Ruth Nelson
MA, 2007; American Art History
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About
Ruth D. Nelson received her MA in Art History at the University of Illinois at Chicago. For her thesis research on the Marquette Building in Chicago, she received the Corning Museum of Glass Rakow Research Grant. In 2018, Ruth was selected as a State of Illinois Humanities Council Road Scholar. Ruth teaches art history in the continuing education department of the College of DuPage and continues her research and writing on topics in American art history. Her most recent book, Our Lady of the World's Fair was published by Cornell University Press in 2024.
Selected Publications
Our Lady of the World’s Fair, Cornell University Press, 2024
The story of how two of New York’s most influential leaders persuaded the Vatican to allow one of the world’s greatest works of art to leave Europe for the first and only time. Driven by different motives, Robert Moses and Francis Cardinal Spellman had the same vision: to display Michelangelo’s masterpiece, the Pieta, in the Vatican’s pavilion at the 1964 World’s Fair in Queens, NY.
Searching for Marquette, Marquette University, 2013