Staff

Andrew Lear

All of our art museum tours are designed by Professor Andrew Lear and led by a team of dedicated scholar guides.

Professor Lear, a leading scholar on the history of sexuality and a master guide, is the founder of Shady Ladies Tours. With a B.A. from Harvard and a Ph.D. from UCLA, Professor Lear is one of the foremost authorities on the erotic in Greek and Roman art.

His book on Greek vase-painting won widespread praise for its erudition and accessibility, and was hailed by the American Journal of Archaeology as “destined for Classic status.” First and foremost, however, Professor Lear is a teacher. He prides himself on his ability to make high culture accessible to everyone, honed through years of teaching at Columbia, NYU and Harvard—where he won the Harvard Certificate for Excellence in Teaching four times.

With his groundbreaking work on the history of art, his expertise in bringing the past to life and his long experience as a scholar and teacher, Professor Lear is your ideal guide to the always exciting, often racy, world of great art.

Rena Tobey

Rena Tobey earned a PhD in another field before turning her attention to American art history. After five years of academic retooling, Rena focused on reviving the memory of forgotten American women artists working before 1945.

She published a seven-essay series in Art Times Journal called Finding Her Way, inspired by these accomplished artists, and her play The Muses, about two Boston women artists in 1910, is part of the 2018 playwriting project 365 Women a Year.

Rena’s greatest passion is bringing art to life by making it accessibleand fun. She taught art history in the Honors College at Connecticut State University and now teaches at the 92nd Street Y, in addition to conducting lively, interactive tours of museum collections and providing talks on American art for community organizations. Just for fun, she has created Artventures!® Game–a cheeky party game on the adventures of art and art history.

With the Nasty Women tour, Rena is delighted to bring you powerhouse women in the collection of the Metropolitan Museum of Art.

Kirsten Lee

Kirsten Lee is a specialist in Ancient Greek and Roman Art, and a passionate teacher and educator.

Currently a doctoral candidate at the Institute of Fine Arts at NYU, Kirsten takes a hands-on approach to her studies, having worked on archaeological excavations across the Mediterranean at such ancient sites as Selinunte, Aphrodisias, Samothrace, and Corinth.

She has taught undergraduates at many institutions in New York, including Parsons, Fordham University, and NYU, and her courses have ranged from introductions to art history to field study explorations of New York City’s architecture and urbanism. Joining Shady Ladies Tours is a dream come true for Kirsten, as there is nothing closer to her heart than great art and audiences that appreciate it.