Student Focus

A&A Graduate Student Fatih Tarhan Exemplifies "Opening Horizons" in Photography Exhibition

Tasked with submitting a photograph on the theme "Opening Horizons" for a group exhibition in Hamburg, Germany, Shirin Abedi chose a subject familiar to the A&A community, graduate student Fatih Tarhan. "Fatih Tarhan opens the horizons of every person he meets," she said. "He speaks in images and penetrates the depths of their hearts with…

Re-centering Princeton's Lost Stories
Being at Home in Princeton

During my internship with the Being at Home in Princeton project, I was asked to critically examine the displacement of the predominantly African American community across the phases of the Palmer Square construction project to create a prototype model for an upcoming virtual exhibition. In this…

Visiting Student Research Collaborator Ivana Dizdar Reflects on Her Year at Princeton

Ivana Dizdar is a Ph.D. candidate at the University of Toronto, where her dissertation examines representations of the Arctic in French 19th-century visual culture. She spent fall 2022 and spring 2023 at Princeton as a visiting student research collaborator and shares her impressions.

What drew you to Princeton?

Archaeology Program Student and Veteran Ramon Espinoza Excavates WWII Crash Site in Germany

Ramon Espinoza ’26, a rising sophomore enrolled in the Program in Archaeology, participated in a summer 2023 field study in Germany at the site of a 1944 crash of a World War II airplane as part of the Department of Defense POW-MIA Accounting Agency (DPAA) efforts to account for missing personnel. He joined a team led by Andrea Palmiotto of…

Coming Fall 2023 – ART 213: "Modernist Art: 1900 to 1950"

"ART 213 takes up the many ways in which European artists responded to both the delights and the disasters of 'modern life.' That life involved new industries, technologies, and media, and inspired new perceptions, passions, and philosophies. Traditional forms of art were radically revised, and novel ones created. A continual question for us…

Coming Fall 2023 – ART 203: “Roman Art”

“In recent years, excavations in and around Rome – whether deliberate digging by archaeologists or accidental discoveries in the course of new building projects – have brought to light, monthly if not weekly, new works of sculpture, architecture, and painting. These discoveries remind us that the past does not always stay buried and forgotten…

Coming Fall 2023 – ART 389: “Women and Gender in Chinese Art”

“Professor Wang and I aim to highlight ‘Women and Gender’ not only as a valuable academic framework but also as lived experiences, disciplinary tools, and enduring poetics that shape a significant part of Chinese art.”

– Yutong Li, A&A Graduate Student and Co-Instructor

Co-taught by Professor Cheng-hua Wang and…

Coming Fall 2023 – ART 233: "Renaissance Art and Architecture"

"Warfare, Religion, Desire, Politics, Statecraft, Magic, Science, Travel, Encounter, Trade, Wealth, Power, Inequality and Ambition - discover the intricate world of the Renaissance (and its resonances with our own time) through the lens of its art and artists!"

– Professor Carolina Mangone

In ART 233: "Renaissance…

Coming Fall 2023 – ART 248: “Photography and the Making of the Modern World”

"I believe photography is the most important invention of the 19th century. It is the basis for all film and video technology, structures our understanding of distant events, and can even produce identity through official (as well as) informal channels. Today, with social media and AI, photography impacts our understanding of the world in…

Touring Thessaloniki with A&A Graduate Student Megan Coates

When Megan Coates sets off in the Greek port city of Thessaloniki, it's as though she’s moving through an extra dimension that activates all of its historical layers at once, with an especially brilliant Byzantine one. Coates spent summer 2023 in Greece, first to participate in the Mount Menoikeon Seminar held by the Seeger Center, next for an…

Museumverse Participates in 2023 New Jersey History and History Preservation Conference

On Tuesday, June 13, the Museumverse team participated in the 2023 New Jersey History and History Preservation Conference in Atlantic City. The conference outlined the importance of preserving the state's heritage sites. At the conference, Museumverse presented a poster showcasing the collaborative projects undertaken by the team over the past…

A&A Concentrator Lucy Gutman '24 Visits London Gallery for Junior Paper Research

With the support of the A&A department, I traveled to London in April to visit an exhibition at the Whitechapel Gallery related to my independent work. Entitled Action, Gesture, Paint, the exhibition included the work of more than 50 abstract artists working in the 20th century—all women and from all around the world.

My…

A&A's Caitlin Karyadi Explains How A Center for Digital Humanities Data Fellowship Furthered Her Dissertation

2022–23 Center for Digital Humanities Data Fellow Caitlin Karyadi writes about her year of curating data and the impact it has had on her dissertation research.

CDH Data Fellows learn best practices in data selection, structuring,…

Course Highlight: ART 401: “Introduction to Archaeology”

Professor Holzman’s Spring 2023 ART 401: “Introduction to Archaeology” was a portal to a fascinating realm; through guest speakers, interaction with objects, and demonstrations, Holzman’s experience-driven approach brought the field of archaeology to life – on one occasion transporting students to the ancient past.

