Biography
JOAN MICKELSON, Ph.D. was born in Hollywood, Florida and attended her mother’s Outdoor School, then Hollywood Central School and Miss Harris’ Florida School for Girls in Miami. As a graduate of South Broward High School she was among the first Florida public school graduates to be accepted at Radcliffe College of Harvard University where she studied Romance Languages and art history. She then earned an MA from the University of Chicago and a Ph.D. from Harvard, all in art history of the modern period. For over thirty years Dr. Mickelson (also known as Joan Mickelson Lukach) was a museum curator and director, writing, editing, and publishing articles and museum exhibition catalogues with a special focus on 19th and 20th century Italy and America. Her Ph.D. dissertation, “Valori Plastici: Painting in Italy from 1915-1919,” is a detailed study of Italian Futurism through the Scuola Metafisica to a return to classicism. Her other interests include South Florida history, American architecture of the modern period, and mystery fiction.
AWARDS:
From the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, award for Service to History and Culture of the Town of Framingham, 2002.
From the Broward County, Florida, Historical Commission, the Cooper Kirk Memorial Award, for Dedication to the Preservation of Broward County History, 2005.