About Me
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J. Cabelle Ahn, PhD, is a NY-based writer, art historian, and non-profit director. Trained as a specialist in early modern European Art, her writing also explores histories of the art market, art of the French diaspora, and the ongoing influence of old masters on contemporary art. Her bylines have appeared in The Art Newspaper, Artnet News, Observer, Elephant Magazine, Master Drawings, Journal18, and in several edited volumes and exhibition catalogs.
She earned her PhD in the History of Art and Architecture at Harvard University in 2024, where her dissertation, Multiple Exposures: Drawings, Displays, and Their Spaces in Eighteenth-Century France, examined the origins of contemporary exhibition practices through the lens of early public and semi-public art exhibitions. Combining data analysis with rediscovered archival materials, the project offered new insight into evolving display strategies of artists such as François Boucher, Charles-Nicolas Cochin, Gerard van Spaendonck, and Charles de Wailly, and how these strategies impacted the rise of the secondary art market.
She also holds an MA from Bard Graduate Center, NY (2015), where she focused on design history and decorative arts, an MA in old master drawings from the Courtauld Institute of Art, London (2013), and a BA in Art History from Wellesley College, MA (2012).
With over a decade plus experience in museums and arts non-profits, she remains committed to broadening public engagement for the arts, strategizing new modes of exhibition-making, developing innovative models for arts fundraising, and expanding visibility for underrepresented and emerging artists. She currently serves as President of the Association of Print Scholars, where she has been an officer since 2019.
