Karl-Magnus Brose

PhD Student


Karl is a fourth-year doctoral candidate working under the direction of Professor Sarah Betzer. He studies early modern European sculpture with a focus on the Old Regime, ancient sculpture and the rise of aesthetic theory. Karl's dissertation examines the work of the French sculptor Edme Bouchardon, centering his Roman period between 1723-1732. He studies Bouchardon's use of ancient models, using his designs for engraved gems, medals, and portraiture to reexamine the social and political stakes of debates about how to imitate ancient art, recovering the sources of art-historical writing in sculptural practice. His broader scholarly interests include art criticism, the history of collecting, the relationship between theory and practice, the history of the paragone, the role of Greek sculpture in German philosophy, the relationship between aesthetics and commodification, and the historiography, theories, and methods of art history. 

Karl graduated from the University of Minnesota in 2015 with a B.A. in Philosophy and a minor in Art History. His summa cum laude thesis studied the entanglement of the modern and the antique in the work of J.J. Winckelmann, focusing on his criticism of the sculptor Gian Lorenzo Bernini. He received his M.A. in Art History from the University of Toronto in 2019. In 2021 he was a co-curator for the exhibition "Boomalli Prints and Paper, Making Space as an Art Collective at the Kluge Ruhe Aboriginal Art Collection of the University of Virginia." He is currently conducting dissertation research in Paris and Rome.