Amy Ogata
Research & Practice Areas
Architecture and design of the 19th and 20th centuries in Europe and the US; material culture; history of childhood and children’s spaces; European Art Nouveau; history of applied arts
Biography
Amy F. Ogata’s research explores the history of modern European and American architecture, design, and material culture. Her book Designing the Creative Child: Playthings and Places in Midcentury America (Minnesota, 2013) historicizes the idea of childhood creativity, and shows how material goods such as toys, playrooms, playgrounds, books, schools, and museums produced for the American baby boom participated actively in forming the notion of the creative child after World War II. The book won a Wyeth grant from the College Art Association and the 2016 Alice Davis Hitchcock Award from the Society of Architectural Historians. A short book on the British toy and graphic designer Fredun Shapur also appeared in 2013. Ogata was co-curator of the international traveling exhibition Swedish Wooden Toys at the Musée des arts décoratifs, Paris and the Bard Graduate Center Gallery in New York City. She co-edited the accompanying catalogue (Yale, 2014), which was recognized by the Association of Art Museum Curators. Her first book was on architecture and design in turn-of-the-century Belgium, Art Nouveau and the Social Vision of Modern Living: Belgian Artists in a European Context (Cambridge, 2001). Ogata is currently working on a study of metal and the metallic in Second Empire France. Her articles have appeared in Art History, Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians, Winterthur Portfolio, the Journal of Design History and other scholarly publications. She has won grants from the Center for Advanced Study in the Visual Arts, the Getty Research Institute, Smithsonian Institution, Canadian Centre for Architecture, Metropolitan Museum of Art, AAUW, Spencer Foundation, and the Belgian American Educational Foundation (BAEF). Before coming to USC, she taught at the Bard Graduate Center, a research institute for design history and the decorative arts in New York City.
Education
- Ph.D. Art and Archaeology, Princeton University, 1996
- M.A. Art and Archaeology, Princeton University, 1992
- A.B. Art History, Smith College, 1987
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Tenure Track Appointments
- Professor of Art History, University of Southern California, 2014 –
- Professor, Bard Graduate Center: Decorative Arts, Design History, Material Culture, 2013-2014
- Associate Professor , The Bard Graduate Center for Studies in the Decorative Arts, Design and Culture, 2004 – 2013
- Assistant Professor, Bard Graduate Center for Studies in the Decorative Arts, Design and Culture, 1998 – 2004
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Summary Statement of Research Interests
Architecture and design of the 19th and 20th centuries in Europe and the US; material culture; history of childhood and children’s spaces; European Art Nouveau; history of applied arts
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Book
Ogata, A. F., Weber, S. (2014). Swedish Wooden Toys. New Haven and London: Yale University Press.
Ogata, A. F. (2013). Designing the Creative Child: Playthings and Places in Midcentury America. Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press.
Ogata, A. F. (2013). Fredun Shapur: Playing with Design. Paris: Editions Piqpoq.
Ogata, A. F. (2001). Art Nouveau and the Social Vision of Modern Living: Belgian Artists in a European Context. Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press.