Seminar: Summer in the Garden of the Sun King

She was responsible for the 2007 renovation of the Wrightsman Galleries, has written and lectured widely on a variety of subjects in the Decorative Arts, and has co-organized various exhibitions, including 2013’s Salvaging the Past: Georges Hoentschel and French Decorative Arts from The Metropolitan Museum of Art at the Bard Graduate Center, New York. She is the co-curator of Visitors to Versailles, 1682–1789, which is currently on view at The Metropolitan Museum of Art.

Hyde received her Ph.D. in history from Harvard University. Her first book, Cultivated Power: Flowers, Culture, and Politics in the Reign of Louis XIV (2005), explores the cultivation and political importance of flowers in France. She also contributed to A Cultural History of Gardens in the Renaissance, 1400–1650 (2013). In 2017, she was a Visiting Mellon Scholar at The New York Botanical Garden. Co-recipient of a Humanities Initiative Grant, she is also completing Of Monarchical Climates and Republican Soil: Nature, Nation, and Botanical Diplomacy in the Franco-American Atlantic World, a book that explores the mission of French botanist André Michaux, who was sent in 1785 by Louis XVI to study and collect North American trees.