News

A&A Celebrates 2023 Graduates!
May 31, 2023

On Monday, May 29th, the Department of Art & Archaeology celebrated our graduating Class of '23 at the Carl Fields Center. Graduates and their families were greeted with a festive buffet and poignant slide show capturing moments throughout students' years at Princeton.

Chair of the Department of Art & Archaeology…

In the News: Eloise Schrier '23 On Why Art Matters to Her
June 1, 2023
Art Matters by Eloise Schrier, Class of 2023

Posted by Princeton University Art Museum June 1, 2023

One of my second graders recently informed me that my superpower is super vision. “You’re like an X-ray!” he squealed into the screen excitedly. I teach art classes over Zoom to elementary and middle-school students,…

In the News: PAW Features A&A Program in Archaeology's Shaun Cason '23
May 31, 2023
Husband, Father, Soldier, Student; Shaun Cason ’23 ranks among the graduating class’s most promising scholars and unique stories

By Brett Tomlinson

Published in the June 2023 Issue of Princeton Alumni Weekly

Jack Tannous *10, an associate professor of history and Hellenic studies, met Shaun…

A&A Professor Esther da Costa Meyer Co-Curates The Sassoons Exhibition at The Jewish Museum
May 25, 2023

The Sassoons exhibition, on view at The Jewish Museum through August 13th, in which intriguing objects tell the story of four generations who migrated across as many countries, evolved partly from a Princeton A&A course co-taught by A&A Professor…

Supported by a Center for Digital Humanities Data Fellowship, the "Languages of Art Writing" Project Explores Art History Via Linguistics
May 25, 2023
By A&A Graduate Students Sara Green and Nathan Stobaugh

Languages of Art Writing is a data curation project focused on the terminology employed in art criticism, artists’ statements, and manifestos published in Western Europe from the late 1940s to the present. It has been developed with the support of a 2021–2023…

Professor Tina Campt's Dynamic Semester of Courses, Events, and Initiatives Centers on Collaboration
May 22, 2023

Jointly appointed in both the Department of Art & Archaeology and the Lewis Center for the Arts, Tina Campt concluded a Spring 2023 semester that was as dynamic and inspiring as it was full. In addition to teaching an undergraduate course and a graduate seminar, Campt launched the Princeton Collaboratorium for Radical Aesthetics, hosting…

A&A Professor Nathan Arrington and Graduate Student William Pedrick Participate in the Launch of the Seeger Center's PITHOS Program in Athens
May 18, 2023

Students and faculty from A&A and Classics joined their counterparts from Greek Universities at the Princeton Athens Center in May 2023 to launch the Seeger Center’s new PITHOS (Princeton-Ioannina-Thessaly On-Site…

Visiting Professor Bert Smith Augments the Study of Hellenistic Art at Princeton
May 18, 2023

Professor Bert Smith is the Stanley Kelley, Jr. Visiting Professor for Distinguished Teaching in the Department of Art & Archaeology and Classics for the 2022-23 academic year. His extensive contributions this year have included a weekly meeting with graduate students in Fall 2022, a Spring 2023 course on Hellenistic Art, an Index…

The Index of Medieval Art Participates in International Congress on Medieval Studies
May 15, 2023
Author
Written by Pamela Patton

Four members of the Index of Medieval Art staff participated in the annual International Congress on Medieval Studies at Western Michigan University in Kalamazoo from May 11th to 13th. The ICMS attracts thousands of scholars interested in medieval studies from late antiquity to the early modern period and a wide range of specializations,…

Spring 2023 Janson-LaPalme Scholar-in-Residence Pamela Long Propels A&A Scholarship on Late Medieval and Early Modern Technology, Science, and Culture
May 10, 2023

As Janson-LaPalme Scholar-in-Residence during the 2023 Spring semester, Pamela O. Long has enriched teaching and scholarship at Princeton through a workshop, a hands-on class demonstration, and a conference. 

