Profile

David P. Saiz is a Ph.D. candidate and a recipient of The George S. Heyer Graduate Fellowship in American/Modern Art History (supported by The Brown Foundation, 2023–24) and a Princeton University President’s Fellowship (2022–23). He studies the material and visual culture of the United States and Black diaspora in the long nineteenth century as well as the histories of photography and science. As a recent McCrindle intern (2024), he conducted provenance research for the Princeton University Art Museum’s American art collection. Presently, he is enrolled as a student in the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s Alexis Gregory Curatorial Practice Program Spring 2025 seminar called, “Rethinking the American Wing at the Metropolitan Museum of Art.” He is conducting dissertation research on the fluid (and unquestionably anxious) role that representations of the personification of the United States—often known as Columbia—plays in constructing racist, nativist, (hetero-)sexist, and classist fictions of differentiation in the long nineteenth century. 

A proud New Mexican, Saiz graduated in 2021 with distinction from the University of New Mexico with an M.A. in Art History and a minor in Museum Studies. He previously worked with the National Hispanic Cultural Center Art Museum, the University of New Mexico Art Museum, New Mexico PBS and the American Archive of Public Broadcasting, Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art, and participated in the Benton Museum of Art’s inaugural “AllPaper Seminar.”