Anne Proctor

Anne E. Proctor serves as Associate Dean for the School of Humanities, Arts, and Education and serves on the RWU Education Advisory Board. Her graduate work focused on the diverse fields represented by SHAE faculty and curriculum: she holds an M.Ed. in Arts in Education from Harvard University (2001), an M.A. in Art History from Syracuse University (2007), and a Ph.D. in Art History from the University of Texas at Austin (2013, dissertation: “Vincenzo Danti at the Medici Court: Constructing Professional Identity in Late Renaissance Florence”).

At Roger Williams, Professor Proctor has taught in the Art and Architectural History Program (AAH) within the Cummings School of Architecture as well as in the Core Curriculum and the Honors program. Professor Proctor continues to offer introductory and advanced courses in Art and Architectural History, with a focus on the art and architecture of the Italian Renaissance, and a Museum Studies course that is cross-listed with Preservation Studies. In her courses on the Renaissance, she brings focus to the underrepresented populations who viewed, contributed to, and were represented in works of art, incorporating re-readings of familiar works as well as assignments that engage in digital humanities work. She was an RWU Faculty Diversity and Inclusion Fellow in 2019-2020 and, as part of that cohort, helped to lead part of the DIFF Summer Institute in 2020.

Professor Proctor’s research focuses on sculpture, collaborative commissions, court spaces, and the professional status of artists in late Renaissance Italy. Her scholarship addresses what it meant to be a local artist and a court artist during the sixteenth century, an era when many sculptors traveled between courts within Italy and across Europe and moved within dynamic professional networks. Professor Proctor has presented papers at conferences and symposia in the United States, Canada, and Europe, including the Sixteenth Century Society Conference and the annual conference of the Renaissance Society of America. Recent work includes papers on the foundation of the Accademia del Disegno in Florence and the role of the architect, painter, and author Giorgio Vasari at the court of duke Cosimo I de’ Medici. She is currently working on a book project that examines the careers of sculptors who served the Medici court in Florence in the third quarter of the sixteenth century.