Luise Mörke

Luise Mörke is a PhD candidate at Harvard University. Her dissertation examines design, consumption, and national identity after German reunification through the work of two East German artists: Bert Neumann (1960–2015), chief scenographer of Berlin’s Volksbühne theater and co-founder of the graphic design firm LSD Berlin, and the installation artist Henrike Naumann (1984–2026), who named Neumann as a predecessor. Drawing on modern art and design, both created Gesamtkunstwerke for a moment when the nation returned to the fraught dream of a lost whole, and when reunification came hand in hand with a surge in politically motivated violence. The dissertation asks: what might characterize a lineage of East German contemporary art?

Before coming to Harvard, Luise studied art history and classical archaeology at Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin, UC Berkeley, the École Normale Supérieure, and the École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales in Paris, where she was in residence at the Maison Heinrich Heine. Her research has been supported by the Getty Research Institute, the German Academic Exchange Service (DAAD), the European Union’s Erasmus program, the Association for Art History, the Davis Center for Russian and Eurasian Studies, the Jens Aubrey Westengard Fund, and the Fairbank Center for Chinese Studies.

Luise’s peer-reviewed articles have appeared in Film Quarterly and The Velvet Light Trap. From 2022 to 2025, she was an editor at re:visions, a journal for contemporary art history based at Freie Universität Berlin, where she co-edited an issue on pseudomorphism: the apparent similarity between works of art that emerge from distinct historical and artistic lineages. The issue’s editorial asked: “[W]hich similarities count as wrong or right for what reasons? How does scholarly protocol establish control over involuntary flashes of recognition, based on the very mental data banks of images that designate art historical erudition?”

Luise also writes essays, catalogue entries, and criticism for English- and German-language publications, including e-flux, Texte zur Kunst, DIE ZEIT, The Baffler, and The Brooklyn Rail. She is an affiliate of Harvard’s Davis Center for Russian and Eurasian Studies and of the Signet Society, as well as an elected member of the German chapter of the International Association of Art Critics (AICA). She has worked for the Berlin International Film Festival and for the Census of Antique Works of Art and Architecture Known in the Renaissance, one of the oldest continuously running research projects in digital art history. In 2025/26, she was the graduate curatorial intern at the Busch-Reisinger Museum. At Harvard, Luise is a resident tutor at Cabot House, where she runs the art program and mentors Harvard College students.