Washington, DC—The Center for Advanced Study in the Visual Arts (the Center), the National Gallery’s world-renowned research institute, announced today its 2024–2025 academic year appointments, including Mary Beard, award-winning author and professor emerita of the ancient world at University of Cambridge, as Kress-Beinecke Professor.

These 37 appointees will research topics that traverse the globe, from 20th-century abstraction in the Andes, materiality and vision in medieval Islamic architecture, and lifelikeness in classical Greece, to Native designers and representation of knowledge during the “Indian New Deal” of the 1930s.

A total of 15 senior, postdoctoral, and predoctoral fellows will be in residence from September to May. Roland Betancourt, professor of Byzantine and modern popular culture at the University of California, Irvine, will also begin his two-year appointment as Andrew W. Mellon Professor. Beyond the National Gallery’s campus, 12 predoctoral fellows and one postdoctoral fellow will conduct research in the field.

“I am proud to support the vast array of research topics and interests of this year’s fellows,” said Steven Nelson, dean of the Center. “As we continue to expand our program, we welcome a breadth of groundbreaking scholarship that furthers—and challenges—our knowledge of the visual arts.”

In addition to these appointments, the Center supports approximately 12 visiting senior fellowships with two-month-long residences throughout the year. The Center will also support two sabbatical fellowships for National Gallery staff members this year, allowing them to pursue independent study, research, or publication. Furthermore, the Center welcomes back five Howard University undergraduate interns for the second year of their two-year pilot program, initiated in 2021.

Center professors, fellows, and interns in residence have offices in the National Gallery’s East Building. Throughout the academic year, they have opportunities to share their research and are encouraged to attend lectures, programs, tours, and gallery talks organized by the Center.

About the Center
Since its inception in 1979 with the opening of the National Gallery’s East Building, the Center has promoted the study of the production, use, and cultural meaning of art, artifacts, architecture, urbanism, photography, and film from all places and periods through the formation of a community of scholars. In selecting its fellows, the Center seeks a diverse pool of scholars in the visual arts. More information about the Center’s fellowships can be found here.

Academic Year Appointees

Kress-Beinecke Professor
Mary Beard, University of Cambridge (emerita)

Andrew W. Mellon Professor
Roland Betancourt, University of California, Irvine

Senior Fellows
Michele Greet, George Mason University
Ailsa Mellon Bruce Senior Fellow
Abstraction in the Andes, 1950–1970

Jason Hill, University of Delaware
Ailsa Mellon Bruce Senior Fellow
Police Media and Documentary Photography in 20th-Century America

Paul Niell, Florida State University
Samuel H. Kress Senior Fellow
Thatched Dwellings, Urban Lives: The Bohio and the City in the Late Spanish Colonial Caribbean

Amara Solari, Pennsylvania State University
Samuel H. Kress Senior Fellow
Missions Impossible: The Art of Franciscan Failure and Puebloan Perseverance in Nuevo México           

Abbey Stockstill, Southern Methodist University
Paul Mellon Senior Fellow
Color through the Seven Spheres: Materiality and Vision in Medieval Islamic Architecture

Chang Tan, Pennsylvania State University
William C. Seitz Senior Fellow
Network Moderns: Vernacular Photography and Image-Making in Global Chinas

Ailsa Mellon Bruce National Gallery of Art Sabbatical Fellows
Michelle Bird, Department of French Paintings
Research for an Exhibition Featuring Contemporary Artists Born and Trained in Cuba

Sarah Cash, Department of American and British Paintings
John Singer Sargent’s Stereographs Rediscovered

Postdoctoral Fellows (in Residence)
Maria Gabriella Matarazzo
Beinecke Postdoctoral Fellow, 2023–2025
Beyond “Buon Fresco”: Experimenting with Oil in Wall Painting, c. 1500–1700

Hugo Shakeshaft
Andrew W. Mellon Postdoctoral Fellow, 2024–2026
Lifelikeness: The Transformation of Art in Archaic and Classical Greece

Postdoctoral Fellows (Not in Residence)
Anni Pullagura
Center/YCBA Postdoctoral Fellow, 2023–2026
Forms of Feeling: Collecting the Nation for Contemporary Cultural Institutions

