Faculty biography - Gail Solberg
Gail Solberg has been living in Italy since 1982. She is 100% American but also, as of recently, an Italian citizen. Her introduction to Italy began when she attended a middle school in Bologna for a year while her family was on an academic exchange. That period allowed for extensive travel, and with her family she saw much of this fascinating country and other parts of Europe.
For almost twenty five years she has taught the art and culture of medieval and renaissance Florence to ACM students. Rarely in the classroom, she utilizes myriad sites across the city as laboratories for investigating the material culture of this society fundamental in the development of western civilization. Topics of her interest are art and politics, devotional art, art and gender issues, the relationship of painting and sculpture, decorative ensembles, fresco cycles, and more.
As an undergraduate student of history and art history at Stanford University she devised her own junior year abroad program. In London she did research on a senior project for her double BA in history and art history. She holds an MA and a PhD from the Institute of Fine Arts of New York University. While at the Institute she was an intern in at the National Gallery in Washington and a research assistant in the Department of European Paintings at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. In New York she taught at Hunter College and at the undergraduate college of NYU. She has been a consultant to the BBC for their Open University course on medieval Italy.
She went to Florence to work on her thesis and during her protracted stay in Italy began teaching American students. She has been affiliated with the Florence programs of Syracuse University, Florida State University, DePaul University, the College of William and Mary, and with the Rome program of St. Mary’s College, but her ‘home’ is with the ACM in Florence.
She is married to an Italian physician and they have two teenage daughters. She publishes in her field and attends international meetings. She is an avid traveller, particularly to her American home base in Urbana, Illinois and to Chicago.