Spotlight on Current Research
IFA Students Sink their Teeth (Literally!) into the Ephemeral Arts in Prof. Meyer’s Seminar
December 10, 2025This Fall semester, Professor Anthony Meyer and his students are exploring why and how Indigenous makers in the Americas create works that aren’t meant to last. Inspired by Meyer’s own research on Nahua ceremonial arts from the Mexica Empire (c. 1325-1521 C.E.) and early colonial New Spain in what is today Mexico, it poses a central question: how might art historians study a work and its materiality if it no longer exists?
Read more about Meyer's seminarFaculty
Constructed Geographies: Paulo Mendes da Rocha, edited by Jean-Louis Cohen and Vanessa Grossman is shortlisted for the Alfred H. Barr Jr. Award for Smaller Museums, Libraries, Collections, and Exhibitions.
Edward J. Sullivan weaves autobiography with art history to chronicle how Latino artists transformed from marginalized voices to central figures in New York's art scene between the 1970s and 2000s.
Emmelyn Butterfield-Rosen has been selected as a resident fellow for the 2025-2026 academic year at the Center for Ballet and the Arts at New York University.
Prita Meier’s latest book, The Surface of Things: A History of Photography from the Swahili Coast, is a finalist for both the African Studies Association’s 2025 Best Book Prize and the 2024 Bethwell A. Ogot Book Prize for East African Studies.
Dipti Khera is a Scholar in Residence at The Power Institute.
Edward J. Sullivan curated the first institutional survey of the Colombian artist Fanny Sanín in New York, at the Americas Society.
Meredith Martin receives the Iris Award for Outstanding Mid-Career Scholar.
Finbarr Barry Flood's co-authored book "Tales Things Tell: Material Histories of Early Globalisms" received the 2024 ICMA Annual Book Prize by the International Center of Medieval Art.
Alexander Nagel receives a Guggenheim Fellowship.
Joan Kee is the winner of the 2024 Robert Motherwell Book Award for The Geometries of Afro Asia: Art Beyond Solidarity
Students
Phoebe Herland curated the Rauschenberg exhibition at the Grey Art Museum.
Jinyi Liu receives a 2025/2026 Getty Predoctoral Fellowship
PhD student Kinaya Hassane traveled to the Comoros, Tanzania, & Kenya this summer for dissertation research, with generous support from the Joan & Stanford Alexander Dissertation Award from the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston.
Shannah Rose was awarded a Fulbright-Hays Doctoral Dissertation Research Abroad (DDRA) Fellowship at the Instituto de Investigaciones Estéticas at the Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México (UNAM).
Scarlett Strauss received a Fulbright Open Study/Research Award to pursue research in Italy for the 2025-2026 academic year.
Summer Sloane-Britt is Assistant Professor of Art History at Occidental College.
Shiro Burnette named to the 2025 cohort of the Center For Curatorial Leadership/Mellon Foundation Seminar in Curatorial Practice.
Saarthak Singh was selected as the recipient of the 2024 UC Berkeley South Asia Art & Architecture Dissertation Prize.
Alumni
Saint Vincent College has named Elizabeth E. Barker (PhD '03) as director of the Verostko Center for the Arts and curator of the Saint Vincent Art & Heritage Collections.
The Columbus Museum of Art (CMA) has announced the appointment of Dr. Anna Katherine Brodbeck (PhD '15) as Deputy Director for Curatorial Affairs.
The Brooklyn Rail interviewed Marilyn Lavin (PhD '73) about her memoir One Life for Two, The Autobiography of Irving and Marilyn Lavin.
Fatima Quraishi (PhD '19) Joins Princeton's Department of Art & Architecture as Assistant Professor of Art and Archaeology.
Blake Oetting (PhD '25) is a Postdoctoral Fellow between the Art History and Rhetoric departments at UC Berkeley and Curatorial Fellow at the Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive.
Rebecca Lowery (PhD '16) joined the Wexner Center for the Arts at Ohio State University as the new curator of exhibitions
Aimé Iglesias Lukin (MA '17) received the 2025 Vilcek Prize for Creative Promise in Curatorial Work.
Paulina Pobocha, (MA '03) was named Chair and Curator of Modern and Contemporary Art at the Art Institute of Chicago.