Predoctoral Dissertation Fellows (in Residence)
David P. Bardeen, University of California, Los Angeles
David E. Finley Fellow, 2022–2025
Arboreal Formations: The Dynamics of Wood in Italian Intarsia and Painting, 1450–1525

Robyn A. Barrow, University of Pennsylvania
Paul Mellon Fellow, 2022–2025
Tracking North: Art, Ecology, and Exchange in the Medieval Nordic World

Chaeri Lee, Indiana University
Twenty-Four-Month Ittleson Fellow, 2023–2025
Āthār: Visualizing Vestiges of Time in Late 19th-Century Iran

James H. Miller, Princeton University
Twenty-Four-Month Chester Dale Fellow, 2023–2025
Fossils for a Future Time: David Smith and the Sculpting of Traces

Celia Rodríguez Tejuca, Johns Hopkins University
Andrew W. Mellon Fellow, 2023–2025
From the Ground Up: Picturing Scientific Knowledge in the Late 18th-Century Spanish Americas

Julia Silverman, Harvard University
Wyeth Fellow, 2023–2025
Unmaking Tradition: Native Designers and the Representation of Knowledge during the “Indian New Deal”

Wenjie Su, Princeton University
Samuel H. Kress Fellow, 2023–2025
Simulating Time: Cosmological Analogies, Cross-Cultural Similes, and the Transmission of Clockwork Objects between Early Modern Europe and China

Predoctoral Dissertation Fellows (Not in Residence)
Abigail Berry, University of California, Los Angeles
Robert H. and Clarice Smith Fellow, 2024–2025
Brick Gothic Architecture and the Hanseatic League: Materials, Networks, and Urban Identity, 1250–1500

Alice Casalini, University of Chicago
Twenty-Four-Month Ittleson Fellow, 2024–2026
Paradigms of Beholding: The Architecture of Religious Experience in Gandhāra

Rowanne Dean, University of Chicago
Paul Mellon Fellow, 2023–2026
Valuing Virtuosity: Goldsmiths’ Work in Northwestern Europe, c. 1350–1500

Ryan Eisenman, University of Pennsylvania
David E. Finley Fellow, 2023–2026
The Limoges Champlevé Enamel Industry, c. 1180–1280

Virginia Girard, Columbia University
Samuel H. Kress Fellow, 2024–2026
Geomyths in Early Netherlandish Landscapes, 1500–1600

Nathalie Miraval, Yale University
Andrew W. Mellon Fellow, 2024–2026
Sacred Subversions: Martha, Monsters, and Domestic Devotion in the Afro-Iberian Atlantic

Isabella Shey Robbins, Yale University
Twenty-Four-Month Chester Dale Fellow, 2024–2026
Relationality and Being: Indigeneity, Space, and Transit in Global Contemporary Art

Soyoon Ryu, University of Michigan
Twelve-Month Chester Dale Fellow, 2024–2025
We Live Here: Artistic Collectivization and Inhabitation on the Outskirts in East and Southeast Asia, 1972–1992

Elizabeth Driscoll Smith, University of California, Santa Barbara
Wyeth Fellow, 2024–2026
Build/Live/Work: Artist-Built Environments and the Expanded Vernacular in the 20th Century

Emily Whitehead, Emory University
David E. Finley Fellow, 2024–2027
Variance and Innovation in Middle Kingdom Coffins at a Time of Standardization and Homogeneity

Margaret Wilson, The Ohio State University
Paul Mellon Fellow, 2024–2027
Making and Breaking Enclosure: The Movement of Art through Late Medieval Convents

Hamed Yousefi, Northwestern University
Twelve-Month Ittleson Fellow, 2024–2025
How Modern Art Became Islamic: Imagining God and Man between Iran’s Two Revolutions (1906–1979)

Howard University Undergraduate Interns
Jada Brooks, 2023–2025
Clay Cauley, 2023–2025
Aletheia Couts, 2023–2025
Miles Kenyan Stewart, 2023–2025
Elroi Yonatan, 2023–2025