Context New York Tour Guides

Ara H. Merjian is the visiting assistant professor and Lauro de Bosis postdoctoral fellow in the department of romance languages and literatures at Harvard University for 2008-9, and assistant professor of Italian studies and art history at New York University. In addition to teaching on the centenary of the founding of Italian Futurism, he currently is finishing a book manuscript, "Urban Untimely Giorgio de Chirico and the Metaphysical City", which examines De Chirico's early metaphysical cityscapes in the light of Nietzschean philosophy. A former Fulbright scholar to Italy and a fellow of the Center for Advanced Study in the Visual Arts of the National Gallery, Ara received his B.A. from Yale University and his Ph.D. from the University of California, Berkeley. He has taught at Berkeley and Stanford Universities and is a regular critic for Modern Painters, Artforum online, and Frieze. Ara has led walking seminars for Context since its earliest days in Rome and Paris.

Eve Straussman-Pflanzer is a Ph.D. candidate in art history at New York University's Institute of Fine Arts. She has worked as a research assistant and docent at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York and the Peggy Guggenheim Collection in Venice. She spent 2006 in Florence on a Rousseau fellowship researching the role of women in the Medici court and leading walks for Context Florence.

Lia recently completed her PhD in art history at the University of Chicago. She spent two years leading tours in Florence for Context while she conducted dissertation research. She has been the recipient of Kress and Mellon fellowships and has worked at museums in Chicago and New York. She currently works as a curatorial research assistant at an area museum and teaches art history at a local university. A resident of Astoria, Queens, Lia is excited about sharing her love of the art and culture of New York on her walks.

Lindsey is a PhD candidate at the Institute of Fine Arts at New York University, where she specializes in the art and architecture of 16th- and 17th-century Europe, with particular emphasis on Italy. She has worked at the National Gallery of Art in Washington and the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York. She just finished a fellowship sponsored by the Metropolitan Museum to conduct research for her dissertation on the Baroque painter and architect, Pietro da Cortona, in Rome. While in Rome she worked for Context Rome, winning acclaim for her teaching style and abilities.

Manu Radhakrishnan is a PhD candidate at Princeton in medieval European history. He spent 2006 in Rome researching his dissertation and working as a docent for Context Rome, where he was praised for his fantastic teaching style. He is currently in New York City, writing his dissertation, and leading walks to the Cloisters and other sites of religious art.

Lorraine Karafel is a Ph.D. candidate in art history at New York University's Institute of Fine Arts, specializing in the art, architecture and social history of 16th-century Europe. She spent 2006 as a Visiting Scholar at the American Academy in Rome researching her dissertation on the painter Raphael and his designs for tapestries and interior decoration. Lorraine has taught at Rutgers University and Parsons School of Design in New York and Paris and has held curatorial and research positions at the National Gallery of Art in Washington and the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, where she currently works.

Sonia is currently working on her Ph.D. in art history and archaeology at Columbia University. She specializes in Greek art and archaeology, but also has a strong interest in Etruscan art. Sonia is a practicing archaeologist and has conducted archaeological fieldwork in Italy (Sicily and Tuscany) and Spain. She has taught at Barnard and Columbia and is writing her dissertation on Ampurias, a Greek settlement in Spain.

Ed Wouk is currently a doctoral candidate in the Fine Arts at Harvard
University. His area of focus is on the artistic relations between the Low
Countries and Italy in the Renaissance, and his dissertation focuses on the oeuvre of one of the foremost of these so-called "Fiamminghi a Roma." Ed is a native New Yorker and has studied and taught New York history extensively. He's also lived extensively in Belgium and the Netherlands and is equally conversant in
the art and theory of the Renaissance and Baroque periods in the North and in Italy.

Ethan Greenbaum received his MFA in painting from Yale University. He is a working artist who exhibits his work regularly in New York and abroad. He is a co-founder and frequent contributor to The Highlights (www.thehighlights.org), a website devoted to artist writings and projects. Ethan teaches art, design and art history at various universities in New York and the surrounding area including the Pratt Institute and Tyler school of Art. He also regularly leads tours in the Chelsea gallery district for Columbia University students. He is a recipient of the Barry Schactman Painting Prize and the Edward Albee Foundation Residency. Ethan lives and works in Brooklyn.

