Her primary area of study is the art and visual culture of the United States during the nineteenth century. In 2012 she was the recipient of a Senior Post-Doctoral Fellowship at the Smithsonian American Art Museum in Washington, DC to conduct research on nineteenth-century sculptor, William Henry Rinehart, and is currently organizing an exhibition of his work. She has lectured and published on artist studio practices, and her article on eighteenth-century artists' use of the camera obscura was recently published in American Art. She has contributed to several museum collections catalogs, including Corcoran Gallery of Art and the Museum of Fine Arts in Springfield, Massachusetts, and is a co-author of the textbook, Understanding Artforms in Our World.