The symbol of the ampersand, inserted between two As in our logo, represents the department’s ambitious scope. It is home to the making of art and the study of art, to excavation and preservation, to the past and the present, to art and archaeology. I have been a member of the faculty for over a dozen years, and yet in one year serving as acting chair, I have been astonished to see up close the quantity, quality, and breadth of work that we do as a collective of passionate researchers and educators. These pages do an excellent job telling that story, but they ofer no more than a selection from a vibrant year that was flled with seminars, lectures, trips, and events, punctuated by papers and exhibits and projects. We might be considered a medium-size department, but with the Index of Medieval Art, Visual Resources, the Tang Center for East Asian Art, and the Program in Archaeology, our impact on the intellectual life of the campus is large. We are also the primary academic partner for the Princeton University Art Museum, which continues to fourish while a new building rises.
As we hold fast to ideals of excellence in teaching and scholarship, we respond to advances in our felds, student interests, and technology. New scholars bring fresh ideas, and I am delighted to welcome Rachel Saunders to the faculty, who comes to us from the Harvard Art Museums, bringing a robust and exciting research profle in Japanese art history. The faculty grows in other ways, too. Basile Baudez was promoted to associate professor and AnnMarie Perl to research scholar, both of which positions come with tenure. Samuel Holzman was re-appointed as assistant professor for a second term and won the University’s Jonathan Edwards Preceptorship. Tina Campt was awarded the Berlin Prize from the American Academy in Berlin, Monica Bravo received a grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities, and Rachael DeLue received Princeton’s Behrman Award for the Humanities.
Faculty members who perform service roles, particularly the director of undergraduate studies, Beatrice Kitzinger followed by Basile Baudez, and the director of graduate studies, Carolyn Yerkes, spearheaded successful undergraduate and graduate curricula. Leading a dedicated and skilled professional staf, this spring we warmly welcomed Jennifer Loessy into her new role as department manager.
The department has embraced Princeton’s granting of minors, adding a minor in the history of art and converting the certifcate in archaeology into a minor. Students from many backgrounds and disciplines take our classes, and the minor will encourage them to dive deeper while giving us the opportunity to more formally integrate them into the department. With ever-growing course enrollments, we are working to meet student demand. Preparations are also underway for our move into a new museum at the end of the next academic year, which should catalyze our teaching with objects and bring us back to where we belong: joined to the Museum, adjacent to the library, and at the heart of the campus.
Nathan T. Arrington, chair
Section One
Faculty
WANG CAPTION TK (Photo/TK)
A&A faculty on the steps of Green Hall (Photo/Kirstin Ohrt)
Faculty
BRIDGET ALSDORF
Bridget Alsdorf spent the year on sabbatical supported by a Guggenheim Fellowship, an American-Scandinavian Foundation Fellowship, and an Old Dominion Research Professorship from the Humanities Council at Princeton. She devoted much of her time to research related to her book on love and collaboration in modern Scandinavian art, which involved trips to Denmark, Norway, and Sweden. She also gave talks related to this research at the J. Paul Getty Museum, Brown University, the Søren Kierkegaard Research Center at the University of Copenhagen, the Preus Museum in Norway, Emory University, and Princeton. In addition to giving a public lecture for the Humanities Council, Alsdorf presented her research to the Princeton Society of Fellows in the Liberal Arts as a third-year Faculty Fellow.
Although her current focus is Scandinavia, Alsdorf has continued to write and speak about France. She was invited to Cambridge University to present her recent book, Gawkers: Art and Audience
in Late Nineteenth-Century France (Princeton University Press, 2022), in the Cambridge Seminar Series in Nineteenth-Century French Studies. In addition, she wrote an essay titled “Game of Suits” for the catalog to the exhibition Gustave Caillebotte: Painting Men opening in October 2024 at the Musée d’Orsay, Paris; and she reviewed the exhibition Marie Laurencin: Sapphic Paris for the London Review of Books Collaborations also developed. With her colleague Marnin Young (Yeshiva University), she coedited the fourth issue in an ongoing series on 19th-century art for nonsite.org, including fve scholarly articles and a text on Cézanne by Fritz Novotny, translated from the German by recent Ph.D. graduate Carmen Rosenberg-Miller. With Hans Halvorson (philosophy), she received a Magic Grant for a series of international workshops on philosophy, science, and art in late 19th- and early 20th-century Scandinavia. With colleague Carolyn Yerkes, she began work on an exhibition and multiauthored book on the 17th-century etcher Jacques Callot.
Last but never least, she was delighted to support two of her
advisees as they completed their dissertations: Annemarie Iker, who wrote on the Catalan modernistes, and Ariel Kline, who wrote on art and empire in 19th-century Britain.
NATHAN ARRINGTON
Nathan Arrington published two chapters related to the material culture of the war dead in Athens: “An Imaginary with Images: Reconsidering the Funeral Oration and Material Culture” (in The Athenian Funeral Oration: After Nicole Loraux, ed. D. Pritchard, Cambridge University Press, 2024) and “Material Responses to Collective Violence in Classical Greece” (in Collective Violence and Memory in the Ancient Mediterranean, ed. S. Ammann, H. Bezold, S. Germany, and J. Rhyder, Brill, 2024). He was invited to write the entry on Greek funerary art for the Oxford Classical Dictionary, which is now an online resource and continues to be the standard reference work for the feld. The archaeological project he leads held its fnal feld season and uncovered the frst extramural temple in northern Greece. More information about this exciting discovery can be found on the
Bridget Alsdorf answers questions after her Old Dominion lecture “Painting in Common: Works of Love from Denmark’s Modern Breakthrough,” fall 2023 (Photo/Kirstin Ohrt)
Gustave Caillebotte, Game of Bézique, 1880, the subject of Bridget Alsdorf’s essay “Game of Suits” for an exhibition at the Musée d’Orsay, Paris
Nathan Arrington, “An Imaginary with Images: Reconsidering the Funeral Oration and Material Culture,” in The Athenian Funeral Oration: After Nicole Loraux
Nathan Arrington, “Stryme: A Thasian Polis on the Aegean Coast of Thrace: Spatial Organization and Domestic Architecture,” in The Ancient Greek City I: Domestic and Public Architecture in Its Social and Political Context
archaeology pages ⯈. Arrington’s scholarly activity on the excavation continued with the coauthored publication of “Stryme: A Thasian Polis on the Aegean Coast of Thrace: Spatial Organization and Domestic Architecture” (in The Ancient Greek City I: Domestic and Public Architecture in Its Social and Political Context, ed. A. Vlachopoulos and A. Gadolou, Hellenic Ministry of Culture, 2023), and the frst volume of the fnal reports has fnally entered the stage of proofs. Arrington’s work on the Early Iron Age Mediterranean also continued, with his participation at a workshop on texts vs. artifacts held at Northwestern University.
Arrington taught a new undergraduate course on Greek ceramics, which combined seminar work, visits to the art museum storage facility, and hands-on experience in the ceramics studio He also covered the undergraduate archaeology methods seminar for the department and ofered two graduate-level reading courses, on ceramics and on advanced readings in archaeological theory and methods.
Publishing, 2024). In the spring, he cotaught with graduate student Sofa Hernandez a successful and rewarding undergraduate seminar on the architectural history of Sicily. At the same time, Baudez coedited with Patricia Blessing and Didem Ekici a volume of essays titled Textile in Architecture: From the Middle Ages to Modernism (Routledge, 2023). The book investigates the interconnections between textile and architecture via a variety of case studies from the Middle Ages through the 20th century and from diverse geographic contexts. The contributions, including examples from Morocco, Samoa, France, India, the UK, Spain, the ancient Andes, and the Ottoman Empire, are organized into three sections: “Ritual Spaces,” which examines the role of textiles in the formation
and performance of sociopolitical, religious, and civic rituals; “Public and Private Interiors,” which explores how textiles transformed interiors corresponding to changing aesthetics, cultural values, and material practices; and “Materiality and Material Translations,” which considers textile as metaphor and model in the materiality of built environment. The French Institute of National History invited the coeditors to present the book in Paris in March. In parallel, Baudez continued to work on his book manuscript, Fabricating the City: Textiles in Eighteenth-Century Venice. He was invited to share parts of his fndings at the University of St Andrews in Scotland and as a research seminar at the Bibliotheca Hertziana in Rome. He contributed to a panel on ephemerality at the Renaissance Society of America
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BASILE BAUDEZ ⯈
This spring, Basile Baudez took over as director of undergraduate studies and was promoted to associate professor. In the fall, he taught an undergraduate course on neo styles based on the architecture of the University campus and he worked with graduate students on the relationship between cartography and architectural graphic conventions in a seminar called “Seen from Above.” He published parts of his research on the topic in an essay titled “Conventional Signs in Early Modern Architectural Plans” in the volume Approaches to Drawing in Architectural and Urban Design (Cambridge Scholars
Basile Baudez leads students of ART 341 “Neo Architecture” on a campus tour, fall 2023 (Photo/Kirstin Ohrt)
A&A graduate student and assistant curator Caitlin Ryan lectures to combined group of students from Monica Bravo's ART 465 “Re-Reading American Photographs” and Jessica Williams Stark's ART 380 “Photography and Fact” in the An-My Lê: Between Two Rivers/ Giữa hai giòng sông/Entre deux rivières exhibition at MoMA (Photo/Monica Bravo)
annual conference in Chicago and on commerce and urban industrialization at the Urban History Association annual conference, held this year in Pittsburgh.
MONICA BRAVO
Monica Bravo published “Mercury Rising: US-Mexican Confict in Blessing of the Enrequita Mine (1860)” in Art History last summer, which is related to her current book project, Silver Pacifc: A Mineral History of Early Photography She was also the recipient of a
NEH Fellowship, which she looks forward to taking in 2025–26. In terms of speaking engagements, she gave the keynote lecture at Yale University’s Nineteenth Annual American Art Graduate Symposium and the Department of Art & Archaeology Reunions lecture in 2024, titled “Mineral Analogs: Carleton Watkins’s Photographs and the Gold Standard.” She also presented at the Humboldt University, the Modernist Studies Association annual conference, and the American Society for Environmental History, and was in conversation with Magnum photographer Susan Meiselas at Vassar College. With Carolin Görgen, she organized the sold-out “Ecologies of Photography: Materials, Industries, and Environment in the American West” conference at the Huntington Library in March, featuring scholars, artists, and viewing sessions. Presentations by Professor Emeritus Marni Sandweiss, Alan Braddock, Elizabeth Hutchinson, and artists Binh Danh and Cara Romero were among the program’s highlights.
In this frst year at Princeton, Bravo taught the undergraduate courses “Photography and the
Making of the Modern World,” “Mexican Modernism,” and “Re-Reading American Photographs,” which all also served graduate students. These courses benefted from access to the Museum’s and Firestone’s special collections, guest speakers, and feld trips with curator-led tours of Trust Me at the Whitney and An-My Lê: Between Two Rivers/Giũ,a hai giòng song/ Entre deux rivières at MoMA (the latter led by graduate student Caitlin Ryan). Together with Museum curator Katherine Bussard, she programmed the “Photo History’s Futures” lecture series with wellreceived talks by Aglaya Glebova and Emilie Boone.
TINA CAMPT
Tina Campt spent an exciting year expanding the work of the Princeton Collaboratorium for Radical Aesthetics. In September 2023 she organized a convening of writers, translators, artists, and scholars, “Translating Blackness/Blackness in Translation,” in Salvador de Bahia, Brazil, in collaboration with Janaina Olivera and together with fellow members of the Practicing Refusal Collective: Saidiya Hartman, Cameron Rowland, Zakiyyah Iman Jackson, Arthur Jafa, and Denise Ferreira da Silva. Following the convening, Campt moderated a panel discussion with the group at the Sao Paolo Art Biennial. In April 2024, she hosted a landmark symposium, “The Radical Practice of Black Curation,” ⯈. which she organized in partnership with Tavia Nyong’o and the Park Avenue Armory. The capacity crowd that flled the Wallace Theater brought together numerous A&A and Lewis Center for the Arts alumni, grads, and undergrads, fellows from the Whitney Interdisciplinary Studies Program and the Studio Museum in Harlem, and a range of artists and curators.
Basile Baudez et al., Textile in Architecture: From the Middle Ages to Modernism
Campt was delighted to learn that she was awarded the Berlin Prize by the American Academy in Berlin, in support of her new book project, Art in a Time of Sorrow. She presented early work from the book at Oxford University, Kunstmuseum Basel, DAS MINSK Kunsthaus in Potsdam, Germany, the Museum of Fine Arts in Houston, and Rice University.
RACHAEL Z. DELUE
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Rachael Z. DeLue spent the year on sabbatical, completing the manuscript of her third book, Impossible Images and the Perils of Picturing. This included travel to Cambridge, England, to conduct archival research for a chapter on Charles Darwin’s diagram of evolution in On the Origin of Species. She presented a paper on Alexander von Humboldt’s illustration of the physical geography of Tenerife at a workshop on art history and climate at the Paul Mellon Centre in London, and she delivered a lecture in Geneva, New York, on artistic and scientifc representations of celestial phenomena, focusing on attempts to visualize total solar eclipses.
On campus, she participated in a panel about the John Witherspoon statue at Princeton and presented new research on landscape and the Anthropocene in the High Meadows Environmental Institute Faculty Seminar Series. In May 2024, she received Princeton’s Howard T. Behrman Award for Distinguished Achievement in the Humanities.
HAL FOSTER
Hal Foster lectured at the University of Lisbon in February 2024 on “banal aesthetics,” the subject of his current book project. He published a book of conversations with Benjamin Buchloh titled Exit Interview (MIT Press/no place press,
2024) and a selection of essays from the last two decades, titled Fail Better: Reckonings with Artists and Critics, is due out from MIT Press in spring 2025.