Seungjung Kim is currently working on her Ph.D. in art history and archaeology at Columbia University, where her area of expertise is Greek art. She has extensive experience as an archaeologist in the field, working in Sicily, and as a researcher and teacher at such institutions as the Metropolitan Museum of Art, Barnard College, and the University of Virginia. Originally from Seoul, Korea, Seungjung also holds a doctorate in astrophysics from Princeton University.

Page Knox is a Ph.D. candidate in the art history department at Columbia University, specializing in late-nineteenth century American painting. She is currently finishing her dissertation on the relationship between print media and the rise of aestheticism in America during the Gilded Age. Page has worked at the Yale British Art Center and taught at Columbia and Barnard Colleges. She is also involved with a number of art institutions in Greenwich, Connecticut where she resides with her family.

Elizabeth Thompson Colleary holds master's degrees in art history and art education and has taught art history and museum education courses at the College of New Rochelle for twenty-eight years. At present she also works as a consultant to the Edward and Josephine Nivison Hopper Research Collection, housed in the library at the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York. She brought in foundation funding to create the Research Collection in 2001 and has worked on archivally re-housing the Hopper papers and cataloguing all of Jo’s work at the museum since then. She also conducted interviews with Hopper family friends in Florida for an oral history project undertaken by the Whitney, and her commentary on the Hopper marriage was included on the Audio Guide created for the installation of Hopper’s work in the recent Full House 75th anniversary exhibition at the Whitney.

Thompson Colleary has also curated numerous exhibitions and published articles on women artists, most recently an article on some newly discovered works by Jo Hopper in the Spring 2004 edition of the Woman's Art Journal. After locating Jo’s work in 2000 she helped to organize an exhibit of her watercolors at the Truro Historical Museum and arranged for her work to be included in the Thoroughly Modern, “New Women” Art Students of Robert Henri exhibition held at the Brigham Young University Museum of Art in 2005, and the Edward Hopper in Charleston exhibition at the Gibbes Museum of Art in Charleston, SC in 2006, where she also took part in a panel discussion entitled “Partners in Art: The Creative Relationship” about two-artist marriages. Thompson Colleary is in the process of writing two books, one on Edward Hopper’s depictions of women and another about Jo, her art, and the Hopper marriage.

Cathy Kaufman is a trained chef and food historian with extensive experience in the food world in New York and beyond. After working as an attorney in New York for more than a decade, Cathy gained multiple degrees in cooking from Peter Kump's New York Cooking School and the School for American Chefs at Beringer Vineyards, California. She has worked in catering and restaurants in New York, and has been on the faculty at the Institute of Culinary Education. Since the late 1990s, she has written and taught extensively on the history of cuisine, including numerous articles for the Oxford Symposium on Food and Cookery. She is senior editor of the Oxford Encyclopedia of Food and Drink in America and author of the recently published Cooking in Ancient Civilizations (Greenwood Press).

Alexandra Leaf is a culinary historian and cookbook author. She writes for a variety of publications including The Philadelphia Daily News, Gastronomica and Country Living and most recently SAVEUR. She has been featured on radio and television, including NPR and CNN, and in such print media as The New York Times, Food and Wine, and Travel and Leisure.

