Release Date: August 1, 2019

National Gallery of Art's Center for Advanced Study in the Visual Arts (CASVA) Announces 2019–2020 Academic Year Appointments

CASVA members tour the permanent collection with Richard J. Powell, Edmond J. Safra Visiting Professor.

Washington, DC—The Center for Advanced Study in the Visual Arts (CASVA), an internationally renowned research institution that brings distinguished scholars from around the world to the National Gallery of Art, has announced its 2019–2020 academic year appointments.

They include Jeffrey F. Hamburger of Harvard University as Kress-Beinecke Professor; Steven Nelson, professor of African and African American art and director of the UCLA African Studies Center at the University of California, Los Angeles as Andrew W. Mellon Professor, 2018–2020; Emily Braun, Hunter College and The Graduate Center, City University of New York as Edmond J. Safra Visiting Professor; and Yve-Alain Bois, Institute for Advanced Study, Princeton, as the 69th A. W. Mellon Lecturer in the Fine Arts. "We are honored that these distinguished colleagues will be in residence at the National Gallery of Art in the coming year," says Elizabeth Cropper, dean of the Center. "They will share their knowledge and experience with colleagues throughout the gallery, and inspire a new generation."

In addition to the distinguished list of appointees, six senior fellows and five visiting senior fellows have been appointed to CASVA, along with one postdoctoral fellow, seven predoctoral fellows working in residence, 11 predoctoral fellows not in residence, and four predoctoral historians of American art who were awarded fellowships to travel abroad.

CASVA members in residence will research a typically wide range of topics, from Chilean art and culture in the 1980s to art-making and code-switching in medieval Iberia. "This incoming class of CASVA appointees embodies the Center's commitment to a wide-ranging series of topics in the history of art, as well creating a community for such a diverse group to work together," says Kaywin Feldman, director, National Gallery of Art.

About CASVA

Since its inception in 1979, CASVA 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 support the program of fellowships, and the appointments are ratified by the Gallery's Board of Trustees. In selecting its members, CASVA seeks a diverse pool of applicants in the visual arts.

CASVA currently supports the Andrew W. Mellon Professor, a two-year appointment of a midcareer scholar; the Kress-Beinecke 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, a postdoctoral fellow, and predoctoral fellows. A board of advisors, composed of seven or eight 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, now under CASVA's auspices, 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.

CASVA publishes Symposium Papers as 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
Kress-Beinecke Professor, 2019–2020
Jeffrey F. Hamburger
Harvard University

Andrew W. Mellon Professor, 2018–2020
Steven Nelson
University of California, Los Angeles

Edmond J. Safra Visiting Professor, Spring 2020
Emily Braun
Hunter College and The Graduate Center, City University of New York

Sixty-Ninth A. W. Mellon Lecturer in the Fine Arts, Spring 2020
Yve-Alain Bois
Institute for Advanced Study, Princeton

Ailsa Mellon Bruce National Gallery of Art Sabbatical Curatorial/Conservation Fellows
Molly Donovan
National Gallery of Art
Department of Modern Art
The Gift Economy: Art of the Present

Molli E. Kuenstner
National Gallery of Art Library
Department of Image Collections
The Führerprojekt

Thomas A. O'Callaghan
National Gallery of Art Library
Department of Image Collections
The Führerprojekt

Paul Mellon Senior Fellow
Ittai Weinryb
Bard Graduate Center
Art and Frontier

William C. Seitz Senior Fellow
Edward A. Vazquez
Middlebury College
Phases of Happiness: Alfredo Jaar and Chilean Art and Culture, c. 1980

Samuel H. Kress Senior Fellows
Carolina Mangone
Princeton University
Imperfect Michelangelo: Non Finito, Decorum, and the Limits of Marble Sculpture

Therese Martin
Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Científicas, Madrid
Art-Making and Code-Switching in Medieval Iberia: Queens, Consorts, and Countesses, c. 950–1150

Ailsa Mellon Bruce Senior Fellows
Elizabeth Otto
University at Buffalo, State University of New York
Bauhaus Artists in Nazi Germany

Steffen Siegel
Folkwang University of the Arts, Essen
From Photographies to Photography: Formation of a Medium, 1800–1850

Ailsa Mellon Bruce Visiting Senior Fellows
Fall 2019 / Winter 2020
Piers Alan Baker-Bates
The Open University
"In the Spanish Fashion": Italian Material Culture and Spanish Devotional Practice in the Sixteenth Century

Péter Farbaky
Budapest History Museum
The Role of John of Aragon (1456–1485) in the Art Patronage of Matthias Corvinus, King of Hungary

Amy F. Ogata
University of Southern California
Metal, the Metallic, and the Making of Modern France

