Francesca Aton

Francesca Aton is associate digital editor of ARTnews and Art in America. She started as an editorial intern at A.i.A., after earning a dual Bachelor of Arts in art history and visual arts from Fordham University in 2017. Francesca is a recipient of the Lipani Visual Arts award, and her art history thesis, Kouroi: From Ancient Tradition to American Identity (2017), which examines Isamu Noguchi’s 1945 statue Kouros in relation to the sixth-century BCE Greek Marble Statue of a Kouros (Youth), was published in the university’s research journal. While at Fordham, she was an editor for the school’s comparative literature journal, Bricolage; her creative writing was published in the literary magazine, the Comma; and her artwork was shown in multiple exhibitions. Before joining Art Media, Francesca was exhibitions associate at the Visual Arts Center of New Jersey, where she worked closely with curators Mary Birmingham and Katherine Murdock, and numerous artists on shows in and around the community. She spoke at the French Embassy on the cultural impact of bilingualism, and was a site assistant for the Apolline Project in southern Italy, unearthing, identifying, and analyzing artifacts encased during the 79 CE eruption of Mount Vesuvius. While studying abroad in Rome, she assisted Fordham University professor Jo Anna Isaak with her research and teaching. She has also served as a guest critic for University of New Orleans professor Anna Mecugni’s class on art criticism. Francesca translated from the French an 1846 New Orleans court case for a forthcoming film by artist Casey Ruble on free woman of color Eulalie Mandeville de Marigny, and has written essays including “Are You Comfortable? Seeking Utility in Helpful Discomfort” (2019) in the artist-run magazine Hécatombe and “Don’t Look Away: More Means More Beyond the Pattern & Decoration Movement” (2020) for the group exhibition “Fanfare” at Fordham University.