Alexandra is a member of Les Dames d'Escoffier International; is a board member of The New York Food Museum; and is former chair of Culinary Historians of New York. Alexandra holds a Masters' degree in Comparative Literature from NYU and speaks fluent French and Italian. In 1992, she was awarded a Soros Foundation Teaching Fellowship and in 2002 was cited for her outstanding contribution to the James Beard Foundation. Her award-winning (IACP) cookbook "Van Gogh's Table at the Auberge Ravoux" (Artisan Books, 2001) has just been reissued in paperback. In 2002, the French edition of the book was published by Hoebecke. Alexandra's first book, "The Impressionists' Table: Recipes and Gastronomy of 19th Century France" was published in 1994 by Rizzoli International.
Alexandra is a well-known expert on chocolate and is the principal organizer of the 92nd St. Y's annual World Chocolate Extravaganza. She lectures around the country on the history, manufacture and appreciation of fine chocolate. In addition, she teaches tasting classes at the Institute for Culinary Education and at the 92nd St. Y in New York City where she resides.

Miru Kim is a New York-based artist who has explored various urban ruins such as abandoned subway stations, tunnels, sewers, catacombs, factories, hospitals, and shipyards. She was featured as one of the America's Best and Brightest 2007 in Esquire magazine. Her work has appeared in various other media such as The New York Times, The Financial Times, Time Out New York, The Korea Daily, La Stampa, JoongAng Daily, Dong-A Daily, HDNet TV, ProSieben, New York Times Upfront, Yen Magazine, AnimalNewYork.com, Gothamist.com, and in many shows in NYC and Berlin.
Miru was born in Stoneham, Massachusetts in 1981 but was raised in Seoul, Korea. She moved back to Massachusetts in 1995 to attend Phillips Academy in Andover, and moved to New York City in 1999 to attend Columbia University. In 2006, she received an MFA in painting from Pratt Institute. She is also the founder of Naked City Arts, LLC, which is dedicated to helping other young artists and bringing art to the Lower Manhattan.

Moses Gates is an Urban Planner working in housing, transportation, and demography of New York. He holds a Masters in Urban Planning from Hunter College, and has been giving tours of the hidden and unknown spaces of New York since 2003. His love of the hidden and unknown aspects of cities has lead him from the rooftops of Sao Paulo to the sewers of Rome.

Ken Ovitz holds multiple degrees and certificates in culinary history and food preparation from The New School University, The Institute of Culinary Education, and the State of New York. He is an expert on Jewish cuisine and religious feasts, and has written numerous articles for the Jewish Voice Newspaper and contributed scholarly papers on the history of Jewish cuisine, the seder, and kosher rules at a variety of conferences.

EY Zipris holds dual Masters degrees in education and museum anthropology from Teacher's College and Columbia respectively. She currently works at the City Museum of New York, and thus has deep and broad knowledge of the city and its history.

Becky earned her Master's degree in urban history from the University of Leicester, UK where she wrote her thesis on nineteenth-century city planning and its social implications, research that now informs her wanderings through New York. A freelance writer and researcher, she has contributed to publications like Time Out New York and The Boston Globe.

Hansel Hernandez-Navarro is an architectural conservator specializing in cultural resource management and the preservation and rehabilitation of historic buildings and monuments. Over the years, Hansel has gained extensive experience through a variety of projects involving the preservation and conservation of historic and cultural resources. He has done site conservation work in the US, Italy, India, and Portugal. Hansel has also had various research and writing roles at the Getty Conservation Institute in Los Angeles,
the World Monuments Fund, and the Museum of the City of New York. Hansel received his Master's in historic preservation from Columbia University's Graduate School of Architecture, Planning and Preservation. He is also active in the documentation and preservation of buildings of the modern movement.

Michelle Cianfaglione received her undergraduate degree in architecture from the University at Buffalo and her masters in architecture from the University of Pennsylvania. During her education, she traveled extensively through Italy and Japan studying art and architecture. She is a third generation New Yorker who lives and breathes the culture of the city. Michelle is a published artist, avid photographer, and a member of Design in 5, which is affiliated with the Architectural League of New York. She began her career at Studio Daniel Libeskind and is currently teaching architecture at the New York Institute of Technology while practicing architecture here in NYC.

Noah Chasin earned his Ph.D. in art history from the Graduate School of the City University of New York (CUNY), writing his dissertation on 1950s architecture. He is currently an assistant professor of art history at Bard College and has been on the faculty at Columbia, Parsons, and other universities. Noah has researched and written extensively on modern architecture, including the buildings and urban environment of New York, which serves as an open-air classroom for many of his lectures.

