Brigitte Buettner joined Smith in 1990. She is originally from Switzerland and studied in Paris. Prior to moving to Northampton, she worked as a collection specialist in the photo archive of the Getty Center in Los Angeles.

Buettner wrote her dissertation on an early 15th-century French illuminated manuscript of Giovanni Boccaccio’s On Famous Women (published as a College Art Association monograph in 1996). After writing several essays on late medieval manuscripts in a courtly context, and a focus on gift-giving rituals in particular, her attention has shifted to the sumptuary arts and to questions of materiality.

She is currently finishing a wide-ranging, cross-disciplinary examination of the role of precious stones in medieval art, symbolic practices and in the production of scientific knowledge. This project has received support from the Mellon Foundation, the American Philosophical Society and the National Endowment for the Humanities.