Elizabeth Saari Browne

Elizabeth Saari Browne (PhD, MIT) is an art historian specializing in eighteenth- and nineteenth-century European art and material culture, with particular attention to sculpture, ceramics, and the gendered dimensions of artistic production, collecting, and authorship.

Her first book, Modeling Sculpture: Clodion and the Aesthetics of Terracotta (University of Delaware Press, Studies in Eighteenth-Century Art and Culture, forthcoming 2027), reconsiders the terracotta oeuvre of French artist Claude Michel, called Clodion (1738-1814), whose work has often been dismissed as merely decorative or facile. Instead, Browne situates Clodion’s engagement with terracotta within period debates about materiality, plasticity, and the formation of aesthetic value, demonstrating how the physical properties of clay challenged limitations to sculptural practice in the eighteenth century.

Her second book project extends her investigations into eighteenth-century conceptions of earthen clay, examining the material’s perceived agency across art-historical, literary, and mineralogical writings. Bringing the history of art into dialogue with natural history, the project considers how clay’s catalytic potential informed broader understandings of matter and artistic making.

Prior to joining the faculty at UGA, Browne worked in the curatorial departments of several museums, including Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum; the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston; and the Santa Barbara Museum of Art. Her work has been published in Art History, the Burlington Magazine, the American Ceramic Circle Journal, the French Porcelain Society Journal, as well as in edited volumes and exhibition catalogues. She is currently a 2025-2027 Lilly Teaching Fellow.