Bill Bautz worked for several decades on Wall Street, designing and implementing computer trading systems to support the operations of banks, brokerage houses and stock exchanges both within the US and internationally. He held senior technology management positions with Shearson Lehman Brothers, American Express Bank, and the New York Stock Exchange. A consultant with the Financial Services Volunteer Corps, Bill currently works providing assistance to the financial institutions in Egypt and Iraq. He holds a graduate degree from Yale University.

Elisa Decker has worked as an artist in Greenwich Village for several decades. In addition to showing her work in galleries throughout the city and the recipient of many prestigious fellowships, Elisa writes for Art in America.

Rachael Goldman holds degrees from Rutgers University, Sotheby's Institute of Art, and City University of New York (CUNY) Graduate Center in Classics and Art History. Rachel is currently working on a manuscript that deals with the social and cultural constructions of color in the Rome Republican and Imperial periods. She has studied at the American Academy in Rome in 2007 and has won fellowships from the New York Classical Club, the College Art Association, and the Archaeological Institute of American. Prof. Goldman is published in the Bryn Mawr Classical Review and the Journal of Decorative Arts of the Bard Graduate Center.

Claire Barliant is a Brooklyn-based freelance critic and writer whose work has appeared in numerous publications including Afterall, Art in America, Artforum, Bookforum, and Time Out New York, and in books on the artists Inigo Manglano-Ovalle and Ann Lislegaard. She is formerly an associate editor of Artforum and an editor of Modern Painters, where she was executive editor from 2007 to 2009.

Nicole Griggs is currently a Ph.D student studying Gothic Architecture at Columbia University with a focus on early gothic structures and applications of new media and technologies. Her interest are in tectonic expression and spatial formation as well as social and cultural history. She received her Master's Degree and MPhil from Columbia University and her Bachelor's degree from Barnard College. Before joining the PhD program at Columbia she worked in media production in both creative and management positions. She also held a curatorial assistant position at the New Orleans Museum of Art for the Raised to the Trade: Creole Building Arts of New Orleans exhibit.

Beth Edelstein is an Assistant Conservator in the Department of Objects Conservation at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, currently working on the reinstallation of the Islamic Art galleries. She received a master\'s degree in art history and art conservation in 2003 from the New York University Institute of Fine Arts Conservation Center, and was an Andrew W. Mellon Fellow at the Cloisters from 2003-2005. She is also co-proprietor of SBE Conservation, LLC, a private objects conservation studio, which is overseeing the restoration of the murals and other historic decorative elements of the Stanton Street Synagogue.

Andrew Magnes is an Architect and Artist. He has a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree in Drawing from the University of Florida and a Master of Architecture degree from New School University, Parsons School of Design. After working for several New York Based architecture firms, he founded his own practice, amProjects, in 2007. Andrew is particularly interested in how cultural and social shifts redefine architectural and urban form. In the Fall of 2011, he will be teaching Architecture at SUNY Orange.

After receiving her undergraduate degree in art history from Swarthmore College, Lauren pursued a master’s in architectural history from the Courtauld Institute in London, where she focused on the urban development of Renaissance Rome. She is currently close to completing her doctorate at the Institute of Fine Arts, and is writing her dissertation on the architecture and urbanism of banks in early modern Italy. Her enjoyment of architectural history budded while working for Venturi, Scott Brown and Associates, a Philadelphia based firm. Lauren loves exploring New York City’s countless cultural treasures. She has taught courses on the architectural history of the city, and has recently helped to landmark some of the city’s monuments.

Sarah Lohman has over a decade of museum experience with a specific focus on culinary history. Currently, she is an educator at the Lower East Side Tenement Museum, and also works as a freelance curator, consulting with historical institutions to create public programs focused on food. Dubbed an "historic gastronomist," Lohman recreates historic recipes as a way to make a personal connection with the past. She chronicles her explorations in culinary history on her blog, FourPoundsFlour.com, and her work has been featured in publications as diverse as Edible Manhattan and NHK Japanese Public Television.