"I learned so much from everyone," said Long, "including the graduate students in the one-day workshop and the…

Professor Bridget Alsdorf Named Humanities Council 2023–24 Old Dominion Research Professor
May 9, 2023

The Humanities Council has named A&A Professor Bridget Alsdorf among 2023-24 Old Dominion Research Professors. Her project as Old Dominion Research Professor is a book titled Shadowed: Intimacy and Collaboration in Modern Scandinavian Art.

The professorship provides additional research time for…

Book Release: Medieval Textiles across Eurasia, Co-Authored by A&A Professor Patricia Blessing
May 9, 2023

Medieval Textiles across Eurasia, c. 300–1400 by Patricia Blessing, Elizabeth Dospěl Williams, and Eiren L. Shea was published online by Cambridge University Press on May 8, 2023 and will be

In the News: Professor Chika Okeke-Agulu Addresses King Charles' Responsibility to Apologize for the Monarchy's Ties to Slavery and to Support Repatriation of Stolen Objects
May 9, 2023
From Insider.com:  "If there's one thing Charles should do as king, it's what his mother never did — apologize for the monarchy's racist past"

By Mikhaila Friel and Samantha Grindell 

May 4, 2023, 4:00 AM EDT

King Charles will undoubtedly be monarch for a shorter period than his predecessor,…

Course Highlight: ART 447: “Siegecraft: Architecture, Warfare, and Media”
May 8, 2023

Professor Carolyn Yerkes’ ART 447: “Siegecraft: Architecture, Warfare, and Media” examined warfare as the subject matter for art and architecture in the early modern world. Yerkes asserts that “Siegecraft was an art more complex than painting, more powerful than sculpture, and more monumental than any building in the early modern world.” …

A&A Chair Rachael DeLue Delivers Annual Keating Lecture
May 5, 2023

A&A Chair Professor Rachael Z. DeLue delivered the Princeton University Art Museum's annual Keating lecture, titled “Against the Grain, or What We Can Learn from Early American Museums that Got it Wrong.”

DeLue began by describing two early museums: Charles Willson Peale’s Philadelphia Museum, open from 1786 to 1849, and Princeton…

Course Highlight: ART 388: “Fascist Aesthetics: Women & Photography Between the World Wars”
May 3, 2023

A&A Lecturer Jessica Williams Stark’s course ART 388: “Fascist Aesthetics: Women & Photography Between the World Wars” examined the rise of fascism through the lens of the female photographer in the interwar period. Alongside key theoretical texts on race, gender, colonialism, and exile, the course explored a diverse range of work by…

Course Highlight: FRS183 "A Portrait of the Artist As...."
April 28, 2023

Professor Doherty’s FRS183 “Portrait of the Artist As….” first-year undergraduate seminar explores works of literary fiction that depart from the model of the Bildungsroman — and specifically the "artist’s novel" as developed in Goethe’s Wilhelm Meister (1795) and epitomized by Joyce’s Portrait of…

Beatrice Kitzinger Named Behrman Professor
April 24, 2023

A&A Professor Beatrice Kitzinger has been named new Behrman Professor in the Humanities Council. The appointment recognizes distinguished humanities scholars and dedicated teachers from within the University community.

Behrman Professors coordinate the 

Professor Tina Campt Launches Princeton Collaboratorium for Radical Aesthetics
April 12, 2023

Under the leadership of Princeton University’s Roger S. Berlind ’52 Professor of Humanities Tina Campt, the Lewis Center for the Arts and Department of Art and Archaeology have launched the Princeton Collaboratorium for Radical Aesthetics. Two special events will inaugurate the new…

Professor Bridget Alsdorf Receives 2023 Guggenheim Fellowship in the Field of Fine Arts Research
April 9, 2023

Professor Bridget Alsdorf is among the 171 scholars, artists, writers, and scientists to receive the 2023 Guggenheim Fellowship.  Appointed on the basis of prior achievement and exceptional promise, Alsdorf and two fellow Princeton scholars were selected from a group of 2,500 applicants.  