SAMUEL HOLZMAN ⯈
Samuel Holzman was on sabbatical, splitting his time between Greece and the United States. In the fall, he was a senior fellow at the American School of Classical Studies at Athens, where he fnalized his book manuscript about Ionic architecture, forthcoming with Princeton University Press. In the spring term, he was a sabbatical fellow at Harvard University’s Center for Hellenic Studies in Washington, D.C., developing a new project on ancient Greek stone masons. Holzman traveled to give talks in Athens, Bologna, and Pisa, as well as Washington, D.C., Baltimore, and Atlanta. In 2023, “Concealing Structural Innovation in Ancient Greek Architecture,” an article about the oldest case of the fat arch used as a relieving device, appeared in the Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians “Antonio da Sangallo and Saint Peter’s Keys,” a collaboration with Carolyn Yerkes on the reception of ancient construction tools in
the Renaissance, appeared in Architectural History.
In summer 2023, Holzman returned to Samothrace where he leads the architectural research team in the sanctuary of the Great Gods. Graduate and undergraduate students from Princeton, including Hannah Smagh *22, graduate students Robert Yancey and Eirini Spyropoulou, Chiara Batisti (Classics), and Elena Evnin ’24, joined this collaborative project, which is organized by NYU and Emory University. The 2023 feld season saw the beginning of excavation along the fortifcation wall of the ancient city of Samothrace, where a major gate leading to the sanctuary has been discovered. Excavation in the area of the West Gate continued in summer 2024.
Holzman was an organizer of “Beyond the Northern Aegean,” a traveling seminar on ancient architecture in the Black Sea region supported by a Getty Connecting Art Histories grant, which visited archaeological sites on the coast of Romania and Bulgaria in summer 2023 and in northwestern Turkey in summer 2024. He was also the faculty coordinator of the PITHOS (Princeton-Ioannina-Thessaly
Hal Foster et al., Exit Interview: Benjamin Buchloh in Conversation with Hal Foster
The 2024 PITHOS fellows at the Vikos Gorge, Greece
On-Site Seminars) program in 2024, which took graduate students from A&A to the University of Ioannina, and which will host Greek graduate students in Princeton in fall 2024.
BEATRICE KITZINGER
Beatrice Kitzinger began her term as Behrman Professor in the Humanities by coordinating the fall semester of HUM 216-217, the Western Humanities Sequence. The class incorporated excursions to the Princeton University Art Museum study room, Princeton University Library Special Collections, the permanent collections at the Metropolitan Museum of Art and The Cloisters, and a visit to the special exhibition Africa and Byzantium at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. She also enjoyed leading the Junior Seminar in the fall, with thanks to the many A&A, Princeton University Library, and Princeton University Art Museum colleagues who helped guide the history of art majors in various methods of object analysis.
AY 23–24 was the fnal year of a three-year Collaborative Humanities Grant awarded to Kitzinger and Jamie Reuland (music) to launch the LUDUS working group, which mounted participatory workshops designed
to support the active, performed, creative, and re-creative study of premodern culture. Taking seriously the “play element” in medieval art, architecture, music, drama, and literature, this group brings together scholars interested in developing methodological and technical tools to study the Middle Ages in its live, plastic, and time-bound dimensions, and will continue to convene under the aegis of the Program in Medieval Studies. With Medieval Studies, in September LUDUS cohosted Professor Sarah Kay (New York University) and the ensemble Concordian Dawn for a concert-lecture on troubadour song. In April, LUDUS supported a weeklong residency by the ensemble Cut Circle. In November, Kitzinger showcased a manuscript from Princeton’s Special Collections at the 16th Annual Lawrence J. Schoenberg Symposium on Manuscript Studies in the Digital Age at the University of Pennsylvania. In May, she contributed a virtual look into the archive of the architectural historian Paul Frankl to a conference held in his honor at the University of Halle.
CAROLINA MANGONE
Carolina Mangone started the year by convening a two-day
conference titled “Finished? Early Modern Arts in the Imperfect Tense” ⯈ that explored the topic of unfnishedness in European art. Her own talk, “Non-Finito as Accident, Imitation, and Deception,” ofered three methodological frameworks for understanding the production of the roughly hewn Palestrina Pietà, a perplexing sculpture that scholars attribute to an unknown artist working anytime between 1560 and 1670. She gave various other talks throughout the year, including at the conference “Metamorphic Matter: Elemental Imagery in Early Modern Art” hosted by Janson-La Palme *76 Visiting Professor Christine Göttler, where she spoke about the implications of Bernini’s transformation of stone into stone on the base of the Four Rivers Fountain.
Over the winter break, Mangone led a group of Western Humanities Sequence students on a trip through Sicily, exploring everything from its archaeological sites to its Baroque churches, with her colleagues Yair Mintzker (history) and Bailey Sincox (Society of Fellows). Mangone looks forward to a year of leave during which she will be immersed in writing her book on Michelangelo’s unfnished sculptures and the various ways in which early modern viewers grappled with the indeterminacy of these works. During this time, she will continue as director of the Program in Italian Studies.
CHIKA OKEKE-AGULU ⯈
Chika Okeke-Agulu served as chair of the international jury of the Decolonial Memorial commission, Berlin, Germany, last fall. This spring, he served on the jury of the international exhibition Foreigners Everywhere for the 60th Venice Biennale. He was recently appointed consulting curator for the Williams Forum Commission
Beatrice Kitzinger with Humanities Sequence students at the Princeton University Art Museum off-site classroom (Photo/Molly Gibbons)
“Finished? Early Modern Arts in the Imperfect Tense” conference poster
project by the artist El Anatsui at the Philadelphia Museum of Art and is organizing the frst museum survey of prints and paperworks by the artist at the museum.
In his role as director of the Africa World Initiative, OkekeAgulu hosted the Chinua Achebe International Symposium and 10th Anniversary Memorial Event (September 29–30), and the inaugural Africa World Lectures given by the writer Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie (October 25–26). This spring Okeke-Agulu was elected to the Council of the Princeton University Community (CPUC) Executive Committee/ Faculty Advisory Committee on Policy for a one-year term. In the fall he will teach “Introduction to African Art” and the “Postblack: Contemporary African American Art” seminar. His advocacy and public scholarship on restitution of looted African art, and on the art industry, were featured by The Nation, Nsider.com, Vigour Times, Causes.com, and ARTnews
IRENE SMALL
Irene Small looks forward with anticipation to the fall launch of her book The Organic Line: Toward a Topology of Modernism (Zone Books, 2024). Highlights of the past academic year include a new iteration of Small’s seminar “Language to Be Looked At,” in which, among other activities, students experimented with typewriter poems, realized works by John Cage and Benjamin Patterson with members of Sō Percussion, and visited the exhibition Ulises Carrión: Bookworks and Beyond, co-curated by Javier Rivero Ramos *23 at Firestone Library’s Millstone Gallery. Small also co-organized an issue of Texte zur Kunst with the researcher and curator Mahret Ifeoma Kupka dedicated to the theme of restitution, hosting a roundtable
From left:
Li,
with the sound artist Memory Biwa and renowned scholar Bénédicte Savoy. Among other presentations, Small gave the keynote lecture for the conference “Form and Transformation” organized by the Comparative Literature department at CUNY Graduate School and presented new research on the Brazilian proto-photographer Hércule Florence as part of “The Pulse of Art History” lecture series at Cornell University. She was honored to join the advisory boards of the journal October (MIT Press) and the Latin American and Latinx Art History Initiative of the Getty Research Institute. In June, she brought graduate students from the modern and contemporary felds to Venice to see the biennale Stranieri Ovunque: Strangers Everywhere as a preview of her fall 2024 undergraduate class seminar, “Contemporary Art: The World Picture.”
CHENG-HUA WANG ⯈ Cheng-hua Wang feels the academic year 2023–24 was particularly memorable: three of her students (the frst under her guidance) obtained their doctoral degrees. Collecting materials and writing their dissertations during the pandemic, these students
demonstrated perseverance in and commitment to the study of Chinese art. Regarding teaching, she made two feld trips with graduate students to visit exhibitions on Chinese art in June and December 2023. China’s Hidden Century: 1796–1912 at the British Museum was a long-awaited exhibition on 19th-century Chinese art. This period has been deemed an era of decline in the study of Chinese art, for which both the quantity and quality of research are often unsatisfactory and breakthroughs difcult to fnd. The exhibition and the conference accompanying it, in a sense, have helped remedy such inadequacies. In London, Wang and
Yutong
Mengge Cao, Cheng-hua Wang, Josephine O’Neil, and Zhuolun Xie examining Zeng Yandong’s Miniature Album with Figures and Landscape, 1822, The Cleveland Museum of Art (Photo courtesy of Zhuolun Xie)
Irene Small, The Organic Line: Toward a Topology of Modernism
her students also participated in the conference “China’s 1800s: Material and Visual Culture.” Wang was invited to be the chair of a panel and ofered a long introduction to its major themes. The purpose of the second feld trip was to see the exhibition China’s Southern Paradise: Treasures from the Lower Yangzi Delta at the Cleveland Museum of Art. Acclaimed as one of the most important exhibitions of Chinese art in North America in the past decade, it covered more than 3,000 years of art-making in the Jiangnan area and included artifacts as diverse as paintings, prints, rubbings, bronzes, ceramics, embroideries, and even cocoons for illustrating sericulture. Wang also contributed an article on Suzhou print culture to the exhibition catalog. In addition, the group went into the storeroom of the museum to see some paintings previously selected by the students. In terms of scholarship, Wang submitted the book manuscript Up the River of Time: Qingming Shanghe as Painting Tradition. Other highlights of the year include her two talks given at the Graduate Institute of Art History, National Taiwan University, and at the Department of East Asian Languages and Civilizations, Harvard University. Focusing
on landscape paintings in the handscroll format from the 10th to the 12th century, the talks presented two structural innovations taking place in the late Northern Song (960–1127) that opened up new possibilities for emotional expression, lyrical symbolism, and political connotation.
ANDREW M. WATSKY ⯈
Andrew M. Watsky retired at the end of the 2023-24 academic year, with gratitude to everyone at Princeton with whom he has worked—students, staf, administration, and faculty alike. He looks forward to spending more time with research and writing at home, in Marquand Library, in Japan, and other places Japanese art takes him.
CAROLYN YERKES ⯈
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Carolyn Yerkes continued to serve as the department’s director of graduate studies and as the director of the Committee on Renaissance and Early Modern Studies (CREMS) throughout the year. For CREMS, she organized events and invited speakers on topics from Judaism in early modern Spain to art historiography in Renaissance Nuremberg. Yerkes cotaught two classes:
“Renaissance Art and Architecture” with Carolina Mangone in the fall, and “Introduction to Architectural History” with Basile Baudez in the spring. Her essay “Piranesi Slices” appeared in Grey Room, and her article on Antonio da Sangallo’s drawings of construction technology, coauthored with Samuel Holzman, appeared in Architectural History
Ending a lengthy period of hermitage, Yerkes traveled to give talks at the University of Texas-Austin for the British, Irish and Empires Studies program; at Yale University for the Directed Studies Program Colloquium; and at the Renaissance Society of America’s annual meeting in Chicago. She also presented at two conferences held at Princeton: Carolina Mangone’s “Finished? Early Modern Arts in the Imperfect Tense” (fall) and Christine Göttler’s “Metamorphic Matter” (spring).
Together with Bridget Alsdorf, Yerkes has launched a new project on the 17th-century etcher Jacques Callot (1592–1635). They are coauthoring and editing a book and co-curating an exhibition that is scheduled to open at the Princeton University Art Museum in spring 2027. Princeton’s remarkable collection of Callot’s work will be its focus.
Students in Irene Small’s course “Language to Be Looked At,” realizing Benjamin Patterson’s Paper Piece, 1960, with members of Sō Percussion (Photo/Irene Small)
Jacques Callot, May at Xeuilley, 1624, Princeton University Art Museum. Bequest of Junius S. Morgan, Class of 1888
New Faculty
Rachel
Saunders (Photo/Antoinette Hocbo)
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RACHEL SAUNDERS ⯈
Rachel Saunders joins the faculty as assistant professor of Japanese art history in fall 2024. A specialist in narrative and sacred painting, Saunders served as the Abby Aldrich Rockefeller Curator of Asian Art at Harvard University since 2015. Her research interests span a wide variety of mediums and periods (medieval to contemporary) and include Buddhist materiality, arboreal arts, and science and the practice of art history. Her most recent project examines morethan-human being in the ecology of bird-and-fower painting in early modern Japan. She is currently at work on a monograph titled Making Sacred Matter: Xuanzang and Buddhist Materialities in Medieval Japan, which examines alternate ontologies manifest in Buddhist objects. After joining the Harvard Art Museums, Saunders curated a number of shows, including the special exhibition Painting Edo (2020) and Prince Shōtoku: The Secrets Within (2019). She has held teaching appointments at Harvard University and Boston University. Her research has been supported by the Center for Advanced Study in the Visual Arts (CASVA), the University of Tokyo (Institute for
Advanced Studies on Asia, 2011–14), the Reischauer Institute of Japanese Studies, the Japan Foundation, the Kajima Foundation, and the Met Center for Eastern Art Studies. Her recent publications include the coedited Japanese-language volume Hābādo Daigaku Bijutsukan Sejuikku Korekushon Namubutsu Taishi zō to zōnai nōnyūhin kenkyū shiryōshū (Interpreting the Harvard Art Museums’ Prince Shōtoku at Age Two and His Relics) (Chūō Kōronsha, 2023); “Seinaru emaki o tsukuru: Genjō Sanzō-e ni okeru e to kotoba’” (The Making of a Sacred Scroll: Explicit Intertextuality in the Illustrated Life of Xuanzang) (Bensei Shuppan, 2021); “Birds, Flowers, and Botany in Sakai Hōitsu’s Pure Land Garden,” in Painting Edo (coauthored with Yukio Lippit, Yale University Press, 2020); and Catalogue of the Feinberg Collection of Japanese Art (Yale University Press, 2021).
