Martha Peacock: Mormon Scholar

Martha Moffitt Peacock is an art historian and professor of art history and women’s studies. She has focused her research on the relationship of art to the lives of women in the Dutch Republic. She is a member of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.

She grew up in Orem, Utah. In 1978, she earned her bachelor’s degree in art history from Brigham Young University. She then earned her master’s and PhD from Ohio State University, Columbus.

Peacock is a professor of art history and associate director of the Center for the Study of Europe with the Kennedy Center at BYU. As of January 2015, the art history program moved to the Department of Humanities and was renamed the Department of Comparative Arts and Letters. She contributed to and edited two exhibition catalogs on the prints of Rembrandt and his circle at BYU. Peacock was a co-curator of the 2013 BYU Museum of Art exhibit, “Rembrandt's Amsterdam.”

She was named 2013 Honors Professor of the Year. In 2007 she presented the annual Alice L. Reynolds lecture, in 2005 she received the Distinguished Research Award from the BYU Women's Research Institute, and in 1999 she received an Alcuin Fellowship.

Peacock and her husband, Greg, have directed numerous study abroad groups and visited many European museums and architectural sites. They are the parents of five children.