“Like Emerson, I believe…

Professor Kaufmann Leads Graduate Student Trip to Central Europe
April 4, 2023

Professor Thomas DaCosta Kaufmann led a trip to Central Europe over spring break with seven A&A graduate students for a week of learning, camaraderie, and indelible experiences. The group visited Czechia and Austria.

Kaufmann’s aim was “to enable students to experience architecture and sculpture and urban sites directly, not to…

In the News: Professor Chika Okeke-Agulu Appointed EMOWAA (Edo Museum of West African Art) Senior Advisor, Modern and Contemporary Art
March 28, 2023
From: BusinessDay, “Chika Okeke-Agulu, Aindrea Emelife to strengthen EMOWAA’s focus on modern, contemporary art”

By Emelike Obinna

Mar 26, 2023

The EMOWAA (Edo Museum of West African Art) Trust is delighted to announce the appointments of Professor Chika Okeke-Agulu, Nigerian art…

Kyoko Ibe Brings the Art of Papermaking to Princeton
March 27, 2023

Visual artist Kyoko Ibe and writer, performer, activist, and lawyer, Reginald Dwayne Betts, placed paper at center stage earlier this year with the Lewis Center for the Arts' March production of Betts' Felon: And American Washi Tale at McCarter's Berlind Theatre from March 2-4, 2023. Paper became the leitmotif for a…

A&A Chair Professor Rachael DeLue Addresses Members of Congress on Humanities Advocacy Day
March 24, 2023

On Humanities Advocacy Day, March 20, 2023, A&A Chair Professor Rachael DeLue and Tera Hunter, Professor of African American Studies and History and Acting Chair of Princeton’s Humanities Council, met with Members of Congress to garner federal support for the humanities.   They were part of a New Jersey delegation that also…

Think from Black: A Lexicon Convenes in Johannesburg
March 23, 2023

Professor Tina Campt, Roger S. Berlind ’52 Professor of Humanities in the Department of Art and Archeology and the Lewis Center for the Arts at Princeton University, was lead convener of a collaborative activation aimed at creating a more expansive vocabulary from the perspective of what it means to be Black provocatively…

Art Hx Artist-in-Residence Nate Lewis Connects with Princeton’s Special Collections and Discusses his Work
March 15, 2023

2022–2023 Art Hx Artist-in-Residence Nate Lewis recently visited Princeton’s Special Collections before discussing his work in conversation with A&A Ph.D. candidate Jessica Womack, who works as the Art Hx project manager. 

Visiting Special Collections

Guided by Art Hx’s…

In the News: ChatGPT Goes Rogue, Fabricating Citations by Hal Foster and Carolyn Yerkes
March 5, 2023

Artnet News exposed ChatGPT's limits as a research tool when a chat about art theory resulted in citations by A&A Professors Hal Foster and Carolyn Yerkes that do not exist.

When asked for comment, Yerkes replied: "It's unreal."

And Foster passed along author Ben Lerner's follow-up ChatGPT exchange:

Course Highlight: ART 343 “Topics in 19th-Century Art: Artists and Their Subjects”
March 4, 2023

ART 343 “Topics in 19th-Century Art: Artists and Their Subjects” explores the various representations of the relationship between artist and subject in the period between the French Revolution and the turn of the nineteenth century. Throughout the semester, lecturer Carmen Rosenberg-Miller *22, whose own work centers around philosophies of…

Course Highlight: ART 228 “Art and Power in the Middle Ages”
March 2, 2023

ART 228 “Art and Power in the Middle Ages” looks at politics and religion reflected in the art of Europe, the Middle East, and Africa between 300 and 1200 C.E., exploring the art of great courts as well as migratory societies and of religions including Catholicism, Orthodoxy, Judaism, and Islam.  Fundamental to the understanding…

In the News: Princeton and Brown University Students and Faculty Collaborate in Professor Tina Campt's Course "Frequencies of Black Life"
March 1, 2023

From Brown Daily Herald Article:

Artist-scholar, DJ madison moore performs at Brown Arts Institute event;

moore discusses history, vestige of Black, queer nightlife following live performance

By Ryan Smith
The Brown Daily Herald Senior Staff Writer

February 26, 2023 

A&A Tigers at CAA!
Feb. 24, 2023

Join us in-booth on Friday for a special presentation on Global Art Reimagined. Elizabeth Pilliod of Rutgers University, The State University of New Jersey and Thomas Kaufmann of Princeton University will outline some of the new approaches to global art history that inform their forthcoming Pearson…

Ukrainian Scholar Digitizes Kyiv’s Iconic St. Sophia for The Index of Medieval Art with Flash Grant
Feb. 24, 2023

With funding from a Council of Humanities Flash Grant, the Index of Medieval Art has supported a displaced Ukrainian scholar and incorporated the records on the mosaics of St. Sophia, a UNESCO world heritage site in Kyiv, in its online database.  Art History Specialist for the Index Maria Alessia Rossi conceived the project…

The Association for Asian Studies Awards 2023 Book Prize to the Tang Center's Dora Ching
Feb. 16, 2023

The nine-volume set Visualizing Dunhuang: The Lo Archive Photographs of the Mogao and Yulin Caves (Princeton University Press 2021) edited by the Tang Center's Dora Ching has won the Bei Shan Tang book prize, which recognizes research in Chinese art history.

"I am deeply honored to receive the inaugural Bei Shan Tang…

In the News: Professor Okeke-Agulu's Oxford University Slade Professorship Heralded in Nigerian Press
Feb. 12, 2023

Excerpt from "A Nigerian, Chika Okeke-agulu, Resumes Duties At Oxford As Distinguished Professor," The Nigerian Voice, February 5, 2023

A leading Nigerian academic in the United States, Professor Chika Okeke-Agulu of Princeton University, has assumed duties at Oxford University, one of the oldest and most respected educational…

A&A Alumnus and Staff Member Awarded 2023 Medieval Academy of America Publishing Prizes
Jan. 31, 2023

The Medieval Academy of America has announced the 2023 prize recipients, including Van Courtlandt Elliott Prize winner A&A alumnus John Lansdowne *19 and Digital Humanities and Multimedia Studies Prize co-recipients Julia Gearhart (A&A’s Director of Visual Resources) and Alice Isabella Sullivan (Assistant Professor Medieval Art and…

Anna Arabindan-Kesson’s “Black Bodies, White Gold” Wins 2023 HBA Book Award
Jan. 20, 2023

The Historians of British Art (HBA) annually awards prizes to outstanding books on the history of British art, architecture, and visual culture.  Anna Arabindan-Kesson’s Black Bodies, White Gold: Art, Cotton, and Commerce in the Atlantic World (Duke University Press 2021) received this year’s award for a single-authored…

Archaeology Certificate Student Shaun Cason, Class of 2023, Among Sachs Scholarship Recipients
Jan. 19, 2023

Excerpt from:

Sachs Scholarship awarded to two Princeton seniors, one Oxford student

Emily Aronson, Office of Communications

Jan. 19, 2023

Princeton seniors Shaun Cason and Anna Allport and University of Oxford student Isabelle (Izzy) Stuart have been named recipients of the Daniel M. Sachs Class of 1960…

Co-Curating “Samuel Fosso: Affirmative Acts;” A&A Doctoral Student Iheanyi Onwuegbucha Describes the Collaborative Process
Jan. 12, 2023

A&A doctoral student Iheanyi Onwuegbucha is among the co-curators who assisted A&A and African American studies professor Chika Okeke-Agulu in producing the first museum survey of Samuel Fosso’s work in the United States: Samuel Fosso: Affirmative Acts,&nbsp…

Access to the Index of Medieval Art Database Will Become Free on July 1, 2023
Jan. 12, 2023
Author
Written by Pamela Patton

We are very pleased to announce that as of July 1, 2023, a paid subscription will no longer be required for access to the Index of Medieval Art database. This transition was made possible by a generous grant from the Samuel H. Kress Foundation and the ongoing support of the Index’s parent department of Art & Archaeology at Princeton…

In the News: NY Times Reviews "Samuel Fosso: Affirmative Acts," Curated by Chika Okeke-Agulu and Students
Jan. 5, 2023

Excerpt from New York Times, Critic's Pick, Jan. 5, 2023

Within Himself, an African Photographer Finds Multitudes A studio portraitist turns the lens on flamboyant alter egos in his first solo U.S. museum exhibition at Princeton.

