Release Date: September 18, 2014

National Gallery of Art's World-Renowned Center for Advanced Study in the Visual Arts (CASVA) Announces 2014–2015 Academic Year Appointments: Focus of Studies Spans the Globe and the History of Art

Mary Morton, curator and head of French paintings, National Gallery of Art, makes a presentation to the participants of Stepping Outside the Artist's Studio: Landscape and the Oil Sketch, c. 1780-1830, the Robert H. Smith Colloquy held on May 12, 2014.

Washington, DC—The world-renowned Center for Advanced Study in the Visual Arts (CASVA) at the National Gallery of Art has announced the appointments of members for 2014–2015. They include Robert S. Nelson of Yale University as Samuel H. Kress Professor; Paul B. Jaskot of DePaul University as Andrew W. Mellon Professor; Kathleen A. Foster of the Philadelphia Museum of Art as Edmond J. Safra Visiting Professor for spring 2015; and Thomas Crow of the Institute of Fine Arts, New York University, as the Sixty-Fourth A. W. Mellon Lecturer in the Fine Arts for spring 2015.

"This year, CASVA's breathtaking array of subjects ranges from fashion and costumes of 19th-century Europe to an art historical investigation of Mongol identity in China," said Earl A. Powell III, director, National Gallery of Art. "This incoming class of CASVA appointees proves that the Center is truly global, collaborative, diverse, and dynamic."

In addition, six senior and six visiting senior fellows have been appointed to CASVA, along with two postdoctoral fellows, seven predoctoral fellows working in residence, and 11 predoctoral fellows working at their respective institutions and abroad. Harry Cooper, the Gallery's curator of modern art and head of department, has been awarded the Ailsa Mellon Bruce Sabbatical Curatorial Fellowship, which will enable him to take a leave of absence from the Gallery to conduct special research on Piet Mondrian's Diamond Paintings.

About CASVA

Since its inception in 1979 the Center has promoted the study of the history, theory, and criticism of art, architecture, and urbanism through the formation of a community of scholars. A variety of private sources supports the program of fellowships, and the appointments are ratified by the Gallery's Board of Trustees.

CASVA currently supports the Andrew W. Mellon Professor, a two-year appointment of a midcareer scholar; the Samuel H. Kress Professor, an appointment of one academic year of a distinguished scholar; the Edmond J. Safra Visiting Professor, a six-month appointment of a scholar who advances his or her own research on subjects associated with the Gallery's permanent collection; and senior fellows, visiting senior fellows, postdoctoral fellows, and predoctoral fellows. A board of advisors, composed of seven art historians appointed to rotating terms, serves as a selection committee to review all fellowship applications.

In 1949, the Gallery commenced the A. W. Mellon Lectures in the Fine Arts to bring to the people of the United States the results of the best contemporary thought and scholarship in the fine arts. The program is named for Andrew W. Mellon, the Gallery's founder, who gave the nation his art collection and funds to build the West Building, which opened to the public in 1941.

The Center publishes Symposium Papers, part of the Gallery's series Studies in the History of Art, and Seminar Papers. Both series are available for purchase on shop.nga.gov. Volumes of Studies in the History of
Art published more than five years ago can be accessed and downloaded on JSTOR. An annual report, Center, published each fall, summarizes research and activities that took place during the preceding academic year. The full archive of Center is available for free download on the Gallery website.

Full List of Appointees

Samuel H. Kress Professor
Robert S. Nelson, Yale University

Andrew W. Mellon Professor
Paul B. Jaskot, DePaul University

Edmond J. Safra Visiting Professor, spring 2015
Kathleen A. Foster, Philadelphia Museum of Art

Sixty-Fourth A. W. Mellon Lecturer in the Fine Arts, spring 2015

Thomas Crow, Institute of Fine Arts, New York University

Paul Mellon Senior Fellow
Susan L. Siegfried, University of Michigan
Fashion and Costume in the Visual Culture of Nineteenth-Century Europe

William C. Seitz Senior Fellow
Mary Roberts, University of Sydney
Islamic Art, Museology, and Transcultural Artist-Dealer Networks, 1850–1910

Samuel H. Kress Senior Fellows
Robert Bork, University of Iowa
The Anti-Gothic Turn: Explaining the Architectural Revolution of circa 1500

Christopher P. Heuer, Princeton University
The Iceberg and the Acrobat: Time and the Printed Image in the Northern Renaissance

Ailsa Mellon Bruce Senior Fellows
Sarah Blake McHam, Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey
"Gaude, Felix Padua, Quae Thesaurum Possides": How Lucky Padua's Treasures Shaped Her Cultural Heritage

Stephen Houston, Brown University
A Splendid Predicament: Young Men in Maya Imagery and Text

Ailsa Mellon Bruce National Gallery of Art Sabbatical Curatorial Fellow, 2014–2015
Harry Cooper, Department of Modern Art
Mondrian's Diamond Paintings