Emeriti
ESTHER DA COSTA MEYER
Esther da Costa Meyer joined the Institute of Fine Arts in the 2024 spring semester as the Kirk Varnedoe Visiting Professor. Da Costa Meyer’s recent work has focused on issues of gender and design in modern and contemporary architecture as well as on the architectural practices of the old colonial powers and the resilient cultures of resistance in colonized nations. Her book Dividing Paris: Urban Renewal and Social Inequality, 1852–1870 (Princeton University Press, 2022) won the Seventh Annual French Heritage Society Book Award in 2024.
In recent years, Da Costa Meyer's teaching has focused on architecture’s complicity with climate change and the architecture of refugee camps around the world.
Research Scholars
ALANNA RADLO-DZUR
Alanna Radlo-Dzur is a postdoctoral research associate and lecturer in Indigenous and Native North American Studies. In August 2023, the Instituto de Docencia e Investigación Etnológica de Zacatecas (IDIEZ) invited Radlo-Dzur to participate in their language revitalization program in the Nahua community of El Tecomate, in the Chicontepec región of Veracruz, México. A language-exchange, the Tlamachtiliztli Nahuatl-Ingles (Curso náhuatl-inglés/NahuatlEnglish Workshop) teaches English using Nahuatl as the language of instruction. The 2023 cohort was the largest to date, doubling in size in the wake of the pandemic. Arriving directly from this experience, Radlo-Dzur joined with the Indigenous Language Alliance in urging Princeton to increase access and support for the study of Indigenous languages. These collective eforts resulted in a new initiative of the Ofce of the Dean of the College for undergraduates studying any less-commonly taught language to receive both funding and ofcial transfer credit starting summer 2024.
Radlo-Dzur presented a workin-progress talk titled “Ohmaxac Chanehqueh (Those Who Dwell at the Crossroads): Absences and Presences” to the department as well as an invited talk on her research for Latin American Studies at Hamilton College. She also presented “Valientes: A Meditation on Courage” in the panel “New Perspectives on Religion, Identity, and the Social Order in Preconquest and Early Colonial Mexico,” organized by David Tavárez for the American Historical Association (AHA) meetings in San Francisco, and “Nahua Women Emerge from the Mist: Reframing
the Narrative” in the panel “Image and Story: Narrative in the Ancient Americas,” organized by Margaret Jackson and Beth Wilson Norwood, at the College Art Association (CAA) annual meeting in Chicago.
In addition to teaching a new course, ART 419 “Nahua Women,” which explores Nahua women in art history across fve centuries, RadloDzur co-organized the Early Modern Nahuatl workshop to stimulate interest in Nahuatl language and cultural studies at Princeton. Sessions introduced basic grammar and paleography as well as pictographic writing and manuscript structures. She is a contributor to the Translating Mesoamerica project led by Nadia CervantesPérez (Spanish and Portuguese) with native Nahuatl-speaker and linguist Humberto Iglesias Tepec to transcribe and translate a selection of Nahuatl-language documents in the collections of the Princeton University Library. With generous support from A&A, Cervantes-Pérez, Tepec, and Radlo-Dzur traveled to Indiana University to present this project at the Annual Meeting of the Association of Nahuatl Scholars.
ALAN STAHL
⯈ ΑΓΟΡΑ ΑΙΟΡΑ
During the spring semester, Alan Stahl taught the ffth iteration of the course “Antioch through the Ages: Archaeology and History.”
This year, the participants examined the archival and physical evidence relating to the cemeteries lying just outside the ancient city. The best-known aspect of this complex
is the enigmatic “Mnemosyne” mosaic in which a group of women gather for what appears to be a banquet of remembrance. Graduate student Hannah Hungerford made a breakthrough in the interpretation of the scene with her demonstration that a faulty restoration had labeled one of the fgures ΑΓΟΡΑ (marketplace) rather than the original ΑΙΟΡΑ (a seasonal celebration). Recently declared A&A major Paige Walworth ’26 made what may be a more far-reaching contribution to the understanding of the site by reviewing the chronological distribution of artifacts and coins throughout the cemetery region, which is characterized by high-prestige sculpture and objects from the 1st and 2nd centuries C.E., generally in damaged condition and out of context; followed by two centuries of virtually no sign of site use; and then a revival of activity in Late Antiquity with objects relevant to Christian observance and pilgrimage. Walworth connected this archaeological pattern with a passage in the writings of John Malalas describing the martyrdom
Esther da Costa Meyer, left, winner of the Seventh Annual French Heritage Society Book Award in 2024, speaks with Professor of French and Comparative Literature at Barnard College Caroline Weber about the book, Dividing Paris: Urban Renewal and Social Inequality, 1852–1870 (Photo courtesy of the French Heritage Society)
Students in ART 419 "Nahua Women" view art from Princeton University Art Museum’s collection (Photo/Cindy Li)
of Antiochene Christians by the emperor Julian in the late 4th century and the establishment of a martyrium for veneration of their remains in what may well be the same location as that studied.
This connection of history and archaeology, hypothetical as it may be at this stage of research, reinforces the basic interdisciplinary concept of the course.
The greatest activity of the Numismatic Collection this year centered around the two newly acquired collections of Byzantine coins, together adding almost 20,000 specimens to the collection.
Elena Baldi, Byzantine Numismatics Cataloger and Linked-Open-Data Coordinator, organized a three-day conference in April, bringing two dozen scholars to campus and laying the groundwork for a new linked-open-data platform for Byzantine coinage. New purchases have continued to build the
collection of Axumite coinage, which served as the basis for the work of graduate student Jenica Brown. The digitization of the coins from Princeton’s Antioch excavations continues under the lead of Kirstin Ohrt, with the cataloguing of the Islamic coins the
responsibility of graduate student Fatih Han.
This year saw the publication of Stahl’s book The House of Condulmer: The Rise and Decline of a Venetian Family in the Century of the Black Death (University of Pennsylvania Press), which includes a chapter on the patronage that made the Venetian church of Madonna dell’Orto a major religious attraction.
JESSICA STARK ⯈
⯈
Jessica Stark fnished an article on the work Etel Mittag-Fodor, a Bauhaus-trained photographer, produced in South Africa as a young exile (forthcoming in History of Photography) and continued to make progress on her monograph on Anne Fischer. In the fall, she delivered a talk on Fischer’s South African resistance photography at a workshop dedicated to exploring Jewish visual and material culture at the Max-Planck-Institut’s Kunsthistorisches Institut in Florence. She was also invited to contribute a biographical case study on Fischer for History of the German-Jewish Diaspora, part of the Leo Baeck Institute’s GermanJewish History in Modern Times, a digital platform hosted by the Moses
Participants in ART 418 examine artifacts at the Princeton University Art Museum found in the cemeteries of ancient Antioch. From left: Hannah Hungerford, Susan McLernon, Eirini Spyropoulou, and Elena Baldi (Photo/Kirstin Ohrt)
Alan Stahl and class examine Antioch materials from the Visual Resources collection presented by Julia Gearhart (Photo/John Blazejewski)
Mendelssohn Center for EuropeanJewish Studies. As a member of the Photography Network board, Stark helped organize and convene the organization’s three-day virtual symposium (“Photography’s Frameworks”) in partnership with the University of the Western Cape in South Africa and served as a respondent for Nomusa Makhubu’s keynote. In December, she began working with Michal Singer and Susan Mvungi at the University of Cape Town to update metadata related to the university’s Anne Fischer Photographic Collection. In the spring, Stark taught “Photography and Fact,” an undergraduate seminar that examined the origins and evolution of our understanding
of photography’s relationship with truth, and served as a respondent for Emilie Boone’s talk on James Van Der Zee for the “Photo History’s Futures” lecture series. Over the course of the year, while teaching and working on her frst book, Stark also began a new research project on Naomi Shapiro’s apartheid-era resistance work and continued her contributions to the ongoing Vision & Justice Project.
Anne Fischer, Anne Fischer and Bernhard Herzberg, gelatin silver print, c. 1937–1941, private collection, Cape Town, South Africa
Unidentified photographer, Etel Mittag-Fodor at the Bauhaus in Dessau, c. 1929, gelatin silver prints in Mittag-Fodor’s private album, Bauhaus-Archiv, Berlin
Faculty The Radical Practice of Black Curation: A Symposium
Black curatorial practice, present and future, was the topic of the symposium “The Radical Practice of Black Curation” co-hosted by the Princeton Collaboratorium for Radical Aesthetics led by Tina Campt and the Park Avenue Armory in New York City. The symposium began on April 11, 2024, with a series of conversations held at the Lewis Center for the Arts that were elaborated in smaller sessions at the Armory the following day. To end the symposium on a festive note, multidisciplinary artist Richard
Kennedy performed Guttural (Conducted Contact), a musical encapsulation of the African diaspora described as opening a portal of participatory gathering for truth to emerge through song, dance, and wordless conversations.
The Lewis Center’s Wallace Theater was flled to capacity for the series of discussions, manifesting the collective craving for conversations on this theme. “I was deeply gratifed by people’s enthusiasm for participating in the conference,” said Campt. “I heard over and over how important it was for so many people—grad students, young and emerging curators, senior curators, and museum directors—how long they had waited to have such a conversation and how hungry they were for it.”
The frst panel, moderated by Tavia Nyong’o (Yale University) and Cameron Rowland (artist), featured Gabi Ngcobo (director, Kunstinstituut Melly, Rotterdam), Oluremi C. Onabanjo (Museum of Modern Art, New York), and Legacy Russell (The
Kitchen, New York). In the afternoon, Campt moderated a discussion with Nana Adusei-Poku (Yale University), Ekow Eshun (independent curator, London), and Koyo Kouoh (Zeitz Museum of Contemporary African Art, Cape Town). The afternoon concluded with Thelma Golden (Studio Museum in Harlem) and Helga Davis (actor/vocalist/ performance artist) in conversation. This symposium built on last spring’s dynamic inaugural semester of Collaboratorium activities, and the momentum is clearly growing.
In addition to the urgent need for this vein of conversation, the symposium cemented another conclusion. “The major takeaway for me was that it can’t be a one-of,” Campt emphasized. “That was the consensus of everyone who attended, particularly at the Armory sessions. So I’m looking forward to working together with the wonderful group of collaborators who have emerged from the symposium to realize the next iteration!”
Top; “The Radical Practice of Black Curation” symposium, day 1, Wallace Theater, Lewis Center for the Arts.
Left to right: Tina Campt, Ekow Eshun, Koyo Kouoh, and Nana Adusei-Pokou (Photo courtesy of Tina Campt).
Above: “The Radical Practice of Black Curation” symposium, day 2, Park Avenue Armory (Photo/Tina Campt)
Transfers to Emeritus Status
MICHAEL KOORTBOJIAN ⯈ ⯈, the Moses Taylor Pyne Professor of Art & Archaeology, joined A&A in 2009, just as three faculty members in the ancient feld were retiring, and his arrival had a signifcant impact on the department. “Professor Koortbojian rebuilt the ancient feld and strengthened teaching and scholarship across the department, serving as chair from 2015 until 2020,” said Professor Nathan Arrington. “His tenure witnessed a signifcant expansion in the department’s scope, with hires strengthening existing areas and moving the department into new areas chronologically, geographically, and thematically. His institutional impact can be felt in the reorganization of the Index of Medieval Art and Visual Resources, and in the development of close collaborations between the department, the Museum, and Marquand Library.”
Koortbojian received his M.A., M.Phil., and Ph.D. from the Department of Art and Archaeology at Columbia University. Before coming to Princeton, he taught at Kings’ College (Cambridge), the University of Toronto, where he received tenure in 1998, and Johns
Hopkins University, where he held the position of Nancy H. and Robert E. Hall Professor in the Humanities.
Koortbojian counts the visiting professorships he successfully organized to be among the important achievements of his A&A career. “Michael was able to attract international scholars of the highest caliber, who considerably enriched the pedagogy of the department,” said Arrington. Thanks to Koortbojian’s initiative, Tonio Hölscher (Heidelberg University) spent a term during the 2012–13 academic year in Princeton as an Old Dominion Fellow and R. R. R. Smith (University of Oxford) came as the Stanley Kelley, Jr. Visiting Professor for Distinguished Teaching in A&A and Classics in 2022–23.
“Professor Koortbojian cares deeply about the quality of graduate work. At all levels, the courses he offered were intimate, characterized by close looking, thoughtful conversation, and one-onone guidance.”
Koortbojian’s groundbreaking and interdisciplinary initiative to build an alliance between A&A and the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering (CEE) has made a broad and novel contribution to the feld of ancient architecture. Over a decade ago, Professor Branko Glˇısić, now chair of CEE, approached Koortbojian to consult on an undergraduate independent study project investigating a Roman bridge, and so began a partnership that has produced two courses, a lecture series, and the Heritage Structures program of study. “Our collaboration started to attract graduate students and researchers and to receive scholarly recognition,” said Glišić.
“Most importantly, we raised awareness of the importance of this interdisciplinary collaboration and sparked sizable interest that led to the creation of a ‘signature’ undergraduate course ideated by Michael and cotaught by the two of us in fall 2022.” The course, HUM 417/ART 408/CEE 415/ HLS 417 “Historical Structures: Ancient Architecture’s Materials, Construction and Engineering,” which received support from a Humanities Council Magic Grant, focused on Roman structures and included a class trip to Rome.
