Cristina Aldrich

PhD Candidate

Areas of interest: Medieval art, especially from the Iberian Peninsula, Marian devotion, polychrome wooden sculpture, pilgrimage, history of collections.

Cristina Aldrich is the current Marica and Jan Vilcek Curatorial Fellow in Medieval Art at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Her dissertation focuses on how polychrome wooden sculptures of the Virgin and Child in Castile and Leon shaped both individual and communal identity in lay and monastic contexts during the twelfth and thirteenth centuries. The project considers the relationship between sculpture and reconquest rhetoric during a time dominated by unstable political and dynastic borders. She has taught at NYU and worked in Education and Development at the Hispanic Society Museum & Library. She holds a BA in Spanish and Art History from Cornell University and an MA from the Institute of Fine Arts.