Jennifer Abadi wrote and illustrated her cookbook-memoir, A Fistful of Lentils: Syrian-Jewish Recipes from Grandma’s Fritzie’s Kitchen (now in its third printing in paperback), and currently assists others in writing and preserving their own family recipes. Four years ago she created “The Traveling Palate,” a monthly event where guests enjoy a series of food demos and tastings while learning about less-common cuisines and cultures in an intimate café setting. Jennifer teaches in such professional cooking schools in New York City as The Jewish Community Center (JCC), the Institute of Culinary Education (ICE), and the Natural Gourmet (beginning fall 2010), as well as privately in individual homes. Her area of expertise covers a range of cuisines, such as Syrian, Indian, Moroccan, Iraqi, Egyptian, Yemenite, Persian, Greek, Armenian, Georgian, and Turkish, all of which she can customize to your needs. Jennifer is also an active member of The New York Women’s Culinary Alliance as well as ChefsLine.com, MyFoodMyHealth.com, and Cookstr.com. She has done food demonstrations on NBC, ABC, and Fox 5 News, as well as been interviewed by such radio on stations as “Awake, Alive, and Jewish,” and “Radio Sefarad: The English Corner,” in Spain.

Jennifer Young received her B.A. in Jewish studies from McGill University in Montreal, and her M.A. in cultural anthropology from the University of Illinois, Urbana Champaign. She is currently a PhD candidate in Jewish history at New York University. Her dissertation focuses on the Jewish labor movement and inter-ethnic activism during the New Deal era. She has traveled extensively studying Yiddish language and culture, from Lithuania to Tel Aviv. She also enjoys exploring northern Manhattan's Washington Heights, where she lives.

Olivia Powell is a doctoral candidate in the Department of Art History and Archaeology at Columbia University. Her dissertation—a marriage between her background in dance and her love of Italian art—studies the relationship between painting and performance in fifteenth-century Florence. At Columbia, she has taught “Masterpieces of Western Art,” as well as “Dance and the Early Modern Artist”—an undergraduate course of her own design. Olivia has also held an adjunct position at Parsons the New School for Design, and an internship at the Morgan Library. In addition to the Italian Renaissance, Olivia maintains an active interest in the arts of Africa. Her M.Phil degree was awarded with a minor in this field, and in 2007 she co-curated Primitivism Revisited: After the End of an Idea at Sean Kelly Gallery in New York City. Olivia is the recipient of fellowships from the Jacob K. Javits Foundation and Columbia University. In her free time, she can be found taking ballet classes at studios throughout the city.

Richard E. Ocejo earned his doctorate in Sociology at the CUNY Graduate Center and joined the faculty in fall 2009. His primary research looks at the interrelationship between urban change and the nighttime economy, with a specific focus on issues such as gentrification and urban growth policies, through the analytical lenses of nightlife scenes. He is currently researching a book on the development of contemporary cultural movements, focusing on the cocktail movement with the aim of identifying patterns of cultural production and consumption, as well as new forms of work in the postindustrial economy.

A Montreal native now based in New York, Chantal Martineau is a freelance writer specializing in food, wine, spirits, travel, and culture. During a three-year stint in London, she edited the travel section of Sir Richard Branson's Virgin.net, and since then has contributed to such titles as Saveur, The Atlantic, The New York Times, Redbook, Wine Enthusiast, Decanter, Imbibe and The Globe and Mail. In 2009, she starred in the Travel Channel's Confessions of a Travel Writer and, in 2010, published Knack Calorie Counter Cookbook. She is currently at work on a book about the evolution of tequila from local agricultural product to luxury good.

