Peter J. Fergusson

Peter J. Fergusson is the Theodora L. and Stanley H. Feldberg Professor of Art at Wellesley College. A member of the faculty since 1966, he teaches courses in medieval art and architecture, landscape, and garden architecture.

Dr. Fergusson received a B.A. degree from Michigan State University (1960) and both an M.A. (1961) and Ph.D. (1967) from Harvard University. Before coming to Wellesley he was an Assistant Professor of Art at McGill University.

In 1970 Dr. Fergusson was awarded the Reginald Taylor Prize and Medal by the British Archaeological Association for a publication on Roche Abbey and in 1986 the Charles Rufus Morey Book Award of the College Art Association of America for his Architecture of Solitude: Cistercian Abbeys in Twelfth Century England (Princeton University Press, 1984). He is co-author of Rievaulx Abbey: Community, Architecture, Memory, which was published by Yale University Press in the spring of 2000 and which was awarded the Alice Davis Hitchcock prize by the Society of Architectural Historians of Great Britain in 2001, and the Haskins Medal of the Medieval Academy of America in 2004. His most recent book, The Landscape and Architecture of Wellesley College, which he co-authored with two colleagues in the Art Department, was published by the College in 2001 in commemoration of its 125th anniversary. He is also the author of articles and reviews which have appeared in the British Archaeological Journal, Art Bulletin, Antiquaries Journal, the Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians, Gesta, and Speculum. On his 70th birthday, he was honored with a festschrift with 34 contributors from 6 different countries, Perspectives on an Architecture of Solitude, Brepols, 2004.

At Wellesley, Dr. Fergusson has been a member of the Trustees' Buildings and Grounds Committee. Other College committees on which he has served include the Appointments Committee, the Board of Admission, the Curriculum Committee, the Space Planning Committee, the Foreign Study Committee, and the President's Advisory Council.

He served three terms as Chair of the Art Department and is co-founder of the Society for the Protection of the Architecture and Landscape at Wellesley College.
Between 1980 and 1986 Dr. Fergusson was the Boston chair of Save Venice and continues as Vice-Chair. In 1988 he was decorated by the Italian Republic for this work. Between 1988–2002 he was Assistant Editor of Speculum. In 1986 he was elected a Fellow of the Society of Antiquaries of London.

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Profile last updated: 9/05