Stephanie Brown is a writer, historian, teacher, and curator. She is currently Assistant Program Director for the Johns Hopkins University’s MA in Museum Studies. She has taught and lectured at institutions nationwide.  Stephanie’s professional and academic interests include the history of collecting and museums, material culture studies, and public history.

​

In 2016, she discovered Flowers and Fruit, a still-life formerly attributed to Paul Gauguin, in a museum in California’s Central Valley. Intrigued, she began to research the painting’s history and ask questions about its provenance. She shared her research on her blog, The Disappearing Gauguin, and that blog evolved into The Case of the Disappearing Gauguin.

​

Stephanie has spent time in France regularly since she was a teenager. At Life at La Bastiole, she blogged about two years in Provence with her young family. Dr. Brown grew up in Winston-Salem, North Carolina, and earned her BA from Williams College and her PhD in French history from Stanford University. She lives in the San Francisco Bay Area with her husband and dogs.