Dillon Gisch

Dillon Gisch is an art historian and classicist. His research investigates how images that modern viewers commonly consider "replicas" of Praxiteles' famous Knidian Aphrodite engendered a diverse array of contextual significances for viewers in the ancient Roman world, including Etruria, Anatolia, and Syria. It also considers the modern typology that previous classical art historians have constructed and employed to collect, categorize, and catalog these images and this typology's troubling connections to the discursive formation of pseudo-race science and eugenics. He has broad interests in visual culture; the historiography of art; social archaeology and art history; collecting, museum, and heritage ethics; empire and cultural appropriation; catalogs and cataloging practices; and legacy data analysis.

Previously, he received his B.A. in Classical Studies and Art History with Distinction (summa cum laude) from the University of Washington—Seattle. After college, he worked as a gallerist of early modern and modern (1450–1970) European, American, and Japanese graphic art on paper at Davidson Galleries in Seattle. He then moved to Stanford, earning his M.A. in Anthropology (with a focus in Heritage Ethics) and Ph.D. in Classical Archaeology. He has also excavated in central Italy at the ancient Etruscan site of Poggio Civitate (Murlo) and the ancient Roman site of Cosa.

The Europe Center and the American Academy in Rome have both featured portions of his research.