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Olivia Dill

Olivia Dill is a doctoral candidate in Art History with research interests in the intersection between works on paper, colonialism, and scientific knowledge production in the early modern Dutch Atlantic world. Dill’s dissertation characterizes the material and aesthetic treatment of iridescent colors in prints and watercolor drawings of American insects by Maria Sibylla Merian and several other Dutch and English artist-naturalists working during the long seventeenth century. Drawing on her undergraduate degree in physics Dill employs both archival and technical art historical methods, using non-invasive materials analysis to investigate the materials and making of prints and drawings.