Now established, the course will endure. “One of the most gratifying things I’ve done at Princeton was to be involved in the Heritage Structures program,” said Koortbojian, ”and I’m very pleased that Sam Holzman is going to be taking it over.”
A devoted scholar and teacher, Koortbojian leaves a lasting legacy among his colleagues and students. “Professor Koortbojian cares deeply about the quality of graduate work,” said Arrington. “At all levels, the courses he ofered were intimate, characterized by close looking, thoughtful conversation, and one-on-one guidance. He modeled
the rigor of careful research and disciplined scholarship that he hoped his students would acquire, all the while inviting and welcoming diferent opinions and ideas grounded in knowledge of Roman society and its art.”
“Few people have had as profound an infuence on my life as Michael Koortbojian,” said former student Professor Nicole Brown *18 (Williams College). “His seminars were rigorous, challenging, and rich with insight—a heady intellectual experience that one looked forward to each week. As a dissertation adviser, Michael was unfailingly generous with his time and expertise, and our many long conversations always left me feeling more energized than ever before, full of new ideas and possible approaches.”
Michael Koortbojian teaches students at Hadrian’s Villa (Photo/Ashton Fancy)
Faculty
Oberlin Shansi two-year fellowship, which unexpectedly brought Watsky to Japan.
⯈
ANDREW WATSKY ⯈
No one is more surprised by Andy Watsky’s elaborate career in East Asian art history than Andy Watsky. That his career would involve art history was clear as an undergraduate at Oberlin College, but he’d been leaning into Western art history. Fortunately for A&A, he pivoted.
“Andy’s impact in the Department of Art & Archaeology has been tremendous,” said Professor Rachael DeLue. “His scholarly work has signifcantly advanced understanding of the arts of Japan, especially chanoyu, the Japanese practice of drinking tea and appreciating the many carefully wrought and highly valued objects involved in the process. I consider myself fortunate to have sat down for tea with Andy and to have seen the ritual frsthand as he prepared an exquisite bowl of matcha for me!”
The fateful turn toward Japanese art history Watsky credits to his adviser William Hood, “who, for perhaps the frst and only time in his life, turned a student on to a path that led to Japan,” Watsky notes in his Chikubushima: Deploying the Sacred Arts in Momoyama Japan (University of Washington Press, 2004). The path was paved by the
In 1986, Watsky became an A&A graduate student with Yoshiaki Shimizu as his adviser. Recently retired curator of Asian art at the Princeton University Art Museum Cary Liu was already in the A&A graduate program and deputy director of the Tang Center for East Asian Art. Dora Ching would join a few years later. “Working with and learning from Andy Watsky has been a true privilege from the moment I frst met him in graduate school in 1990 to our close collaboration in A&A, especially since 2016 when he became director of the Tang Center,” said Ching. “His enthusiasm about Japanese art—in particular tea objects and tea culture—was infectious, and the casual conversations we shared were in fact disguised master classes.”
Earning his Ph.D. in spring 1994, Watsky began teaching Asian art history in the fall at Vassar College, where he would stay for 14 years. In 2008, he returned to Princeton, overlapping with his mentor for a year and coteaching Professor Shimizu’s fnal course before retirement. He looks back on his years as a professor at Princeton with gratitude for the opportunities he’s had “to be a part of the ever-evolving A&A Department and Museum, and to work with fantastic undergraduate and graduate students.”
Among the courses Watsky taught, ART 425/EAS 425 “The Japanese Print” has become a monument in A&A’s course oferings; students learn about the genre in the frst half, and collectively select a print for Museum acquisition in the latter.
Watsky’s expertise is in 16th-century Japanese art, with a particular interest now in the arts associated with tea practice,
comprising such diferent mediums as ceramics, metalwork, bamboo, painting, calligraphy, and textiles. In retirement, Watsky looks forward to completing a book about 16th-century tea, triangulating artifacts, diaries, and a historical treatise on tea dating to 1588.
“Andy is the very definition of a devoted and inspiring teacher and mentor, whose students rave about his object-centered approach. What is more, he has been a wonderful colleague and an exemplary department citizen throughout his time
Watsky has worked closely with the Museum and helped build its collection. In fact, Museum director James Steward counts over 80 works that have come to the collection by Watsky’s hand.
Ching summed up Watsky’s breadth of contributions to A&A:
“Whether about art, tea, vexing issues in administration, or life in general, Andy without fail always listens, explains, questions, and
re-evaluates, with the result that one comes away learning more and wanting to learn more,” she said. “He is a rare teacher, colleague, and friend!”
DeLue agrees: “Andy is the very defnition of a devoted and inspiring teacher and mentor, whose students rave about his object-centered approach. What is more, he has been a wonderful colleague and an exemplary department citizen throughout his time in A&A.”
Looking forward, Watsky expects to continue ruminating on the subject that has defned his career but with the freedom that retirement brings. He leaves Princeton with immense optimism for the future of the feld: “The arrival of two fne Japanese art specialists, in the department and in the Museum, gives me confdence that Japanese art studies will thrive at Princeton for years to come, and that’s a great feeling to have as I step down.”
Andrew Watsky (Photo/John Blazejewski)
Andrew Watsky displays works from Marquand Library’s collection (Photo/Kirstin Ohrt)
Graduate students Yutong Li and Mengge Cao tour the exhibition China’s Southern Paradise: Treasures from the Lower Yangzi Delta at the Cleveland Museum of Art with Professor Cheng-hua Wang (Photo/Zhuolun Xie)
In Memoriam: John Wilmerding
John Wilmerding, professor of art and archaeology, emeritus, died June 6, 2024 in New York City. He was 86. A renowned scholar, curator, collector and philanthropist, prolifc author, and beloved mentor, Wilmerding was a monumental force in American art history.
The inaugural Christopher Binyon Sarofm ’86 Professor in American Art from 1988 to 2007, Wilmerding established in the Department of Art & Archaeology one of the leading programs for the study of American art in the country. A prolifc and infuential author, he examined major 19th- and 20th-century American artists including Fitz Henry Lane, Winslow Homer, Thomas Eakins, John F. Peto, George Bellows, Andrew Wyeth, and Richard Estes, as well as themes of American landscape painting and cultural and intellectual history.
“He was an outsize fgure in the feld of American art, an inimitable teacher, and a lovely person,” said Professor Rachael DeLue, the current Christopher Binyon Sarofm ’86 Professor in American Art.
In a 2018 interview for the Smithsonian Institution’s Archives of American Art, Wilmerding recounted the advice he received to relegate the study of American art to his “back pocket” in favor of European art or risk being discredited. “I was determined to do American art, period, and take that chance,” he said.
His foresight and passion would illuminate the study of American art history and help
fundamentally defne the feld, establishing him as “a towering fgure in the feld and a transformative member of the department,” said incoming Art & Archaeology chair and professor Nathan Arrington.
As a curator, art collector, and later a benefactor and adviser to museums, his impact beyond the academy was also profound.
“It is easy enough to claim that someone’s contributions are incomparable, but in John’s case it is true,” said Museum director James Steward. “Whether as a philanthropist whose gifts of art have enriched collections at the National Gallery of Art or here at Princeton, or advising collectors such as Alice Walton in the creation of what is now the Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art, John’s generosity and counsel have left the world of art and museums a better place,” Steward said.
With an A.B. (1960), M.A. (1961), and Ph.D. (1965) from Harvard University, Wilmerding taught art history at Dartmouth College until 1977. He served as curator of American art at the National Gallery of Art from 1977 to 1982, and then as its deputy director from 1983 to 1988, when he arrived at Princeton.
From 1992 to 1999 Wilmerding served as department chair and was, from the beginning, an active participant in Princeton’s Program in American Studies, relishing its interdisciplinary approach. “I learned so much from him—about American art, of course, but also about how to be an open-minded and generous scholar and to remain curious and excited to learn at every stage of one’s career,” said DeLue. “His groundbreaking scholarship made my own work possible, and he was beyond gracious when it came to letting the ‘next generation’ take the reins of American art at Princeton.”
During his tenure at Princeton, Wilmerding served as visiting curator in the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s department of American art. He was also on the boards of the Guggenheim Museum, the National Gallery of Art, Monticello, the Smithsonian, the Wyeth Foundation for American Art, the Center for Advanced Study in the Visual Arts, and the Terra Foundation for American Art, and was a member of the Committee for the Preservation of the White House as well as commissioner of the National Portrait Gallery.
The Shelburne Museum in Shelburne, Vermont, established the John Wilmerding
John Wilmerding (Photo/John Blazejewski)
Fitz Henry Lane, Stage Fort Rocks and Western Shore of Gloucester Outer Harbor, 1857, National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C., John Wilmerding Collection, Promised Gift
Directorship Fund in 2021, the museum’s frst named position. A grandson of the museum’s founder, Electra Havemeyer Webb, Wilmerding also served as president of the Board of Trustees.
Wilmerding’s great-grandfather Henry Osborne Havemeyer and his wife, Louisine Waldron Havemeyer, were also art collectors who bequeathed a large group of their European and Asian works of art to the Metropolitan Museum of Art, according to a 2004 story in The New York Times
Wilmerding’s own instincts as a collector began to emerge during his fnal year of college when he made his frst purchase, Stage Rocks and Western Shore of Gloucester Outer Harbor (1857) by Lane, the Times reported. Next, he bought George Caleb Bingham’s Mississippi Boatman (1850), followed by Martin Johnson Heade’s Sunlight and Shadow: The Newbury Marshes (circa 1890). “After that, there was no stopping me,” he told the newspaper.
“I can think of no one who has done so much for American art both historic and modern, and for American museums, with as much wit, wisdom, and quiet good grace.”
—James Steward, director of the Princeton University Art Museum
In 2004, the National Gallery of Art showcased his collection in the exhibition American Masters from Bingham to Eakins: The John Wilmerding Collection, including paintings and drawings by Peto, Homer, Eakins, Frederic Edwin Church, John F. Kensett, and Joseph Decker, among others. Realizing his collection flled many gaps in the National Gallery’s collection, Wilmerding announced at the opening that the works would remain there as a gift to the nation. Wilmerding was also adviser and founding board member of Alice Walton’s Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art.
His retirement from Princeton University in 2007 augmented the Princeton University Art Museum’s American art collection with three momentous gifts, memorializing his profound legacy. Wilmerding himself made promised gifts of 50 Pop art paintings, sculptures, and works on paper to the museum, including works by artists Robert Indiana, Alex Katz, Roy Lichtenstein, and Tom Wesselmann. In addition, more than 100 donors contributed funds toward the purchase of
the important painting Still Life with Watermelon by Rubens Peale in recognition of Wilmerding’s career. And fnally, a cluster of anonymous gifts established a new endowed museum curatorship titled the John Wilmerding Curator of American Art.
Steward cited “the remarkable philanthropy he inspired in others” as a force behind the vitality of American art scholarship at Princeton, “including the naming of the Wilmerding Curatorship of American Art and now the naming of the future Wilmerding Pavilion, which will be dedicated to American art expansively understood when the new museum opens next year.”
Karl Kusserow, the inaugural and current John Wilmerding Curator of American Art, said, “John was the gentle giant of American art—erudite, insightful, and hugely accomplished as a scholar, curator, and administrator. He was also lively, generous in deed and spirit, and fun. Infectiously curious, his interests ranged from Fitz Henry Lane to Lady Gaga. In all he studied, he excelled at discerning what was both individually distinctive and broadly meaningful. He will be widely and greatly missed.”
During his tenure in the Department of Art & Archaeology, Wilmerding brought his groundbreaking insights and expansive relationships with the art feld to his students, many of whom maintained contact. His current and former graduate students hold positions at esteemed universities, colleges, museums, galleries, and auction houses.
“John’s mentorship was foundational for me, and many,” said Mark Mitchell *02, Curator of American Paintings and Sculpture at Yale University Art Gallery. “He shaped my understanding of the role of a museum curator,
rooted in the experience of art in person and dedicated to refective connoisseurship. He delighted in art that matters and encouraged his students to do the same. John brought American art to life, and, more than that, he made it essential.”
“John was a supportive and generous mentor,” said Justin Wolf, professor of art history and chair of the Department of Art at the University of Maine. “He had so much to share, and he shared liberally, whether his scholarly insights, his passion for specifc artists, his remarkable art collection, his access to the nation’s best museums, or his blunt assessments of my own scholarship. While he believed in me and advocated for me, he was always direct and transparent when he felt that I had missed the mark or embellished an idea. I’ve tried to bring that same generosity and rigor to my teaching and advising.”
Wolf added: “John also had a wicked sense of humor, and I learned much from his sharp wit as well.”
DeLue elaborated: “John knew exactly when a bit of drollery or wit would lighten the mood of a faculty meeting or help a junior colleague understand she wasn’t alone in not wanting to take every little thing so seriously. And there really was nothing better than saying something funny enough to make John release his signature laugh, a half giggle and half cackle that resounded through the halls of McCormick.”
Wilmerding is survived by his sister, Lila Wilmerding Kirkland; her husband, David Kirkland; a brother, James Watson Webb Wilmerding, and wife Marsha M. Wilmerding; three nieces and three nephews.
Einars J. Mengis, John Wilmerding with Spectacle–Optometrist’s Sign, July 10, 1968, Collection of Shelburne Museum Archives
Graduate Section Two Students
Molly K. Eckel delivering her SAAM Fellows Lecture, May 8, 2024
(Photo/Alex Dika Seggerman)
2023-24 Graduate Program
A&A welcomed 11 new graduate students in fall 2023, approved 14 dissertation proposals, and celebrated as many dissertation defenses. Several graduate student initiatives enriched the curriculum, including the new Reading Group on Palestinian Art and the continuing Arts of the Islamic Middle East Book Club. The “Know How Craft Workshop” invited six scholars to Green Hall from various institutions throughout the year, drawing enthusiastic participants from across disciplines. Four graduate students participated in the Prison Teaching Initiative, benefting from the teaching experience while ofering excellent art history education to incarcerated individuals. In spring 2024, in collaboration with Graduate Placement Ofcer Professor Carolina Mangone and Assistant Dean for Professional Development James M. Van Wyck, and with support from GradFUTURES, Mathilde Sauquet organized two Career Exploration panels featuring A&A alumni. In its second year, the undergraduate mentorship program supported 13 A&A undergraduates, organizing faculty-led workshops to demystify the graduate school application process and explore career paths.
