Michael Yonan’s research engages with several aspects of art and culture eighteenth-century Europe, including court and monarchical art, the interpretation of rococo architecture, eighteenth-century material culture and decorative arts, Austrian and especially Viennese art, and Enlightenment thinking about gender and sexuality.
Publications
The Wieskirche: Movement, Perception, and Salvation in the Bavarian Rococo." Studies in Eighteenth-Century Culture 41, forthcoming.
"Toward a Fusion of Art History and Material Culture Studies." West 86th: A Journal of Decorative Arts, Design History, and Material Culture 18, no. 2 (Fall 2011), forthcoming.
The Cultural Aesthetics of Eighteenth-Century Porcelain. Co-edited with Alden Cavanaugh. (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2010)
“The Eighteenth-Century Genesis of Vienna's Belvedere Museum.” In The First Modern Museums of Art: Eighteenth-Century Culture and the Formation of an Institution, ed. Carole Paul. (Los Angeles: Getty Publications), forthcoming.
Empress Maria Theresa and the Politics of Habsburg Imperial Art, Pennsylvania State University Press, 2011. (introduction available online here)
“Portable Dynasties: Imperial Gift-Giving at the Eighteenth-Century Habsburg Court in Vienna.” The Court Historian, 14, no. 2 (2009): 177-188. Available online here (pdf)
“The Man Behind the Mask? Looking at Franz Xaver Messerschmidt.” Eighteenth-Century Studies 42, no. 3 (Spring 2009): 431-451
“Nobility and Domestic Conviviality in the Paintings of Archduchess Maria Christine.” ISECS conference proceedings. Theatrum Historiae 4, supplement, Univerzita Pardubice, Czech Republic (2009): 135-154.
“Igneous Architecture: Porcelain, Natural Philosophy, and the Rococo cabinet chinois.” In The Cultural Aesthetics of Eighteenth-Century Porcelain, ed. Alden Cavanaugh and Michael Yonan (Aldershot: Ashgate,2010) 65-85.
“Ornament’s Invitation: The Rococo of Vienna’s Gardekirche.” The Eighteenth Century: Theory and Interpretation 50, no. 4 (Winter 2009): 15–38.
"Pompeo Batoni Between Rome and Vienna," Source: Notes in the History of Art 26, No. 2 (Winter 2007): 32–37.
"Veneers of Authority: Chinese Lacquers in Maria Theresa's Vienna." Eighteenth-Century Studies 37, no. 4 (Summer 2004): 652-672.
"Modesty and Monarchy: Rethinking Empress Maria Theresa at Schönbrunn," Austrian History Yearbook 35 (2004): 25-47.
"Conceptualizing the Kaiserinwitwe: Empress Maria Theresa and her Portraits," in Widowhood and Visual Culture in Early Modern Europe, ed. Allison Levy, (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2003), 109-125.