Paul Mellon Visiting Senior Fellows
Fall 2019 / Winter 2020
Henry John Drewal
University of Wisconsin–Madison
Sensiotics: Senses in Understandings of the Arts, Culture, and History of the Yoruba People in Africa and the African Diaspora

Stephanie Porras
Tulane University
The First Viral Images: Maerten de Vos, Antwerp Print, and the Early Modern Globe

Paul Mellon Guest Scholar, Fall 2019
Jacqueline Francis
California College of the Arts, San Francisco
A Legacy Project: The Evans-Tibbs Collection Catalog of 1989

A. W. Mellon Postdoctoral Fellow
Rachel Grace Newman
A. W. Mellon Postdoctoral Fellow, 2018–2020
The Sugar Plantation, The Transatlantic Slave Trade, and Modernity

Predoctoral Dissertation Fellows (in residence)
Rachel E. Boyd
David E. Finley Fellow, 2017–2020
[Columbia University]
Experimentation and Specialization: The Glazed Terracotta Sculpture of the Della Robbia Workshop, c. 1430–1550

Alicia Caticha
Twenty-Four-Month Chester Dale Fellow, 2018–2020
[University of Virginia]
Étienne-Maurice Falconet and the Matter of Sculpture: Marble, Porcelain, and Sugar in Eighteenth-Century Paris

Samuel Luterbacher
Andrew W. Mellon Fellow, 2018–2020
[Yale University]
Layovers: Japanese Export Lacquer's Transit and Reuse across Early Modern Iberian Empires

Julia Oswald
Samuel H. Kress Fellow, 2018–2020
[Northwestern University]
The Visual Rhetoric of the Relic Treasury, 1100–1600

James Pilgrim
Paul Mellon Fellow, 2017–2020
[Johns Hopkins University]
Jacopo Bassano and the Environment of Painting

Miriam K. Said
Ittleson Fellow, 2018–2020
[University of California, Berkeley]
Materializing Apotropaia: The Power of the Sensing Body in Neo-Assyrian Magical Arts, Ninth–Seventh Century BCE

Michelle Smiley
Wyeth Fellow, 2018–2020
[Bryn Mawr College]
"An American Sun Shines Brighter": Science, Technology, and the American Invention of Photography

Predoctoral Dissertation Fellows (not in residence)
Thadeus Dowad
Paul Mellon Fellow, 2018–2021
[University of California, Berkeley]
Border Regimes: European Art and Ottoman Modernity, 1789–1839

Susan Eberhard
Andrew W. Mellon Fellow, 2019–2021
[University of California, Berkeley]
Chinese Export Silverwares, Foreign Coins, and Incarnations of Value: The Global Economy and Its Materials, 1682–1902

Luke A. Fidler
Paul Mellon Fellow, 2019–2022
[University of Chicago]
Henry the Lion and the Art of Politics in Northern Europe, c. 1142–1195

Sara Lent Frier
Robert H. And Clarice Smith Fellow, 2019–2020
[Yale University]
Unbearable Witness: The Disfigured Body in the German-Speaking Lands, c. 1500–1650

Abigail Lapin Dardashti
Twelve-Month Chester Dale Fellow, 2019–2020
[The Graduate Center, City University of New York]
The Production of Modern Afro-Brazilian Art: African Decolonization, US Black Power, and Transnational Religious Networks, 1966–1988

Ziliang Liu
Ittleson Fellow, 2019–2021
[Harvard University]
Art of Changes: Material Imagination in Early China, c. Third to First Century BCE

Rachel Catherine Patt
David E. Finley Fellow, 2019–2022
[Emory University]
Meaning, Materiality, and Pothos in Late Antique Gold-Glass Portraits

Andrew Sears
David E. Finley Fellow, 2018–2021
[University of California, Berkeley]
The Sacred and the Market: Reliquaries and Urbanism in Medieval Cologne

Kimia Shahi
Wyeth Fellow, 2019–2021
[Princeton University]
Margin, Surface, Depth: Picturing the Contours of the Marine in Nineteenth-Century America

Johanna Sluiter
Twenty-Four-Month Chester Dale Fellow, 2019–2021
[New York University]
Engineering Habitat: Reconstruction, Decolonization, and the Atelier des Bâtisseurs, 1945–1962

Teresa Soley
Samuel H. Kress Fellow, 2019–2021
[Columbia University]
The Politics of Death: A Social History of Renaissance Portuguese Tomb Sculpture

Ailsa Mellon Bruce Predoctoral Fellows for Historians of American Art to Travel Abroad
Abby R. Eron
[University of Maryland]

Katherine Oestreich Fein
[Columbia University]

Katie L. Loney
[University of Pittsburgh]

Sara C. Morris
[University of California, Santa Barbara]

Press Contact:
Christina Brown, (202) 842-6598 or [email protected]