially early printmaking. In recent years, he has extended his interests to the art of the twentieth century and beyond, with a special focus on the art of Sol LeWitt. He has published books, book chapters, and journal articles on fifteenth-century woodcuts and metalcuts, as well as manuscript illumination and panel painting. His recent publications include Locating Sol LeWitt (Yale University Press), an edited volume of essays by eight contributors, selected as one of the "Best Art Books of 2021" by the editors of ARTnews, Art in America, Bookforum, and Vanity Fair; and Strict Beauty: Sol LeWitt Prints (Yale University Press), a finalist for the 2022 Alfred H. Barr, Jr. Award for Smaller Museums from the College Art Association. In addition to his publications, Professor Areford has curated several exhibitions, including "Strict Beauty: Sol LeWitt Prints," New Britain Museum of American Art and Williams College Museum of Art, 2021-2022; "The Art of Empathy: The Cummer Mother of Sorrows in Context," Cummer Museum of Art, 2013-2014; and "Origins of European Printmaking: Fifteenth-Century Woodcuts and Their Public," National Gallery of Art and Germanisches Nationalmuseum, 2005-2006. 

Professor Areford's current research and curatorial projects include Sol LeWitt: To and From Painting, a book-length study of Sol LeWitt's wall drawings; "Beautiful Ideas: The Prints of Sol LeWitt," a multi-venue traveling exhibition organized by the New Britain Museum of American Art; and "Nature's Edge: The Prints of Richard Claude Ziemann," an exhibition proposal and catalog in progress.

Professor Areford's fellowships and awards include a Fulbright Fellowship for research in Germany; a Post-Doctoral Fellowship at the National Gallery of Art in Washington, DC; the Newberry Library's Weiss/Brown Publication Subvention Award; and a National Endowment for the Arts "Art Works" grant. From 2009-2011, he served on the Board of Directors of the International Center of Medieval Art.