By Arthur Lubow

"In the aftermath of the civil war in Nigeria that devastated his…

“Museumverse” Student Project Wins First Place at Keller Center Innovation Forum
Dec. 14, 2022

Congratulations to Department of Art & Archaeology graduate students Mengge Cao, Iheanyi Onwuegbucha, and Michael Zhang along with Shruti Sharma (Electrical and Computer Engineering), for winning first place and $15,000 in the humanities and social sciences division of the 17th Annual Keller Center Innovation Forum with their enthralling…

The Power of Seeing it for Yourself: Humanities Courses Converge in Rome
Dec. 14, 2022

Travel brings theory to life, vibrantly showcasing history, culture, and architecture like no image or text ever could. Students in two Humanities Council courses experienced this over fall break when they visited Rome.

Team-taught by Carolina Mangone (art & archaeology) and Moulie Vidas (religion and Judaic studies), the…

Inessential Colors by Basile Baudez Wins Alice Davis Hitchcock Medallion
Dec. 12, 2022

Basile C. Baudez’s Inessential Colors: Architecture on Paper in Early Modern Europe (Princeton University Press, 2021) is this year’s winner of the Alice Davis Hitchcock Medallion.  The judges consider the monograph “a landmark work…

Deciphering the Line between Science and Fiction in Art
Dec. 7, 2022

Featured on Princeton’s homepage, Professor Rachael DeLue’s course “Science and its Fictions in the Long 19th Century” trains students across disciplines to see images with a critical eye.  Students hone their visual literacy by looking at early images purporting to represent science, including John James Audubon's “The Birds of…

Object Mobilities Workshop Convenes in Australia
Dec. 2, 2022
Author
Written by Ariel Kline

Convened in Canberra in November 2022, the “Object Mobilities” workshop brought together scholars from the United States and Australia to speak about objects on the move. Most surprising was the wide range of objects under discussion: from radioactive samples of Persian ceramics in nineteenth-century British collections (in a paper by Mary…

Learning from Collections: Behind the Scenes at the Met
Nov. 23, 2022

Students from ART 369/EAS 386: “The Arts and Archaeology of the Chinese Court” and ART 493/EAS 493: “Narrative and Visuality in China,” co-taught by the Department of Art & Archaeology’s Cheng-hua Wang with Chao-Hui Jenny Liu and Paize Keulemans from the Department of East Asian Studies, respectively, had the incredible opportunity to…

Index of Medieval Art Conference
Nov. 18, 2022

On November 11th and 12th, The Index of Medieval Art hosted a workshop and conference on the theme of “Looking at Language,” which brought together eight scholars in a wide range of specializations to share their expertise on the multifarious relationships between language and works of medieval art. On the first day, the speakers met with…

New Release: Patricia Blessing’s Architecture and Material Politics in the Fifteenth-century Ottoman Empire
Nov. 17, 2022

Just released by Cambridge University Press, Patricia Blessing’s Architecture and Material Politics in the Fifteenth-century Ottoman Empire explores the emergence of Ottoman architecture in the 15th century and its connection with broader geographical contexts. Analyzing how transregional exchange shaped building…

Learning from Artists: Renee Magnanti
Nov. 11, 2022

Artist Renee Magnanti gave students of Sam Holzman’s ART 504: “Studies in Greek Architecture” hands-on instruction in the techniques of encaustic painting.  Having worked in the medium for over 30 years herself, Magnanti has developed her own recipe and method and has established a singular style of carving in encaustic.  Her…