A&A Graduate Student Representatives Year in Review
The past year has been dynamic for our A&A graduate community. We welcomed 11 new colleagues, enriching our academic discussions and broadening our perspectives. The successful Admitted Students Weekend gave us a chance to connect with prospective peers, and we’re looking forward to welcoming another cohort of nine new graduate students this fall.
Our community-building efforts included six happy hours and study break dinners, providing respite from our rigorous academic pursuits. These gatherings, along with the art museum site tour, fostered connections across cohorts and research interests.
Academically, we’ve made strides in enhancing our resources and opportunities. Our advocacy led to extended hours at Marquand Library, a crucial improvement for our research needs.
We’ve amplified our voice within the department and university. Our representatives attended monthly GSG meetings, met regularly with the director of graduate studies and department chair, and participated in department meetings. We provided input on the Japanese Art History job search and helped shape the speaker list for ART 502.
The modern and contemporary art students benefited from a field trip to Venice, engaging directly with international art and gaining valuable research insights. Our work with the climate and inclusion committee and continued push for increased student involvement with the art museum demonstrate our commitment to creating a more inclusive and opportunityrich environment for all.
This year, our graduate community has grown in numbers, influence, and cohesion, creating spaces for academic discourse, social connection, and professional growth.
Top row from left: Jorge Sánchez, Sonya Merutka, Graduate Administrator Gina Migliaccio-Bilinski, Francesca Butterfield, Nectar Knuckles, Victoria McCraven, Tobias Rosen, Director of Graduate Studies Professor Carolyn Yerkes, Edward Maza; bottom row: Michael Quituisaca, Josephine O’Neil, Hannah Hungerford, Meredith Noorda (Photo/Kirstin Ohrt)
Graduate Students
New Dissertation Topics
Shing-Kwan Chan, “Flora and Fauna in Focus: Artistic Innovations and Scientifc Explorations in Nineteenth-Century Nature Paintings from Guangdong, China” (Cheng-hua Wang)
Fatih Han, “‘Let them rejoice / and be glad’: Sense and Sensibilia of Cross-Cultural Material Culture from the Thirteenth and Fourteenth Century Eastern Mediterranean” (Charlie Barber, Patricia Blessing)
Sofia Hernandez, “Renewed Architecture and Urbanism in Catania: The Spanish Response to Natural Disaster” (Basile Baudez)
Andrew Kensett, “‘Another Reality’: Photography, Abstraction, and the Human Subject in the Postwar U.S.” (Rachael Z. DeLue)
Katy Knortz, “How to House a City: The Urban Densifcation of Ostian Insulae” (Michael Koortbojian)
Joseph Litts, “Natural Disaster in the Atlantic World: Aesthetics, Delight, and Risk during the Long Eighteenth Century” (Rachael Z. DeLue)
Nicole-Ann Lobo
“‘Acts of Culture’: Aesthetic Afnities & Decolonial Solidarities across Twentieth-Century Goa and Mozambique” (Anna Arabindan-Kesson, Irene V. Small)
Louis Loftus, “Hybrid Monuments: Hybridity, Biology, and Architecture in Mid-Nineteenth Century France” (Basile Baudez)
Sharifa Lookman
“Susini-made: Labors of Scale and Medial-transfer in Giambologna’s Florence”
(Carolina Mangone)
Iheanyichukwu Onwuegbucha
“‘A Virile School of Art’: History and Aesthetics of the Nsukka School (1971–1999)”
(Chika Okeke-Agulu)
Maria Slautina
“Crossing Boundaries: Tea Assemblages in SeventeenthCentury Japan” (Andrew M. Watsky)
Ewan Wallace
“Fly Theory”
(Rachael Z. DeLue)
John White
“Remains: Animal Matter as Art in Early Modern Kunstkammern” (Thomas DaCosta Kaufmann)
Zhuolun Xie
“Materiality, Mobility, Sociality: The Sino-Japan Art Sphere of Chan Buddhists in the Seventeenth Century”
(Cheng-hua Wang)
Dissertations Defended
William Austin
“The Function of Ornament in Classical Art and Architecture (500–300 B.C.E.)”
(Nathan Arrington, Samuel Holzman)
Erica DiBenedetto
“Drafting Methods: Architecture and Language in Sol LeWitt’s Art, 1960–1980”
(Brigid Doherty, Hal Foster)
Mengge Cao
“Small-Size Painting and Its Viewership in Southern Song Dynasty China, 1127–1279”
(Cheng-hua Wang)
Annemarie Iker
“Secrecy in the Art of Santiago Rusiñol (1861–1931) and the Catalan Modernistes”
(Bridget Alsdorf)
Caitlin Karyadi
“The Making of Shen Nanpin (1682–ca. 1760): Painting, Collecting, and Canonizing in Japan and China”
(Cheng-hua Wang)
Ariel Kline
“Of Monsters and Mirrors: Art and Empire in Nineteenth-Century Britain”
(Bridget Alsdorf)
Yutong Li
“The Aesthetics of Alterity: Imaging the Foreign Other in Jiangnan and Coastal China, 1550s–1660s” (Cheng-hua Wang)
Erene Morcos
“Mirroring the Refections of the Soul: The Greco-Latin Psalter” (Charlie Barber, Beatrice Kitzinger)
Aleksander Musial
“Immersion: Classical Reception and Eastern European Transformations of Hygiene Architecture, ca. 1600–1830” (Thomas DaCosta Kaufmann)
Luke Naessens
“Postminimalism, Temporality, and the Politics of Indigeneity: 1969–1983” (Hal Foster)
From left, back row: Professors Beatrice Kitzinger and Charlie Barber, Luke Naessens, Will Austin, Professors Andrew Watsky, Irene Small, and Bridget Alsdorf; front row: Jessica Womack, Erin Piñon, Caitlin Karyadi, Javier Rivero-Ramos, and Annemarie Iker (Photo/Sarah Kislingbury)
Meseret Oldjira
“Holy Books for Holy Men: Illuminated Gospel Manuscripts in the Ethiopian Monastic Sphere, 1280–1340” (Charlie Barber, Beatrice Kitzinger)
Erin Piñon
“The Illuminated Haysmawurk`: Ottoman-Armenian Painting and Confessionalism in the Age of Print” (Charlie Barber, Beatrice Kitzinger)
Nomi Schneck
“Storytelling on the Mosaic Floors of Late Antique Sepphoris” (Charlie Barber, Beatrice Kitzinger)
Michelle Tian
“The Mobile Secretariats in Mid-Qing China: Artistic Production and Literati Collectivism, ca. 1790–1840” (Cheng-hua Wang)
Jessica Womack
“‘Nation in the Making’: Art, Politics, and Statecraft in Jamaica after 1962” (Chika Okeke-Agulu)
2023-24 Fellowships Awarded
William Austin, Ione Mylonas Shear Fellowship at the American School of Classical Studies at Athens
Molly Eckel, Smithsonian American Art Museum (SAAM) and National Museum of American History (NMAH) Fellowship
Ariel Kline, Harold W. Dodds Fellowship
James Miller, Chester Dale Dissertation Fellowship
Isabela Muci-Barradas, Charlotte W. Newcombe Doctoral Dissertation Fellowship and Harold W. Dodds Fellowship
Aleksander (Olek) Musial, Center for Advanced Study in the Visual Arts (CASVA) Paul Mellon Predoctoral Dissertation Fellowship
Wenjie Su, Samuel H. Kress Fellowship, Center for Advanced Study in the Visual Arts
Sasha Whittaker, Whitney Fellowship at the Metropolitan Museum of Art
Faggen Prize
Caitlin Karyadi (Photo/Gina Choi)
Caitlin Karyadi *24 was awarded the 2024 Jane Faggen Ph.D. Dissertation Prize for “The Making of Shen Nanpin (ca. 1682–1760): Painting, Collecting, and Canonizing in Japan and China.” Supervised by Andrew M. Watsky, her dissertation interrogates the larger-than-life legacy of the Chinese painter Shen Nanpin, who briefy visited Japan in the 1730s and later, in his absence, became a fgurehead of Japanese painting. While period records relating to Nanpin are scant and inconclusive, the extant works bearing his name number in the thousands and are clearly not all painted by one person. Rather than working against this conundrum to recapture the individual himself, Karyadi takes as subject the many images and texts that fashioned the Chinese painter, thereby repositioning the notion of the “fake” as a critical category that constructs authenticity. As the frst study to approach Nanpin as an assembled Sino-Japanese phenomenon rather than an infuential Chinese patriarch, Karyadi’s dissertation not only rewrites canonical narratives for East Asian art history but further demonstrates the intimacies of production and reception that, just as her absent subject, cross both geographic and temporal boundaries to recent A&A Ph.D. graduates.
Placements
Mengge Cao *24
Multiyear Postdoctoral Scholar, East Asian Art History, University of Chicago
Erica DiBenedetto *23
Curatorial Assistant, MoMA, NYC
Annemarie Iker *23
Lecturer in the Princeton Writing Program
Javier Rivero Ramos *23
Assistant Curator, Art Bridges Foundation
Erene Morcos *23
Lectureship, University of Cologne
Luke Naessens *24
Terra Foundation Postdoc, Courtauld Institute of Art
Meseret Oldjira *24
Multiyear Postdoctoral Scholar, University of Hamburg
Nomi Schneck *23
Harry Starr Postdoctoral Research Fellow, Judaic Studies, Harvard University
Graduate Students
Graduate Student News
MENGGE CAO
In June 2023, Mengge Cao presented a paper, “Immersion and Absorption: Painting Sizes and Visual Experiences in Middle Period China,” at the Third Middle Period China Humanities Conference at Yale University. During the spring semester, Cao participated in the weekly interdisciplinary cohort meeting as a Graduate Fellow of the Princeton Institute for International and Regional Studies (PIIRS). Having defended his dissertation in May 2024, Cao will join the Department of Art History at the University of Chicago as a Postdoctoral Scholar. Besides revising his dissertation into a book manuscript, Cao will work mainly on the Dispersed Chinese Art Digitization Project (DCADP) by collaborating with technical teams and museum partners.
MOLLY K. ECKEL ⯈
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In September 2023, Molly Eckel relocated to Washington, D.C., to serve as the Joe and Wanda Corn Predoctoral Fellow at the Smithsonian American Art
Museum (SAAM) and the National Museum of American History. The 12-month residential fellowship supports object-based research for her dissertation, tentatively titled “Robert S. Duncanson’s Antislavery Allegories,” under the supervision of curators Eleanor J. Harvey and Fath Davis Rufns. In Washington, D.C., Eckel consulted works by Robert S. Duncanson at the Smithsonian, which holds the largest single collection of the artist’s works. In May 2024, she presented a portion of her second chapter at the Smithsonian American Art Museum’s Annual Fellows Lecture in a talk titled “The Prophecy of Divine Justice in Robert S. Duncanson’s Robbing the Eagle’s Nest (1856).”
Maggie Hire spent the past two years as a curatorial assistant in the Department of Drawings and Prints at the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) working on the exhibition Käthe Kollwitz, the frst New York City museum retrospective devoted to the socially critical work of the well-known German printmaker. The exhibition, which traces the development of Kollwitz’s work through the tumultuous period spanning the 1890s to the 1930s,
Julian Rose, Building Culture
opened in March 2024 and was on view through July 20. Outside of her work at MoMA, Hire authored a short essay on the monochrome sculptures of Polish avant-gardist Katarzyna Kobro, forthcoming in Monochrome Multitudes: Art of One Color from Allais to Zeisler, a book project born of an exhibition curated by Orianna Cacchione and Christine Mehring at the University of Chicago’s David and Alfred Smart Museum of Art.
JULIAN ROSE
Julian Rose fnished his book Building Culture, which will be
Presenters of the Chinese Painting History plenary session at the Third Middle Period China Humanities Conference at Yale University: Lennert Gesterkamp, Mengge Cao, Freda Murck *95, Heping Liu, Wei Zhao (Courtesy of Mengge Cao)
Installation view of Käthe Kollwitz, The Museum of Modern Art (Photo/Jonathan Dorado)
MAGGIE HIRE
Tobias Rosen, coeditor, re:visions, April 2024
published by Princeton Architectural Press in fall 2024. Begun during his time as an editor at Artforum, it is a collection of interviews with leading architects on the topic of museum design. Spanning generations, geographies, and methods of practice, the architects refect on the complex process of creating spaces for art—MoMA, Tate Modern, the Centre Pompidou, the 21st Century Museum of Contemporary Art in Kanazawa, and many others—illuminating the diverse infuences and concerns that combine to create art museums that are increasingly central to public life both in the United States and around the globe. Each of the interviewed architects has a deep connection to artistic practice, from Walter Hood’s long interest in improvisational techniques in music to Peter Zumthor’s direct collaborations with some of the most important artists of his generation to Elizabeth Diller’s decades of work in conceptual and performance art. Together they ofer a comprehensive picture of what art means to architecture today and a revealing document of the formative role of museum spaces in the evolution of contemporary art. Collectively, the conversations seek
Eirini Spyropoulou and Professor Nathan Arrington at the Archaeological Institute of America (AIA) and Society for Classical Studies (SCS) Joint Annual Meeting in Chicago (Photo/Luke Soucy, Department of Classics)
answers to two key questions: How did museums come to play such a central role in our culture, and how will they continue to evolve in the future?