Meisha Hunter is an architectural historian and a historic preservationist. She studied Classical History and Art & Architectural History at Queens’ University in Kingston Ontario, received her M.A. in Art History from Rutgers University, and pursued post-graduate studies in historic preservation at Columbia University. In 2007, she was awarded the Rome Prize in Historic Preservation from the American Academy in Rome, where her research focused on the construction history, water management, and stewardship of a still-active, 21km long, 2000 year old aqueduct. Her research and collaborative projects focus on historic waterworks infrastructure, and her writing has been
included in publications of the American Academy in Rome, the Ename Center for Public Archaeology and Heritage Presentation, Fang Duff Kahn, the International Council on Monuments and Sites, and the University of Delaware Press. She has lectured in Canada, Germany, Italy, and the Netherlands, as well as the United States., and has travelled throughout Europe, as well as regions of North Africa, and the Middle East in pursuit of ancient Roman aqueducts. Her photographs have been exhibited in Florence and Rome. A native Canadian, she currently lives and works in New York City.
Ms. Hunter’s project in Rome focused on the stewardship of the Aquedotto Vergine, a 2000 year old, 21km long, gravity fed aqueduct, still in active use within Rome’s water distribution system. Subsequently, Ms. Hunter completed a post-graduate certificate program in historic preservation at Columbia and prepared a thesis entitled “Stewardship and Sustainability of Historic Waterworks Infrastructure: New York and Rome.” Since 2003, her research, travel and writing has centered on articulating a preservation voice in the future stewardship of historic aqueducts.

Norbert Figueroa received his Bachelor in Environmental Design degree and Master in Architecture degree from the University of Puerto Rico. He began his career in Puerto Rico and soon after that explored the architectural scene of New York City - currently working as a Licensed Architect at Studio V Architecture. Over the years, Norbert has gained extensive experience through a variety of projects involving urban design and historic conservation, among others. He is also a travel writer, focused on adventure travel and architectural cultures from different parts of the world.

Adam Zucker is an artist, curator, and arts writer who lives and works in New York City. He received his B.A. in art and multimedia from the University of New Haven and is completing his Masters in Art History and Museum Studies at the City College of New York. As an artist, he has exhibited his art in galleries across the East Coast and has been featured in several publications, catalogs and journals. His writing has been published in Sculpture Magazine, and online at Berkshire Fine Arts. As an independent curator he is a founding member of a curatorial collective called et al Projects where he works with contemporary artists to create multi-disciplinary events and exhibitions. He is curating a museum exhibition on a group of renowned American Figurative Expressionists in Provincetown Massachusetts in 2013. Adam was born in New York City and enjoys the excitement and fast pace of one of the greatest art scenes in the world.

Having earned his Master’s degree in History and Philosophy at the CUNY Graduate Center, Daniel London continues his pursuit of the urban past through intensive research into the following questions: How have cities been built, experienced and imagined by different social groups across time? How have these understandings conflicted or converged with each other? And finally, how have these discussions and debates impacted the city we see today? He is currently teaching a course on American Urban History, working at the Museum of the City of New York, and is planning his dissertation on public space in early-twentieth century New York.

Michelle Cheng is the co-founder of the popular culinary website Chouxettes. A historian by training, she earned her Master's degree from New York University's Institute of Fine Arts with a special interest in decorative arts. Michelle has worked in numerous galleries in New York City.

Alexandra holds an M.S. in Agriculture, Food and Environment from Tufts University Friedman School of Nutrition Science and Policy, and a BS in Nutritional Sciences from Cornell University. She is a researcher, cook, nutritionist and writer, currently researching on Chinese food policy and agriculture production. She has previously written and researched on issues related to food security, sustainable agriculture and social and environmental justice for NGOs and think tanks such as the Worldwatch Institute and the Small Planet Institute, where she is currently a Fellow at Large. In 2010, as one of the authors of a publication for Slow Food International, she was invited to Turin, Italy, where she was able to taste and learn about specialty foods produced in various regions of Italy. Her understanding of the food culture and immigrant community of New York comes from her grandparents, who came to New York 50 years ago and were very active in the Chinatown community and restaurant business. Alexandra currently lives in Manhattan.

No biography information for Rachel Ropeik.