My teaching and research focus on modern and contemporary European art, with an emphasis on Germany. As Director of the Graduate Program in the History of Art, I teach mostly graduate seminars in art-historical method, classical modernism, and contemporary art. On the undergraduate level I also regularly offer a lecture course in art in Germany since 1960.

My current and recent research has focused on the painters Paul Klee, Max Beckmann, Sigmar Polke, the critics Carl Einstein and Walter Benjamin, and the German Dada movement. If my various publications are linked by a common thread, it is my interest in how visual objects, if we have the patience and discipline to look at them closely and openly, are capable of an articulate discourse on
issues that transcend the normal connotations of the "aesthetic."