Stephanie Brown is a writer, historian, teacher, and curator. She is currently at work on a project exploring the life and times of Anna Klumpke, a pioneer American artist who became Rosa Bonheur's heir, biographer, and keeper of the flame. Formerly Assistant Program Director for the Johns Hopkins University’s MA in Museum Studies, Brown has taught and lectured at institutions nationwide.  Stephanie’s professional and academic interests include the history of women, gender, and sexuality; early San Francisco history and culture; collecting and museums; and material culture studies.

​

Dr. Brown's book The Case of the Disappearing Gauguin was published in 2024 by Rowman & Littlefield, now Bloomsbury Press. The book grew out of her 2016 discovery of 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.