TOBIAS ROSEN
Melpia, Messenia.” She examined architectural material from two diferent periods in the site of Ano Melpia in Greece: the remains of a peripteral temple, dating to the mid-6th century, as well as the architectural members of a Doric entablature dating to the 3rd century B.C.E. The attribution of the latter fragments to the second phase of the temple gives us a very unusual picture, which is at the same time modern in style and traditional and local in its layout, while shedding light on the process of reconstructing a rural Arcadian sanctuary in stone and contemporary style.
SASHA WHITTAKER
Tobias Rosen coauthored the editorial text and co-conceived the theme for the fourth edition of re:visions, exploring the concept of pseudomorphism. As described by Erwin Panofsky, this concept describes the apparent resemblance of artworks originating from diferent cultural or artistic contexts. re:visions is an open-access online journal for 20th- and 21st-century art and visual culture, publishing essays, articles, reviews, interviews, and artist portraits. Founded by students at the Art History Institute of the Freie Universität Berlin, the journal publishes yearly with contributions in both English and German. The fourth edition is available at revisionsjournal.de ⯈
EIRINI SPYROPOULOU
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Eirini Spyropoulou participated in the 2024 annual meeting of the Archaeological Institute of America with a paper titled “Contextualizing the Temple at Ano
Sasha Whittaker spent the 2023–24 academic year as a Jane and Morgan Whitney Fellow at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, based in the Department of Photographs. There she continued researching and writing her dissertation on fashion photographer George Hoyningen-Huene, while also delving into Hoyningen-Huene’s photography of objects in the Met’s collections. While at the Met, Whittaker curated an exhibition of the permanent collection of photographs in the Robert Wood
Johnson, Jr. Gallery, that was on view from spring through summer 2024. Spanning 150 years of photography’s history, this exhibition asks how the challenge of picturing performance—whether dance, music, theater, or performance art—pushed the technological limits of photographic processes. Within the framework of the Met’s Fellowship Program, she organized the working group “Ancient Worlds and Their Afterlives,” which brought together fellows studying ancient art and its reception across the globe. In April 2024, Whittaker presented her dissertation research at the IFA-Frick Symposium, in a talk titled “Advertising Antiquity: Ancient Greek Sculpture in George Hoyningen-Huene’s Fashion Photography.” She also presented her research on HoyningenHuene’s photobooks at the Met Fellowship Program’s annual symposium, “Research Out Loud.”
Sasha Whittaker stands beside her exhibition of selections from the Met’s permanent collection of photographs in the Robert Wood Johnson, Jr. Gallery (Photo/Rodrigo Salido Moulinié)
Graduate Students
Professor Cheng-hua Wang and Students Participate in Landmark British Museum Exhibition and Conference ⯈
Professor Cheng-hua Wang, along with Mengge Cao *24, Shing-Kwan Chan, Yixu Eliza Chen, and Yutong Li *24, visited London in June 2023 to view the British Museum’s China’s Hidden Century exhibition and participate in the associated conference, “China’s 1800s: Material and Visual Culture.”
The group spent four days examining not only the objects in the exhibition but also the unconventional curatorial approach, which included projecting silhouetted fgures onto thin white fabrics and looping audio tracks in galleries to narrate or imagine the voices of the depicted subjects.
With over 30 speakers from around the world, the conference ofered a wide range of topics and approaches. Wang chaired a panel on 19th-century Chinese decorative arts including furniture, glass, ceramics, and cloisonné enamelware. The conference attracted more than 300 attendees including scholars, curators, students, collectors, and art dealers.
Seeing Process on the Medieval Page ⯈
Professor Beatrice Kitzinger and Megan Coates punctuated the Princeton University Library’s fall MARBAS lecture series with a fnal session that examined process in medieval manuscripts and spotlighted fve marvelous resources in the Rare Books collection.
Undergraduate and graduate students as well as researchers and faculty from the Index of Medieval Art and the Departments of Near Eastern Studies, History, English, and, of course, A&A comprised the audience. Coates and Kitzinger introduced their selections, pointing out indications of choices made by their creators, before inviting the group to look closely themselves.
Coates compared two gospel books, focusing on the process evident in the 12th-century exemplar which included four inserted folios. Each folio included portraits that had been embellished a century later, converting drawings to icons.
Kitzinger presented two manuscripts and a fascinating new addition to the collection: an Italian illuminator’s test sheet dated to the early 14th century displaying myriad techniques from broad
to exquisitely fne brush strokes and experimentations with color, expressly showing the medieval hand at work.
Sensing the In/Visible Space in Manuscripts of the Islamic World ⯈
On December 6, 2023, and February 27, 2024, Fatih Han presented “‘Tafaddal, Come in and Delve!’ How to Sense the In/ Visible Space in Manuscripts of the Islamic World” in Special Collections at Firestone Library. “For a long time, I’ve been fascinated by the many ways medieval and early modern artists of the Islamic world illustrated spaces in communication with the human senses on a fat medium, both when the space was visible and invisible,” said Han. “Over time I came across so many absolutely incredible and magnifcent manuscripts in our collection at Princeton University that gave me so much more to explore and fnd out about spatial concepts in manuscripts of the Islamic world. I wanted to recreate my own journey of wandering through spaces in manuscripts in this talk and take the audience on this sensual travel through space: from the invisible Divine world to
From left: Yixu Chen, Yutong Li, Cheng-hua Wang, Mengge Cao, and Shing-Kwan Chan (Courtesy of Cheng-hua Wang)
Eric White, Professor Charlie Barber, Megan Coates, Jenica Brown, and Earnestine Qiu examine the gospel books (Photos/Kirstin Ohrt)
the visible gardens and palaces of the king’s court.”
As the group followed Han through the manuscripts, from one sensory landscape to the next, they all but climbed into the pages, examining symbols and embellishments, perspective trickery that checkered interior with exterior spaces, hidden mathil, subtleties in facial expressions, and unexpected characters like winged angels and beavers.
Jenica Brown Helps
Princeton Grow Its Aksumite Coin Collection ⯈
Jenica Brown, a graduate student interested in medieval and early modern Ethiopia, has played an unexpected role in growing Princeton’s numismatic collection.
In fall 2023, while taking Alan Stahl’s course “Problems in Ancient History: Introduction to Ancient and Medieval Numismatics” as well as Hamza Zafer’s course in the ancient Ethiopian language Gə ʿ əz, Brown was particularly interested in coins of the Aksumite empire, which existed from the 1st to early 7th
century in present-day Ethiopia and Eritrea.
When the class began, Princeton’s numismatic collection housed four Aksumite coins, acquired by Stahl in spring 2023. Aware of Brown’s interest, Stahl not only leaped at the opportunity to grow the Aksumite coin collection when he saw the currency come up for auction but involved Brown in the selection process. Stahl noted, “Some years back, graduate student Meseret Oldjira asked about working on Axumite coins for her project for this seminar, but as we had none, she worked on coins of ancient Saba (biblical Sheba). When I saw the Axumite coins for sale at a dealer’s table at the Kalamazoo Medieval Congress last year, I took the opportunity to begin collection in this area.”
Bringing together her recent research on Aksumite coins with her growing Gə ʿ əz skills, Brown has helped Stahl select coins throughout the year which, since her involvement, have expanded the Aksumite coin collection from four to nearly 40.
“I’m really pleased that I had
the opportunity to work on these coins and to contribute to Dr. Stahl’s eforts to grow the collection,” said Brown. “These coins are important evidence of the culture that fourished in the Horn of Africa in late antiquity, and their acquisition complements Princeton’s major collection of Ethiopic manuscripts.”
Nick Irvin Curates Chaos in Vienna ⯈
Nick Irvin curated the exhibition Dowsing in Vienna, Austria, at the invitation of the acclaimed Galerie Emanuel Layr as part of a citysponsored festival called “Curated By.”
The collection of exhibitions takes place annually with the city’s commercial galleries inviting international curators to organize exhibitions based on a theme. In 2023, exhibitions were centered on the theme “The Neutral,” rifng on Roland Barthes’s late lecture series by the same name.
Irvin’s Dowsing, on view from September 12 to October 14, 2023, included 14 artists across generations plus selections from an archive of print ephemera from “fringe groups and conspiracy
Fatih Han and attendees examine Kharīdat al-Ajā’ib wa Farīdat al-Gharā’ib (The Perfect Pearl of Wonders and the Precious Pearl of Extraordinary Things) by Sirāj al-Dīn AbūHafs'Umar Ibnal-Wardī, 1349 (Photo/Kirstin Ohrt)
Close-up of King Mahadyas coin (Photo/Kirstin Ohrt)
Jenica Brown examines an Aksumite coin (Photo/Kirstin Ohrt)
Graduate Students
theorists from the 80s and 90s who mostly communicated their ideas through mailers and other selfpublished print materials,” said Irvin. “We’re so inundated with images all the time … you know so much about what’s going on all over the world all the time, and it’s enough to drive you a little crazy,” he said. “This show is about people who embrace the threat of the crazy by instead of tuning out of the media, staring deeper into it, and coming to very inventive and idiosyncratic conclusions.”
Touring Japan’s Autumnal Art Scene with Masha Slautina ⯈
Maria (Masha) Slautina specializes in Japanese art history. In her doctoral dissertation, she explores the artistic assemblage, or toriawase, in 17th-century Japanese tea practice (chanoyu), conceptualizing it as a transcultural multimedia art form. Slautina spent fall 2023 researching at the University of Tokyo and wrote about her experience of the Tokyo and Kyoto autumnal art scene, including a tour with her adviser Andrew Watsky, for the A&A website.
“Japanese arts and seasonality have traditionally been closely intertwined,” she writes. “It’s no surprise, therefore, that art exhibitions in Japan have been marked with—and marketed through—a selection of themes and art objects embracing, refecting, and highlighting seasonal topics.”
With Watsky, Slautina visited the Gotoh Museum, set amidst a picturesque garden in Setagaya. Among masterpieces like the earliest illustrated handscrolls of the eleventhcentury classic The Tale of Genji, Slautina was impressed by the Gotoh Museum’s assortment of tea utensils, which are central to her research.
Nick Irvin discusses Frances Stark’s U.S. Greatest Hits Mix Tape: Argentina 1976, 2021, mixed media (Courtesy of Frances Stark and Emanuel Layr)
Dowsing, curated by Nick Irvin
Masha Slautina and Andrew Watsky at Gotoh Museum (Photo/Masha Slautina)
At the first “Know How” workshop on September 13, 2023, participants discuss Harper Montgomery’s presentation, “Contemporary Art and Artes Populares in Havana: Craft Theory in 1970s and ’80s Latin America.” From left: Joe
Elise
Harper Montgomery, Andrew Kensett, Alanna Radlo-Dzur, Nick Irvin, and Irene Small (Photo/Kirstin Ohrt)
“Know How: Workshops on the Histories of Art
and Craft” ⯈
Graduate students Joe Bucciero and Elise Chagas organized the discussion series “Know How: Workshops on the Histories of Art and Craft” to examine craft from the art historical perspective.
The six-workshop series ran from September 2023 to April 2024, with presentations by Harper Montgomery (Hunter College), Horacio Ramos (CUNY), David Kim (University of Pennsylvania), Manon Gaudet (Yale), Amy Yao, and Julia Bryan-Wilson (Columbia).
According to Bucciero and Chagas, “‘Know How’ derives from discussions that the two of us had last year about our respective dissertations, both of which concern art of the 1920s—in Peru (Elise) and Germany (Joe)—that, for various reasons, has mostly evaded the dominant narratives of Western modernism. Despite disparate national settings, the protagonists of our projects shared an interest in what in English would be referred to as craft. Reconsidering the economic, social, and material bases of so-called art and so-called
craft, the artists and writers on whom we focus found new ways to defne their, and their work’s, broader social and political roles.”
Students Launch Reading Group on Palestinian Art ⯈
Graduate students Nicole-Ann Lobo and Sonya Merutka launched a reading group in spring 2024 focused on Palestinians’ artistic practice. Compelled by the disruption of Palestinian culture caused by the war in the West Bank and Gaza, Lobo and Merutka said, “Palestinian artists have long been understudied in the context of institutional art history, and we thought it would be important to make space to study their diverse and wide-ranging artistic practices.”
Students from diverse subfelds within A&A, as well as from anthropology, Near Eastern studies, architecture, English, comparative literature, and the history of science, are involved in the group.
“Participating students have wide research interests ranging from carceral studies, Black studies, feminist theory, literature, queer contemporary art, international solidarity across social and artistic
movements, archaeology, textiles, and medieval art,” said Lobo and Merutka.
Each week, the group explored one or two Palestinian artists whose mediums include performance, flm, and painting, along with crafts like the traditional Palestinian art of embroidery, tatreez. “While discussing artists like Emily Jacir, Kamal Boullata, and Mona Hatoum, our group explores themes ranging from heritage, tradition, and appropriation to fugitivity and performance in resistance to confnement, incarceration, and exile,” they said. “We are very grateful to the department for helping make possible this space and access to books and artist monographs to discuss thoughtprovoking art and its importance across our diferent felds and research interests.”
