Marjan Sterckx is associate professor of Art History at Ghent University. She lectures on the histories of nineteenth-century art and of interior design. She is the founding chair of the UGent-VUB research group The Inside Story: Art, Interior & Architecture 1750-1950 (ThIS), that yearly organizes the Studiedag Historisch Interieur en Design in Ghent. Her research concerns the intersections between art, gender and space, both public and domestic, during the period c. 1750-1950.
Sterckx published articles in Sculpture Journal, Nineteenth-Century Art Worldwide, Journal of Interior Design, History of Photography, and many other journals, and chapters in several edited volumes. She co-edited the volumes Sculpting Abroad: Nationality and Mobility of Sculptors in the Nineteenth Century (with Tom Verschaffel, Brepols, 2020), and Male Bonds in Nineteenth-Century Art (with Thijs Dekeukeleire and Henk de Smaele, Leuven University Press, 2021). Currently, she prepares edited volumes on Spaces of Belgian Culture 1860-1920 (with Dominique Bauer and Ilja Van Damme, 2025), on the 19th-century Belgian triennial Salons (with Jan Dirk Baetens and Tom Verschaffel, 2025), and on Jenny Montigny (with Johan De Smet, 2026). She is founding co-editor of Brepols Publishers' book series XIX. Studies in 19th-century Art and Visual culture, and co-editor of Tijdschrift voor Interieurgeschiedenis en Design.
In 2021, Sterckx created the exhibition Crime Scenes in Ghent, on Belgian interwar interiors through the lens of forensic photography, and its catalogue. In 2023, she curated the exhibition Yvonne Serruys. Sculpteur de la femme nouvelle in Menen and edited the book of the same name (in French and Dutch). Together with Katerina Serulus and Javier Gimeno-Martinez, she curated the exhibition Untold Stories. Women designers in Belgium 1880-1980 at Design Museum Brussels (15/10/2024-14/04/2025). Currently, she is preparing exhibitions on Jenny Montigny for the Museum of Fine Arts in Ghent, together with Johan De Smet, and on women sculptors in Belgium for Museum M.
Sterckx was awarded the ‘Tri-annual Award for Humanities' of Academische Stichting Leuven for her PhD research on women sculptors and their work in the metropolis (Paris, London, Brussels, 1770-1953) in 2009, the Rakow Grant for Glass Research (2009) from Corning Museum of Glass, New York, 'Laureaat van de Koninklijke Vlaamse Academie voor Wetenschappen en Kunsten, klasse Kunsten' in 2019, the Onderwijsprijs (Teaching award) of the Faculty of Arts and Philosophy of Ghent University in 2022, and the Journal of Interior Design's Best Article award 2022 for the article ‘The interior as a witness'.
Research interests: 19th-century art & art practice, sculpture, women artists, art & gender, art & the interior, historic interiors, monuments, sculpture & photography, design history
