Professor Brigitte Buettner began teaching art history at Smith College in 1990. After an academic career filled with wonder, excitement and surprises, Buettner plans to retire at the end of the 2024 spring semester.
Buettner completed her undergraduate degree in art history at L’Université Paris-Nanterre — the alma mater of French President Emmanuel Macron. As a first-generation college student having always been drawn to the visual aspect of art, Buettner easily found her way into art history. In my conversation with her, she emphasized the many differences between the education system in France and that of the United States.
She loves teaching at Smith, in part, because of how radically different the American liberal arts education is from what she experienced in Paris. She cited the ability to form mentorship relationships with faculty as one of the things she appreciates most about Smith. This was something she lacked when working towards her undergraduate degree.
“It was all huge classes; there was no individual attention…I wish I had had the kind of attention that we provide to students here. It’s just phenomenal, which is why we encourage students to avail themselves,” she explained.
She went on to pursue a doctorate degree in art history at L’École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales in Paris through the typical progression of the European higher education system.
“You go from year to year, and then all of a sudden, you’re in a Ph.D. program without ever knowing exactly why,” she reflected.
She began her graduate career studying contemporary art. However, after finding an advisor with whom she was excited to work, Buettner ended up focusing on medieval art. In particular, she specialized in illuminated manuscripts, which are hand-crafted, lavishly illustrated texts produced during the medieval period.
Her first job out of graduate school was documenting medieval manuscripts in the research unit at the Getty Center in Los Angeles. Buettner attributed her landing that post to a “pure, random act of kindness.” She described the difficulty — despair, even — she had experienced in trying to find a job in academia right out of graduate school.
She similarly recognized the “accidental” aspect to her joining the Smith faculty given the scarcity of faculty positions available in higher education. During the interview process for the position, she had to give her first public talk in English.
Now, after 34 years at Smith, Buettner answered without hesitation that it is the students that have been her favorite part of teaching. In addition to advising her students on academic matters, she sees great value in sharing her own, non-linear academic journey with them.
“I’m an example of someone who has not had a straight trajectory. Everything was a little bit happenstance…It wasn’t like I decided, when I was finishing my Ph.D., ‘I’m going to be working at the other end of the world.’”
And yet, here she is. In addition to her expertise in medieval manuscripts, Buettner’s research at Smith has taken her in a slightly different direction. She describes this shift in her focus with no small amount of serendipity.
It all began with a class she taught on reliquaries. She recalled that in one of the first iterations of the class (around 1993, she estimated), a student asked a question about the prominence of gems adorning medieval reliquaries. That was the spark, Buettner said.
“I couldn’t answer, and I didn’t know where to go for answers. So I worked on that for a good 20 years,” she said.
She plans on continuing this research into her retirement. She has also grown increasingly interested in the ethics around the transmission of medieval objects. Part of her current research is concerned with how medieval art has been co-opted to serve modern political agendas from the age of Napoleon to the Nazi era in Germany. Buettner explained that this is a project that has been undertaken for Greco-Roman art, but seldom for medieval art.
One of a handful of professors representing the small but mighty Medieval Studies department, Buettner has also enjoyed the flexibility she has at Smith to engage in transhistorical explorations of art, particularly through the introductory course, Art and Its Histories.
Although she thoroughly appreciates the richness of her time at Smith, Buettner is excited for what is to come.