Each week students…

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

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.” …

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

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...."

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…

Perrin Lathrop *21: from A&A to Assistant Curator of African Art

Perrin Lathrop *21 joined the Princeton University Art Museum in 2022 as Assistant Curator of African Art at a decidedly dynamic moment; as the Museum takes its new shape, Lathrop is helping to define the African art galleries. She feels both the weight and exhilaration of her charge.  “It's a real…

Course Highlight: ART 488 “The Modern Museum: Between Preservation & Action”

This semester, Princeton University Art Museum Director James Steward is teaching ART 488: “The Modern Museum: Between Preservation & Action.” The course raises an array of questions centered on the role of today’s museum.  How must it respond to the digital age and to a world of increasingly porous borders? Can it run the risk of…

A&A Students Visit Seward Johnson Atelier as Part of the A&A Undergraduate Mentorship Program

A&A graduate students Katy Knortz and Will Pedrick recently organized an excursion to the Johnson Atelier as part of the Art & Archaeology Undergraduate Mentorship Program.  Along with mentorship of junior and senior History of Art and Practice of Art majors, the program was created to foster academic enrichment along with a…

Course Highlight: ART 431 “Living with Others: Art, Culture, and Identity in Medieval Spain”

ART 431, “Living with Others: Art, Culture, and Identity in Medieval Spain,” taught by Pamela Patton, who also directs the Index of Medieval Art, traveled to the Metropolitan Museum of Art to discuss works made by the medieval Christian, Muslim, and Jewish communities of the Iberian Peninsula with Dr. Julia Perratore, Assistant Curator of…

A&A Graduate Students Tour PUAM Construction Site

A&A graduate students recently got a close look at the Princeton University Art Museum’s construction site on a tour organized by A&A graduate student Alexandra Germer with PUAM’s Associate Director for Collections and Exhibitions Chris Newth and Andrew W. Mellon Curator of Academic Engagement Janna Israel. 

“Chris led us…

Practice of Art Student Emma Mohrmann ’24 on the Art of Paper Making

Emma Mohrmann, a junior in the A&A Practice of Art track, recently participated in visual artist Kyoko Ibe’s paper-making workshop, hosted by Visual Arts Lecturer Daniel Heyman at 185 Nassau.  Having worked in paper previously, Mohrmann was inspired to…

Course Highlight: ART 565 “Seminar in Modernist Art and Theory: Before and After Gender"

Co-taught by A&A Professors Bridget Alsdorf and Irene Small, ART 565: “Seminar in Modernist Art and Theory: Before and After Gender” revisits major approaches to feminist art history from the nineteenth century to the present, while considering how queer, trans, masculinity, and decolonial studies have transformed art-historical analysis…

Course Highlight: ART 209 “Between Renaissance and Revolution: Baroque Art in Europe”

Professor Thomas DaCosta Kaufmann’s ART 209 “Between Renaissance and Revolution: Baroque Art in Europe” surveys changes in European art from the end of the Renaissance until the Age of Revolution c. 1800. A highlight of the course is visiting Princeton University Art Museum’s collection to examine works firsthand.  “Certainly, my…

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

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”

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…

Engineering Student Alexis Wu '25 Highlights Mudd Manuscript Library as a Resource for ART102

Need Resources For Your Next Paper? Visit the Seeley G. Mudd Manuscript Library!

In this post, I share my experience of requesting resources from Princeton’s Seeley G. Mudd Manuscript Library for a research paper in ART102/ARC102: An Introduction to the History of Architecture. I took the Spring 2022 iteration of…

A&A's Megan Coates Meets Greece's President While Advocating for Diversity in Greek University Exchange Programs

I enrolled at Stockton University as a Nursing major. The degree required a number of humanities courses, one of which was "The Worlds of Homer," taught by Princeton alum Professor David Roessel *97. He approached me and asked if I would perform a piece he translated, the only catch was that the performances would be in Cyprus and Greece,…

Madeleine Haddon *21: From A&A to the V&A East

In her new role as Curator of V&A East, Madeleine Haddon *21 has the riveting and crucial task of establishing the museum of the future. Scheduled to open in spring 2025 in East London, V&A East is the new campus of the acclaimed Victoria & Albert Museum. The new museum aims to engage the transformative power of art and design to…

Mark Guiducci ’10: From A&A to Vogue

His B.A. in art & archaeology has paved a glamorous career path for Mark Guiducci ’10, who is, today, the Creative Editorial Director at Vogue.  Guiducci draws a direct line between his current position and its roots in A&A: “My thesis advisor Bridget Alsdorf encouraged us to analyze clothes as much as any other part…

Dispatches from the Field: Fatih Tarhan’s Search for Mamluk Mosque Lamps in Cairo

For some time now, I have been engaging with the sense-scapes of art objects from the Islamic Middle East, trying to understand them within their architectural context. Despite ongoing skepticism, the study of the sensorium of art objects has definitely become a hot topic within Islamic art—and within this sensorial conundrum, what really…

Louisa Ferguson '12: From A&A to Spotify

Louisa Ferguson ’12, Head of Global Marketing Experience at Spotify, exemplifies the limitless opportunities a degree in art & archaeology provides.  She now holds a dream job, merging her love of music and music culture with the captivating task of building new digital experiences for Spotify users.