Paul Mellon Visiting Senior Fellows, fall 2014
Stefan Krause, Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna
Freydal, The Tournament Book of Emperor Maximilian I (1459–1519): The Washington Manuscript

Stephanie C. Leone, Boston College
The Arts in Baroque Rome during the Pontificate of Innocent X Pamphilj (1644–1655)

Oscar E. Vázquez, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
Learning to Draw in Spanish: Copying the Body in Latin American Academies of Art, 1781–1910

Ailsa Mellon Bruce Visiting Senior Fellows, fall 2014
Lynn Catterson, New York City
Stefano Bardini: Forming the Canon of Fifteenth-Century Italian Sculpture

Caroline Jordan, La Trobe University
Cultural Change or Cultural Diplomacy? The Carnegie Corporation of New York's British Dominions Exhibitions, 1934–1941

Xin Wu, The College of William and Mary
Gardens and Landscapes as Neo-Confucian Metaphors: Vision and Place-Making in Song Academies

Postdoctoral Fellows
Caroline O. Fowler, A. W. Mellon Postdoctoral Fellow, 2013–2015
Between the Heart and the Mind: Ways of Drawing in the Seventeenth Century

Lihong Liu, A. W. Mellon Postdoctoral Fellow, 2014–2016
The Real Scene: Painting and Place in China, 1450–1550

Predoctoral Dissertation Fellows (in residence)
Kate Cowcher, Andrew W. Mellon Fellow, 2013–2015
[Stanford University]
Between Revolutionary Motherland and Death: Art and Visual Culture in Socialist Ethiopia

Nikolas Drosos, Twenty-Four-Month Chester Dale Fellow, 2013–2015
[The Graduate Center, City University of New York]
Modernism with a Human Face: Synthesis of Art and Architecture in Eastern Europe, 1954–1958

Hannah J. Friedman, Paul Mellon Fellow, 2012–2015
[Johns Hopkins University]
Assay and Oracle in the Art of Jusepe de Ribera

Adam Jasienski, Samuel H. Kress Fellow, 2013–2015
[Harvard University]
In the Guise of Holiness: Portraiture, Dynastic Politics, and Sanctity under the Spanish Habsburgs

Miri Kim, Wyeth Fellow, 2013–2015
[Princeton University]
"Right Matter in the Right Place": The Paintings of Albert Pinkham Ryder

David Pullins, David E. Finley Fellow, 2012–2015
[Harvard University]
Cut and Paste: The Mobile Image from Watteau to Robert

Rachel Saunders, Ittleson Fellow, 2013–2015
[Harvard University]
The "Illustrated Life of Xuanzang": Poetry, Painting, and Pilgrimage in Medieval Japan

Predoctoral Dissertation Fellows (not in residence)
John R. Blakinger, Twenty-Four-Month Chester Dale Fellow, 2014–2016
[Stanford University]
Artist Under Technocracy: György Kepes and the Cold War Avant-Garde

Monica Bravo, Wyeth Fellow, 2014–2016
[Brown University]
Picturing Greater America: US Modernist Photography and the Mexican Cultural Renaissance, 1920–1945

Esther Chadwick, Paul Mellon Fellow, 2013–2016
[Yale University]
The Radical Print: Experiments in Liberty, 1760–1830

Seth Estrin, Paul Mellon Fellow, 2014‒2017
[University of California, Berkeley]
Objects of Pity: Art and Emotion in Archaic and Classical Greece, 520‒380 BCE

Robert Fucci, David E. Finley Fellow, 2013–2016
[Columbia University]
Jan van de Velde II (c. 1593–1641): The Printmaker as Creative Artist in the Early Dutch Republic

Brendan C. McMahon, Andrew W. Mellon Fellow, 2014–2016
[The University of Southern California]
Colors of Deceit: The Arts of Iridescence in Viceregal Mexico

Eiren L. Shea, Ittleson Fellow, 2014–2016
[University of Pennsylvania]
Fashioning Mongol Identity in China (1250–1400)

Zachary Stewart, Robert H. and Clarice Smith Fellow, 2014–2015
[Columbia University]
The Integrated Interior: Parish Church Architecture in Eastern England, c.1350‒c.1550

Nicole Paxton Sullo, Twelve-Month Chester Dale Fellow, 2014–2015
[Yale University]
The Art of Memory in Byzantium during the Later Middle Ages

Phil Taylor, David E. Finley Fellow, 2014–2017
[Princeton University]
Raoul Ubac's Photographic Surrealism

Kelli Wood, Samuel H. Kress Fellow, 2014–2016
[University of Chicago]
The Space of Play: Games in Early Modern Italy

Ailsa Mellon Bruce Predoctoral Fellowships for Historians of American Art to Travel Abroad
Alisa Alexander [University of California, Santa Barbara]

Jenevieve De Los Santos [Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey]

Mary Thomas [University of California, Santa Cruz]