A Concert and Reception
in Honor of Dr. Alessandra Comini
SMU Distinguished Professor Emerita of Art History

Featuring Music from her Mystery Novels
with Cathedral Arts Artists-in-Residence
Courtney Maina, soprano
Christopher A. Leach, tenor
Mikhail Berestnev, piano
Mary Dibbern, piano

music by Beethoven, Brahms, Schubert, Schönberg, Mahler, Mendelssohn and Schumann

SUNDAY, APRIL 14 at 3:00 PM
GREAT HALL
FREE PARKING AND ADMISSION
Event flyer HERE.

About Alessandra Comini

Alessandra Comini is an American art historian and curator. She is University Distinguished Professor of Art History Emerita at Southern Methodist University. Proficient in music and languages as well as art history, Comini brought an interdisciplinary approach to her study of the arts in Austria and Germany at the turn of the 20th century, an approach particularly suited to the integrated art forms of fin-de-siècle Vienna.

Early and personal life

Alessandra Comini was born the daughter of Megan Laird and Raiberto Comini in Winona, Minnesota. Her earliest years were spent in Barcelona, Milan, and Dallas. Comini received her B.A. from Barnard College (1956), her M.A, from the University of California, Berkeley (1964), and her Ph.D. from Columbia University (1969). Her dissertation on the topic of Egon Schiele’s portraiture was written under Theodore Reff.

In 1974, she began her decades of collaboration with art historian Eleanor Tufts at Southern Methodist University.

Career

While teaching at Columbia between 1965 and 1974, Comini became one of the founders of the Women’s Caucus for Art in 1972. She taught at Southern Methodist University from 1974 until 2005. And she guest taught at the University of California, Berkeley (1967) and Yale University (1973). Voted outstanding professor sixteen times by her students, Comini served as the Alfred Hodder Resident Humanist at Princeton University (1972–1973) and was named Distinguished Visiting Lecturer at Oxford University’s European Humanities Research Centre (1996).

Celebrated for her witty, erudite, and compelling public lectures, Comini has been in demand as a guest speaker nationally and internationally. As an interdisciplinary speaker, Comini lectured repeatedly at the Leipzig Gewandhaus symposia, The Santa Fe Opera, and for the Indianapolis and Dallas Symphony Orchestras.

In 1990 Comini was awarded the Grand Decoration of Honour for Services to the Republic of Austria in recognition of her contributions to Germanic culture.

In 2014 Comini turned to fiction writing and has published nine art history murder mystery novels since in the Megan Crespi Series.

The Neue Galerie Museum for German and Austrian Art, New York, commissioned Comini to curate its blockbuster exhibition Egon Schiele’s Portraits (2014–15).

Honors and Awards

Comini’s book Egon Schiele’s Portraits (1974) was nominated for a National Book Award (1975) and received the College Art Association’s Charles Rufus Morey Book Award (1976). Comini’s book The Changing Image of Beethoven: A Study in Mythmaking (1987) was a pioneer application of reception history to imagery.

• 1995 – Women’s Caucus for Art, Lifetime Achievement Award
• 1996 – United Methodist Church Scholar/Teacher of the Year Award
• 2002 – Texas Hall of Fame nomination
• 2005 – Comini Lecture Series established, Southern Methodist University
• 2010 – Medal of Honor, Veteran Feminists of America
• 2011 – Distinguished Alumna Award, Barnard College
• 2012 – International Symposium, Neulengbach, Austria, “Alessandra Comini und Neulengbach”
• 2018 – Golden Honor of Merit for Services to the State of Lower Austria
• 2019 – Alessandra Comini International Fellowship for Study Abroad, founded by Meadows School of the Arts, Southern Methodist University