The Arts of the Islamic Middle East Book Club Continues
The success of the Arts of the Islamic Middle East Book Club continued for the third consecutive year with participants across the Princeton University community:
Know How Craft Workshop Series
September 13, 2023
Harper Montgomery, Hunter College
“Contemporary Art and Artes Populares in Havana: Craft Theory in 1970s and ’80s Latin America”
October 4, 2023
Horacio Ramos, CUNY Graduate Center
“Sovereignty through Praxis: Contemporary Quechua Weaving from Peru”
October 25, 2023
David Young Kim, University of Pennsylvania
“Caravaggio and the Echos of Figuration”
February 7, 2024
Manon Gaudet, Yale University
“Displaced Decoration: Ethnographic Photography, Indigenous Portraiture, and the Rookwood Pottery Company”
April 3, 2024
Amy Yao, Artist, Princeton University
April 10, 2024
Julia Bryan-Wilson, Columbia University
“Towards Textile Specifcity”
Bucciero,
Chagas,
Graduate Students
graduate students, postdocs, and faculty from A&A, architecture, history, Near Eastern studies (NES), anthropology, and religion. During the spring term, the book club discussed Alain George’s The Umayyad Mosque of Damascus: Art, Faith and Empire in Islam, Alex Dika Seggerman’s Modernism on the Nile: Art in Egypt between the Islamic and the Contemporary, and Richard J. A. McGregor’s Islam and the Devotional Object: Seeing Religion in Egypt and Syria Professor Dika Seggerman, who teaches Islamic art at Rutgers University-Newark, joined for an engaging in-person conversation. Book club organizer Fatih Han expresses his gratitude to A&A, NES, history, and medieval studies for their generous support that made these fruitful and productive book club meetings possible
Mathilde Sauquet Challenges Representations of People, Camels, and Cultures in Art ⯈
What began as a conference paper on camel iconography became part of an interdisciplinary efort to correct deep-rooted misrepresentations in art and its exhibition. Mathilde Sauquet presented a paper on camel iconography in 2021 that sparked the interest of a research associate at the Carnegie Museum of Natural History in Pittsburgh, which was re-examining the problematic diorama Lion Attacking a Dromedary on display at the museum. That resulted in Sauquet joining a group of interdisciplinary contributors to a journal dedicated to addressing this problematic display. “I happened to be taking the ‘Decolonizing Art History’ seminar with Professor Irene Small and Professor Beatrice Kitzinger,” explained Sauquet. “As part of the class, I was able to present the diorama as a case study to the group, which elicited wonderful comments and contributions from my graduate colleagues, some having curatorial experience or modern colonial history expertise, for example.”
At CAA 2023, the interdisciplinary group presented the panel “Curating Controversy: Interrogating Lion Attacking a Dromedary at
Carnegie Museum of Natural History,” at which Sauquet presented a paper titled “Picturing the Other: A Pre-modern History of Camels and Dromedaries in Art.”
In July 2023, the group’s eforts culminated in a special issue of Curator: The Museum Journal, and two months later Carnegie Museum’s board voted to remove the exhibit and change its policy on exhibiting human remains.
Needless to say, Sauquet and her colleagues are pleased with this result. “It’s really great to see institutions fnally prioritize human dignity over sensationalist displays and hackneyed museum practices,” Sauquet said. “Following the announcement of the Carnegie, the Penn Museum also announced it will no longer exhibit human remains—hopefully these changes encourage other museums to do the same.”
John White Presents at the 2024 Barnes Foundation Graduate Symposium
On March 1, 2024, John White presented his paper “The World within a Whale” at the 28th Annual Graduate Symposium on the History of Art at the Barnes Foundation in Philadelphia. His work examined the whale in the visual and material culture of the early modern Low Countries as a metonym for the sea
Palestinian artist Raeda Saadeh, Who Will Make Me Real?, 2005
Cautionary and explanatory panels partially obscure the controversial diorama Lion Attacking a Dromedary when it was still on view at the Carnegie Museum of Natural History on July 8, 2021 (Photo/Shane Dunlap, Tribune Review)
Ben Allsopp, John White, and Sara Varanese (Photo/Basile Baudez)
Sasha Whittaker presents “Advertising Antiquity.” Also pictured: Peter Moore Johnson, Ph.D. candidate at the Institute of Fine Arts and panel moderator (Photo/Isabella Weiss) within the context of the climate catastrophe then and today.
Professor Basile Baudez supported and introduced him, and numerous A&A colleagues provided helpful feedback on the paper. The Q&A that followed the panel also included speakers Ben Allsopp (Johns Hopkins) and Sara Varanese (Rutgers).
Sasha Whittaker Presents at the Institute of Fine Arts and the Frick Collection Symposium on the History of Art
On April 5, 2024, Sasha Whittaker presented her paper “Advertising Antiquity: George HoyningenHuene and the Cultural Politics of Fashion Photography” at the Institute of Fine Arts and the Frick Collection Symposium on the History of Art at the Institute of Fine Arts of New York University. Her paper presented a close reading of a 1934 photograph by Vogue’s George Hoyningen-Huene, which pictured a model in a Paquin evening gown posing before a radically enlarged photograph of two sculptures of the goddess Diana, both plaster casts of Roman copies of Greek originals from
the 4th century BCE. Through a series of wide-ranging visual comparisons, the paper explored how Hoyningen-Huene turned to ancient Greek sculpture to construct a transgressive vision of modern womanhood. The paper benefted from generous feedback from A&A faculty and fellow graduate students, as well as from colleagues in the Department of Photographs at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, where Whittaker is a fellow for the 2023–24 academic year
The Benefits of and for the Prison Teaching Initiative ⯈
Following a strong A&A precedent, Elise Chagas, Andrew Kensett, Nicole-Ann Lobo, and Sharifa Lookman are the most recent A&A graduate students to participate in the Prison Teaching Initiative (PTI). PTI bridges Princeton’s academic and service-driven
missions by providing high-quality postsecondary education to incarcerated individuals in New Jersey; ofering Princeton University graduate students, postdocs, faculty, and staf innovative, evidence-based pedagogy training and the chance to diversify their teaching portfolios through intensive classroom experience; and fostering a robust campus dialogue on mass incarceration and its relationship to systemic inequalities in access to education.
The art history course ofered through the program “ARTH-101: Art Appreciation/Introduction to Art History” explores two- and threedimensional artworks, including architecture, and their historical and cultural connections from a global perspective. With a class size of roughly 20, discussions center on art’s interaction with history, society, and culture.
“Our goal was to equip students with a working knowledge of the essential terms and concepts of art; to introduce students to a diversity of artistic practices from cave painting to contemporary art; and to provide opportunities for students to develop their own aesthetic tastes and interests,” said Chagas. “I feel that our students’ work demonstrates the accomplishment of all of these goals.”
Kensett agreed: “Some of my favorite memories of the course are from group discussions that centered on the close analysis of particular works of art. In those moments, it really felt like we were producing new knowledge, and doing it collectively—building, observation by observation, an understanding of an artwork that none of us could have arrived at alone.”
“Students were consistently eager to engage and share ideas, always delivered with respect and keen interest,” Lookman echoed. Said Lobo, “I would repeat this
Graduate Students
experience in a heartbeat and certainly plan to teach with PTI in future semesters. Not only has it made me a more conscious art historian, but I’ve learned so much from my students and developed new pedagogical strategies I am sure I will carry with me in my career for years to come.”
GradFUTURES Supports A&A Career Exploration Series ⯈
The Graduate School’s appointment of Carolina Mangone as an inaugural GradFUTURES Faculty Fellow for Professional Development this year set in motion a Career Exploration Series designed for A&A graduate students and developed in collaboration with graduate student Mathilde Sauquet and Assistant Dean for Professional Development James M. Van Wyck.
First, on April 17, 2024, Deborah Schlein *19 (librarian, Near Eastern Studies), Jonathan Henry *20 (lecturer, religion), and Abigail Sargent *22 (lecturer, Princeton Writing Program) presented
to graduate students across disciplines. And on April 19, the second panel specifcally designed for A&A graduate students featured Nancy Um (Getty Research Institute Associate Director for Research and Knowledge Creation), Jonathan Fine *20 (director, Weltmuseum Wien), and Justin Willson *21 (curator, Icon Museum and Study Center).
“The graduate student feedback has been overwhelmingly positive following these two events,” said Sauquet. “Graduate students were able to ask specifc professional development questions and received thorough, genuine advice from the speakers. For example, during our Humanities panel, attendees asked about the importance of precepting while at Princeton and about the practical applications of the Digital Humanities certifcate on the job market. During our A&A panel, grads asked about the possible culture shock of taking a position in a diferent country and sought advice as to how to develop leadership skills while in graduate school. The panels also created a rich environment for broader conversations, such as the importance of humanistic training in addressing systemic issues in academia or the ethical dilemma of training Ph.D. students in the current state of the job market. We were lucky to have such incredibly generous panelists who shared their time and insights with us—they played a big part in generating a safe and productive space for dialogue.”
Sauquet felt encouraged that such panels were impactful—and is already looking ahead. “I look forward to working with the A&A Graduate Placement Ofcer, GradFUTURES, and the graduate student community to come back with even better programming next year.”
Undergraduate Mentorship Program
For the 2023–24 academic year, the Art & Archaeology Undergraduate Mentorship Program welcomed 13 undergraduate mentees and two graduate student mentors: Sharifa Lookman and Claire Sabitt. At the start of the fall 2023 semester, our new mentees joined the mentorship team for an introductory dinner in a restaurant near campus. After breaking bread together, the group embarked on a series of meetings and events designed to provide mentorship, academic enrichment, and a dynamic and convivial intellectual community.
To this end, the mentorship team held a series of workshops on themes specifc to undergraduate needs, such as demystifying the graduate school application process and approaching the job market with a degree in art history and archaeology. At our fall workshop on graduate school applications we welcomed guest speakers Professor Basile Baudez and department lecturer Jessica Williams Stark to share their personal experiences with the graduate application process. At a spring workshop on applying to the job market, guest speakers Director of the Index of Medieval Art Pamela Patton, Director of Visual Resources
Julia Gearhart, and Curator of Academic Engagement Janna Israel, shared their diverse educational backgrounds and work experiences with mentees.
Additionally, members of the mentorship program traveled together on A&A-sponsored trips to visit exhibitions at the Metropolitan Museum of Art and the Baltimore Museum of Art, where they took part in lively discussions of history, art, and praxis.
Deborah Schlein, Jonathan Henry, Abigail Sargent, and Mathilde Sauquet (Photo/Kirstin Ohrt)
Undergraduate Section Three Students
Lucy Gutman '24 examines works in the Princeton University Art Museum collection as part of ART 380 "Photography and Fact" (Photo/Kirstin Ohrt)
Undergraduate Students
Undergraduate Program ⯈
Directors of Undergraduate Studies:
Professor Beatrice Kitzinger (Fall), Professor Basile Baudez (Spring)
The undergraduate program enjoyed a full and dynamic year. Underscoring the excitement for our feld, the demand for introductory courses ART 100 and ART 102 was exceedingly high this year. The Majors Colloquia convened and enabled students of History and Practice of Art to meet, present their independent work in progress to one another, and share tips and advice. Writing workshops met regularly, and students participated in a breadth of excursions through the Undergraduate Mentorship Program. At the close of the year, fve students completed degrees in the History of Art, on topics ranging from Venetian Renaissance painting to contemporary queer art. Seven students completed degrees in the Practice of Art, working in a wide variety of media.
Program in Archaeology ⯈
Director of the Program in Archaeology:
Professor Nathan Arrington
Eight students received a certifcate in archaeology in 2024. They hailed from Anthropology, Chemistry, Classics, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, and History, demonstrating the broad appeal of archaeology and the ability of the program to complement diverse student trajectories. The program received faculty and university approval to ofer a minor rather than a certifcate in 2024–25. The requirements will remain largely unchanged, with students taking a mix of ancient art courses and non-art classes (such as anthropology or earth science) in addition to a required methods seminar, participating in feldwork, and completing independent work. The Department of Art & Archaeology continues to generously support the students’ participation in one season of feldwork, which usually takes the form of working on an archaeological project but extends to internships with archaeological material in archives or museums.
Practice of Art Track ⯈
Director of the Program in Visual Arts
Professor Jeffrey Whetstone
The Practice of Art Class of 2024 was the frst class of students to have matriculated through our transformed Practice of Art major that was initiated in 2023. This graduating class benefted from new advising structures and new writing and production requirements in both their junior and senior years. The Practice of Art track is facilitated collaboratively by A&A and the Program in Visual Arts, which is part of the Lewis Center for the Arts. The new curriculum for the Practice of Art requires collaboration between A&A and VIS faculty in advising, teaching, and preparing students for comprehensive exams. Collaborative advising and team critiques are designed to challenge Practice of Art concentrators’ skills of analysis and depth of imagination as well as foster broader connection between VIS and A&A faculty. The results from the pedagogical transformation were extraordinary. The Practice of Art senior thesis exhibitions were ambitious and displayed the technical and conceptual rigor that one may expect from a master of fne arts program.
Chair and Professor Nathan Arrington addresses students and guests at Class Day 2024 (Photo/John Blazejewski)
Class of 2024 on Class Day (Photo/John Blazejewski)
Independent Work
History of Art Senior Theses
Gabriel Chalick ’24, “Enrique Chagoya’s Fantasylandia: An Investigation of How Chagoya Uses Additive Palimpsest to Examine Iconography” (Monica Bravo)
Lucy Gutman ’24, “‘Dear Sonya, many thoughts’: An Epistolary Dialogue between Helen Frankenthaler and Sonya Rudikof” (Carolyn Yerkes)
Lucia Heminway ’24, “Painted Studioli: Recontextualizing the Details of Vittore Carpaccio” (Carolina Mangone)
Natali Kim ’24, “Andrea Fraser’s Interview-Based Artwork” (AnnMarie Perl)
Autumn Shelton ’24, “Death as a Venue of Creation: The Architecture of Antioch’s Sari Mahmoud Cemetery” (Beth Semel)
Cathleen Weng ’24, “Four Non-Cemetery Burials in Iron Age and Roman Britain” (Janet Kay)
Undergraduate Students
Senior Thesis Prizes
The Grace May Tilton Prize in Fine Arts
Awarded for an outstanding thesis by a senior in any of the departments collaborating in the Efron Center for the Study of America, the thesis must deal wholly or principally with some aspect of the fne arts or crafts, past or present, within the territory now embraced by the United States, or elsewhere in the Americas. The prize is a gift of Robert Schirmer of the Class of 1921 in memory of his mother.
