Kathryn Gerry

Kathryn Gerry has held full-time teaching positions at the University of Kansas, the Memphis College of Art, and Bowdoin College, and she has held curatorial and education positions at the Walters Art Museum, Baltimore, and the Peary-MacMillan Arctic Museum, Brunswick, Maine. In both teaching and curating, her interests have ranged broadly, covering the ancient and medieval periods in Europe, Africa, and Asia, and this breadth was on display in an exhibition she curated for the Bowdoin College Museum of Art, “New Views of the Middle Ages: Highlights from the Wyvern Collection” (2020-2022). Her research centers on medieval European illuminated manuscripts and portable arts, particularly works made in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries in England and northwestern Europe. Her publications have touched on the cult of saints, monasticism, the changes made to works of art after their initial production, and eco-critical approaches to art history. Her research has been supported by the Samuel H. Kress Foundation, the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, and the International Center of Medieval Art, and she has held fellowships at the Courtauld Institute of Art, the Walters Art Museum, and the School of Advanced Study at the University of London.

Books

In Print

The Medieval World; the Walters Art Museum, with Martina Bagnoli. Giles, 2011.

Editor, Lost Artefacts from Medieval England and France: Representation, Reimagination, Recovery, with Laura Cleaver. Boydell and Brewer, 2022.

Editor, New Views of the Middle Ages: Highlights from the Wyvern Collection. Scala, 2020.

Editor, A New Look at Old Things: Revisiting the Medieval Collections at the Walters Art Museum, with Richard Leson. Journal of the Walters Art Museum 68 (2010/2011).

Editor, Art and Nature: Studies in Medieval Art and Architecture, with Laura Cleaver and Jim Harris. Courtauld Institute of Art, 2009.

Forthcoming

“Encounters: The Medieval Mediterranean in 50 Objects,” with A. Achi, B. Crostini, D. Hayes, and M. Rosser-Owen. Routledge [under contract and in preparation; anticipated completion of manuscript in 2027.

“Setting the Scene for the Cult of Saint Alban: Collective Memory and Local Environment in the Book of St Albans (Dublin, Trinity College MS 177)” [in preparation].

Book Chapters

“Matthew Paris’s Pictorial Life of Alban,” in The Cambridge Companion to Matthew Paris. Edited by J. G. Clark. Cambridge University Press, 2026.

“Reweaving the Material Past: Textual Restoration of a Lost Textile from St Albans” in Lost Artefacts from Medieval England and France: Representation, Reimagination, Recovery. Edited by K. Gerry, L. Cleaver. Boydell and Brewer, 2022.

“Medieval Art in the Twenty-First Century” in New Views of the Middle Ages: Highlights from the Wyvern Collection. Edited by K. Gerry. Scala, 2020.

“Portals to the Past for the Students of Today: Teaching with Artworks in the Museum,” with Sean Burrus, Stephen Perkinson, Vyjayanthi Ratnam Selinger, and Emma Maggie Solberg, in New Views of the Middle Ages: Highlights from the Wyvern Collection. Edited by K. Gerry. Scala, 2020.

“Extended Shelf-Life: Manuscript Consolidation in an English Monastic Library” in Illuminating the Middle Ages: Tributes to Prof. John Lowden from his Students, Friends and Colleagues. Edited by L. Cleaver, A. Bovey, L. Donkin. Brill, 2020.

“Artistic Patronage and the Early Anglo-Norman Abbots of St Albans” in Writing History in the Anglo-Norman World: Manuscripts, Makers and Readers, c. 1066-c. 1250. Edited by L. Cleaver, A. Worm. Boydell and Brewer, 2018.

“The Psalmist and the Saint: Constructing Meaning in a Twelfth-Century Composite Manuscript” in St. Albans and the Markyate Psalter: Seeing and Reading in Twelfth-Century England. Edited by K. Collins, M. Fisher. Medieval Institute Publications, 2017.

“Picturing Narrative and Promoting Cult: Hagiographic Illumination at Three English Cult Centres,” in Matter of Faith: An Interdisciplinary Study of Relics and Relic Veneration in the Medieval Period. Edited by J. Robinson, L. de Beer, A. Harnden. British Museum Research Publication no. 195, 2014.

“Cult and Codex: Alexis, Christina and the Saint Albans Psalter,” in Der Albani-Psalter: Stand und Perspektiven de Forschung / The St. Albans Psalter: Current Research and Perspectives. Edited by J. Bepler, C. Heitzmann. Olms, 2013.

“The Reappearance of the Disappearing Christ in an Early Thirteenth-Century Psalter from Oxford” in Art and Nature: Studies in Medieval Art and Architecture. Edited by L. Cleaver, K. Gerry, J. Harris. Courtauld Institute of Art, 2009.

Journal Articles

In Print

“Reading between the Lines: Alexis, Christ, and the Construction of the Saintly Ideal in the St Albans Psalter.” Arte Medievale, series 4, vol. 4 (2014): 81-94.

“Tam forma quam materia mirabili: Workmanship, Material, and Value in a Twelfth-Century Portable Altar.” Journal of the Walters Art Museum 68 (2010/2011): 53-66.

“The Alexis Quire and the Cult of Saints at St Albans.” Historical Research 82 (2009): 593-612.

Forthcoming

“Traversing the Waters of a Vast Whirlpool: Navigating the Outdoor Spaces of the Guthlac Roll.” [accepted for publication in Gesta, anticipated Spring 2027]

Other

“Pictorial Lives of Saints—Illustration or Adaptation?” Hagiography Society Newsletter 35, no. 2 (August 2025): 6-9.