UT News Search Button By: Sara Robberson Lentz Julia Guernsey says she doesn’t like to mythologize her past. A true art historian, she is ever aware of how the narrative she might tell shapes reality. When asked about her life growing up, she says simply that she had a happy childhood growing up in Rockford, Illinois, a town west of Chicago. “Nothing much of note or unusual. I’m really not sure what to say about Rockford. … It was the home of Cheap Trick?” she says laughing about the birthplace of the rock band. Guernsey was the oldest of three children and was encouraged to pick a more practical degree as an undergraduate. She got her bachelor’s degree in business from Marquette University. After graduating, she started working at an art gallery in Milwaukee, where she first learned, from her boss, about art history as a discipline. Guernsey, a curious learner, decided to sign up for a class at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee (UWM). She fell in love with the discipline and found a home in it. She went on to get her master’s and eventually her doctorate. “I had always loved history,” she says. “But for me it was adding that visual component to it that really resonated — understanding that there was this visual history that was as important to study as text.”