Kirsten Grimstad, PhD

Kirsten’s publications reflect the range of her commitments. She is the author of a scholarly monograph on the German author Thomas Mann, The Modern Revival of Gnosticism and Thomas Mann’s Doktor Faustus, published by Camden House (2002). Mann’s Faust novel, written 1943-1947, was the first book by a German author to engage the German catastrophe in fictional form. This work has inspired her current interest and research on the new forms of public memory about the Holocaust.

In the 1970s she co-authored two commercial books on the feminist movement, The New Woman’s Survival Catalog (Berkeley Publishing Company) and The New Woman’s Survival Sourcebook (Knopf), which together compiled a portrait of the organizations and activities of the women’s alternative culture in the 1970s. The success of these two publications led to her becoming a co-founder and executive editor of Chrysalis: A Magazine of Women’s Culture, which was published out of the Los Angeles Woman’s Building during the period 1977-1981. The two books and all ten issues of Chrysalis were on display in 2012 at the exhibition, “Doin’ It in Public: Feminism and Art at the Woman’s Building” at Otis College of Art and Design, as part of the Pacific Standard Time festival of post-war Southern California Art.

She also served as supervising editor on numerous volumes in the field of art conservation, as consultant to the Getty Conservation Institute and International Council of Museums.