Ferguson knew when she…

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

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…

I took Archaeology in the Field this past summer....

I took “Archaeology in the Field” this past summer and I highly recommend it to anyone who is curious about archaeology and looking to experience something new.

The excavation part of the course is a rare chance to work on an actual archaeological project with professionals. If you have any interest in pursuing a career in archaeology…

Mentorship Program Takes Students on New York Gallery and Private Collection Tour

As part of the Art & Archaeology Undergraduate Mentoring Program, A&A juniors Drew Pugliese, Cary Moore, and Lucy Gutman, senior Benjy Jude, and graduate student Samuel Shapiro traveled to New York to visit Chelsea Galleries and Tom Tuttle’s ’88 private collection.

Regarding Violence, an exhibition of recent works by…

Inaugural A&A Major’s Colloquium a Success!

The first day of Reading Period saw the inaugural Majors’ Colloquium in A&A: the junior and senior cohorts in History of Art and Practice of Art convened for work-in-progress presentations and discussion about their independent projects.

Thanks to all the students for their generous engagement with one another’s work, and best…

2022 Graduate Symposium Insights from the Organizers

From the earliest stages of conference planning, the question of format—whether the event would be in person, entirely on Zoom, or hybrid—was at the forefront of our minds. Although we had come to appreciate the wide access and flexible format offered by an online venue—and even as we feared a potential third winter of virus recrudescence…

Object Mobilities Workshop Convenes in Australia

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…

Wintersession Highlight! Meet Socrates, the Punk!

Socrates was a punk! In this Wintersession 2023 workshop, we’ll examine the sound, style, and theories behind the punk rock genre, from a philosophical perspective.  Beginning with the “proto-punk” bands of the mid-1970s and moving chronologically into contemporary “post-punk” genres, such as emo and pop-punk, philosophical themes will be…

Wintersession Highlight! Make Your Own Mosaic!

In this Wintersession 2023 workshop, each participant will receive a mosaic kit to complete and take home while Katy Knortz, art & archaeology graduate student, teaches them about the history of mosaics in antiquity. Chief Conservator at the Princeton…

Fall 2022 Junior / Senior Open Studios

Enjoy food, art, and great conversation with our students in their studios on Tuesday, November 15th from 5:30–7:00 pm at 185 Nassau Street, 4th floor.

Coming Spring 2023 - ART 414 / CLA 414 / HLS 414: Hellenistic Art

“For me, most exciting are the interactions of Hellenistic visual cultures we see in extraordinary recent finds from Macedonia and Afghanistan, at opposite ends of the Hellenistic world.” – Professor Bert Smith

The conquest of Asia from Anatolia to Afghanistan by Alexander III of Macedon (Alexander the Great) brought far…

Coming Spring 2023 - ART 388: Fascist Aesthetics

“In 2022, armed with our smartphones and the platforms of social media, we all have the power to play a role in shaping the visual culture of the contemporary moment. This course considers the interwar period, an era in which such power and access weren’t always given and in which women began to emerge in large numbers as professional…

Around Roma Antiqua in 7 Days!

Salve! As a Classics major, I was accustomed to hearing the Latin word for “Hello!” at the start of a language class or as a greeting on the first day of the Princeton Certamen. You can imagine my bewilderment, then, when an Italian cashier welcomed me to his shop with a fluent Salve! on the second day of our class trip to…

Coming Spring 2023 - ART 571: Frequencies of Black Life

“The course is intended as a space for an interdisciplinary consideration of how we might use the idea of frequency as an analytic framework across multiple fields of study. Collaborative thinking is a crucial part of both my scholarship and my writing practice so it’s something I am eager to cultivate among grad students. The collaborative…

Coming Spring 2023 - ART 447 / HLS 445 / ARC 440: Siegecraft

“I’m most looking forward to looking at a whole range of artworks I've never studied before, together with students. Princeton has truly amazing prints, drawings, and books that we can explore together.” – Professor Carolyn Yerkes

Siegecraft was an art more complex than painting, more powerful than sculpture, and more monumental…

Graduate Student Highlight

Graduate student Nathan Stobaugh presented Queerer Mirrors: Identification and Disidentification in VALIE EXPORT's Television and Cinema at The Barnes Foundation 26th Annual…

Faculty and Alumni CAA Awards

CAA announced its 2022 Awards for Distinction this week.  Two Department of Art & Archaeology alumni earned awards for their publications and one of our faculty contributed an essay to a publication that won a prize.

Kaira Cabañas *07’s…