Drew Pugliese ’24
The Asher Hinds Prize in European Cultural Studies
This prize was established in memory of Asher Hinds, professor of English and one of the leaders of the Special Program in the Humanities, which later became the programs in American studies and European cultural studies. Hinds was remembered with particular afection by his students and colleagues, who established this prize. It is awarded to the student who does the most outstanding work in the humanities.
Lucia Heminway ’24
The Herbert L. Lucas Prize in Visual Arts
This prize was established in 1998 by Herbert L. Lucas, Class of 1950, and was amended in 2004 to recognize excellence and the quality of a body of work by graduating seniors in painting, sculpture, photography, flm, and media.
Daniel Drake ’24, Evan Haley ’24, Emma Mohrmann ’24, Cary Moore ’24, Kapili Naehu-Ramos ’24, Lauren Olson ’24, Magnolia Wilkinson ’24
The Jim Seawright Award in Visual Arts
Established in 2009 in honor of Jim Seawright, professor of visual arts, this award is presented annually to a student whose work exemplifes exceptional originality or innovation in any medium in the Program in Visual Arts.
Emma Mohrmann ’24
The Frederick Barnard White Prize in Architectural History
This prize was established by Mrs. Norman White in memory of her son, Frederick Barnard White, Class of 1883. It is awarded to the student who has written an outstanding senior thesis on the subject of architectural history.
Jonathan Gagnon ’24 (civil and environmental engineering)
The Frederick Barnard White Prize in Art History
Established in 2001 in memory of Frederick Barnard White, Class of 1883, this prize is awarded to a student who has written an exceptional senior thesis on any art historical topic.
Lucia Heminway ’24
The Department of Art and Archaeology Senior Thesis Prize
Established by the Irvine Foundation, this prize is awarded annually for the most outstanding senior thesis in the Department of Art & Archaeology.
Drew Pugliese ’24
Highest Honors
Emma Mohrmann
Drew Pugliese
High Honors
Cary Moore
Lucy Gutman
Honors
Magnolia Wilkinson
Lucia Heminway
Natali Kim
Daniel Drake
Gabriel Chalick
Kapili Naehu-Ramos
Basile Baudez and Drew Pugliese (Photo/John Blazejewski)
Senior Exhibitions
Professor Jeffrey Whetstone, director of the Program in Visual Arts
The series of spring solo theses exhibitions began with Lauren Olson’s show, I Hear Machines Underwater, examining the female body and its power, institutions and their power, and how these powers intersect and collide.
Magnolia Wilkinson, winner of the Lewis Center for the Arts Community Arts Award, followed Lauren in the Hurley Gallery with the show Reproduction Production, which examined the prospect of motherhood in contemporary times.
Kapili Naehu-Ramos, recipient of the Lewis Center for the Arts Toni Morrison Award, ofered viewers visual allegories of indigenous Hawaiian cosmology in her exhibition, Mo’o. Emma Mohrmann’s exhibition So Soft You Can Barely Feel the Seams used construction materials she often found on campus along with handwoven fabric, fashioning beauty out of chaos. Emma’s exhibition was awarded the Jim Seawright Award. Daniel Drake produced the comedy Dichlund, a pilot episode of a series about a dystopian corporate workplace. Evan Haley’s exhibition Be Not Afraid combined fashion, video, and sculpture on the subject of biblical angels. And the season ended with Cary Moore’s stunning, austere Plenitude exhibition of paintings and drawings that examined the essential and evolutionary qualities of round forms like vessels and moons.
This year’s exhibitions and thesis portfolios have proven our notions about Princeton student artists true—that high expectations foster extraordinary production.
Lauren Olson (Photo/Kirstin Ohrt)
Lauren Olson, I Hear Machines Underwater (Photo/Jon Sweeney)
Magnolia Wilkinson, Reproduction Production (Photo/Jon Sweeney)
Magnolia Wilkinson (Photo/Kirstin Ohrt)
Kapili Naehu-Ramos (Photo/Kirstin Ohrt)
Kapili Naehu-Ramos, MO'O (Photo/Lauren Fedorchak)
Emma Mohrmann (Photo/Kirstin Ohrt)
Emma Mohrmann, So Soft You Can Barely Feel the Seams (Photo/Jon Sweeney)
Evan Haley, Be Not Afraid (Photo/Jon Sweeney)
Evan Haley (Photo/Kirstin Ohrt)
Cary Moore (Photo/Kirstin Ohrt) Cary Moore, Plenitude (Photo/Kirstin Ohrt)
Daniel Drake ’24 on Filmmaking at Princeton ⯈
The highest compliment one could pay Daniel Drake on his senior thesis would come in the form of side-splitting laughter. Drake’s fnal project as a Practice of Art student was the pilot of his original television comedy titled Dichlund The show follows a desperate twenty-something woman on an absurd job search that lands her in a corporation that makes The Office seem sensible.
Drake’s love for the flm and television screen has its roots in a high school class taught by his mom. “As she was learning how to teach the class, I was in the class learning it with her,” Drake said. “We both just developed this love for it at the same time.”
Drake’s work is infuenced largely by his favorite comedy shows like
Arrested Development, 30 Rock, and Atlanta, which he refers to as the cartoonish singlecamera sitcoms of the 2000s. But he also looks to modern art for comedic inspiration. “The principles of photography, composition, surrealism, and absurdism are really prevalent in comedy,” he said. He singled out Sherrie Levine among infuences, who was known for explicitly appropriating the work of famous artists. “She was inspired by Marcel Duchamp to copy another artist named Edward Weston,” Drake noted. He appreciated her premise that all art lacks originality. “I’m making something with the knowledge that it is part of a tradition rather than trying to make something totally original,” said Drake. “Making a sitcom is efectively compiling clichés in a lot of ways—it’s a postmodern mindset.”
Princeton is responding to the growing interest in flm with two new faculty focused on flm, Christopher Harris and Nicolás Pereda, joining the Visual Arts Program in fall 2024. Director of the Visual Arts Program Jef Whetstone looks forward to Harris and Pereda becoming integral to universitywide conversations and research in flm. “Harris’s work fuses abstraction and musicality into the interrogation of the Black diaspora and Pereda creates narrative structures that weave in and out of scripted story and live documentary,” said Whetstone. “These diverse approaches will ofer students in visual arts an expansive perspective on making flms and a glimpse of the possible futures for the medium of moving images.”
Daniel Drake directs actors Gabriela Veciana ’24 and Charlotte Kunesh ’24 during the filming of his comedy pilot Dichlund (Photo/Kirstin Ohrt)
Screening of Dichlund at Princeton University’s James Stewart Film Theater (Photo/Kirstin Ohrt)
Introducing Student-Run
Rah Rah Arts Magazine! ⯈
The premiere issue of Princeton’s student-run visual arts magazine
Rah Rah Arts was released in fall 2023 followed by a second issue in spring 2024—and submissions have been gathered for a third as well.
Founding editors Practice of Art majors Evan Haley ’24 and Emma Mohrmann ’24 and Visual Arts minor Magnus von Ziegesar ’25 saw a need for an art publication that was inclusive. “The vibe that everyone who submits automatically gets accepted and everyone on campus is eligible is something that’s different from other publications and something we felt would be good for building community,” said von Ziegesar
The call for submissions, open to Princeton alumni, staff, faculty, graduate students, and undergraduate students, welcomes “anything you make to process the world around you or to express your voice, including dance, costumes, protest art, iPhone photos, zines, baking, knitting, and more.”
The Rah Rah team is grateful for support from A&A along with the Visual Arts Program, the Lewis Center for the Arts, and other departments who have contributed to fund printing.
For more information, contact rahrah@princeton.edu
Evan Haley ’24 Furthers a Museumverse Project on the Displacement of a Neighborhood for Palmer Square ⯈
Evan Haley, Practice of Art concentrator, was awarded a Derian Internship in summer 2023 to work with Museumverse, a collaborative graduate student initiative that bridges technological expertise with humanistic
understanding in transforming the museum experience. “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,” said Haley. Combining archival research, oral histories, and immersive technologies like augmented reality and virtual reality, the project aims to re-center lost stories in the history of Princeton.
Cindy Li ’25 Follows Her Junior
Paper Research Topic to Inner Mongolia
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History of Art major and archaeology certificate student Cindy Li traveled to Inner Mongolia in summer 2023 to conduct research for her junior paper, which analyzed the impact of peripheral politics on imperial garments, fashion history, and minority ethnic art. Li, whose own heritage is half Manchu and half Mongolian, is an international student from China. “I grew up with my grandmother, a daughter of a Manchu family and a former history teacher who told me old tales about the past civilization. She experienced imperial invasion, as well as cultural exploitation. Her passion for history and justice never ceased.” Li chose her paper topic “as my way of memorializing her essential knowledge and passing along her teaching of Manchurian history.”
Li’s paper examined Qing-era imperial garments with animal fur lining and embroidery. “By directly analyzing the materiality of clothing, I aim to interpret the emperor’s policy directives through the
Two young children sitting on the curb of Baker Alley, the former neighborhood behind Nassau Street demolished for the construction of Palmer Square (Photo/Recollector Photo Collection via Historical Society of Princeton)
Rah Rah’s founding editors: Magnus von Ziegesar, Emma Mohrmann, and Evan Haley (Photo/Kirstin Ohrt)
Undergraduate Students
choices of materials and how they accentuate his approach to state governance,” she said.
On her travels to two provinces in China, Inner Mongolia, and Heilongjiang (Manchuria), she researched the regions’ ethnic minorities and their fur craftsmanship.
“During my visit to Inner Mongolia and Manchuria, I felt the warmth of the people in the tribe and witnessed firsthand the processes of leather hunting, gathering, and garment making,” she said. “Too many cultures are on the brink of extinction, which is why researching the art history of ethnic minorities is so crucial today.”
Henry Moses ’25 Visits Esteban Jefferson’s
Exhibition May 25, 2020 in London
With support from A&A, Henry Moses traveled to London during winter break to view the exhibition at Goldsmiths Centre for Contemporary Art that was the topic of his junior paper, contemporary American artist Esteban Jefferson’s May 25, 2020. Moses focused on four paintings, two centered on the George Washington at Valley Forge monument at Continental Plaza in Brooklyn, and two on the Theodore Roosevelt monument formerly in front of the Museum of Natural History in Manhattan.
“The works in the series are marked by cohesive stylistic similarities; they all stage clashes between the finished and the unfinished, a use of color and monochromaticity, and highly mimetic representation and more abstract forms,” said Moses. “This final opposition is one that truly came to the fore as I stood in front of the massive canvases.”
“Much ink has been rightly spilled in the past few years over the question of just what to do with the problematic monuments that populate our cities,” he continued. “It’s clear that Jefferson’s works engage and enter this timely debate. However, after seeing the works in person, I’m not sure a clear answer comes out of them, or whether giving a clear answer is even the point. Instead, I think
Jefferson’s critique is aimed at representational modes that encode within them a sense of finality. This might include monuments, with the concretizing work they do to preserve the memory of an individual as a guide into the future. But it also might include works in his own medium that simply give too simple, too rigid, an answer. It might include works that hold within them meaning that is directly accessible on a quick glance.”
“I am so grateful for the generous funding of the Department of Art & Archaeology and for the trip it allowed me to take,” said Moses. “Seeing the works in person has completely changed the course of my research, and I’m excited to continue thinking about the problematics they bring about.”
Liu Kuan-Tao, Kublai Khan Hunting, 1279–1368 CE (Courtesy of Cindy Li)
Cindy Li on horseback (Courtesy of Cindy Li)
Esteban Jefferson, detail of October 6, 2021, oil and graphite on linen (Photo/Henry Moses)
tion Four
Sec Archaeology News
Students excavate a temple at the Molyvoti, Thrace, Archaeological Project, Greece
The summer of 2023 was the final excavation season of the Molyvoti, Thrace, Archaeological Project, which began in 2010. According to Greek law, permits are granted to archaeological projects for three years of excavation followed by two years of study. 2023 marked the third and final year on a second dig permit, and the team now has time to catch its breath and work on study and toward publication. And there is much to study. The major discovery of the season was the first extramural (i.e., located outside the city walls, in the countryside) temple in northern Greece. Several earlier seasons led the team to believe that a sanctuary lay here, including pedestrian surface survey (the collection of artifacts in the plow zone) and geophysical survey (looking under the surface of the soil with electrical resistivity). It took several years to organize actual excavation, in no small part because the suspected structure lay outside the archaeological zone on private
property that was farmed. With the cooperation of the landowners, the six-week excavation season revealed the full structure. As always, Princeton undergraduates and graduates worked on the project, alongside students from universities across the globe, including, of course, Greeks.
Professor Nathan Arrington is the codirector and USA director, and the Greek side of the partnership is directed by Dr. Marina Tasaklaki (Ephorate of Antiquities of Rhodope) and Dr. Domna Terzopoulou (Ephorate of Antiquities of Evros).
The temple is an unusual shape, relatively small (10.80 × 7.90 m), and more square than rectangular. It consists of a cella with a pronaos, which may have been a later addition. A hoard of coins found underneath the temple dates the first phase to the mid-3rd century B.C.E., which is a very interesting time for the region, since the nearest large city had fallen into neglect. Yet here in the countryside a temple flourished. Incense burners, figurines, miniature vases, and worked antlers are some of the indications of cult activity. The worked antlers appear to have
been fashioned at the site itself, since artifacts from different stages of the manufacture process have been found. A mold for a moldmade bowl was also found, indicating local production.
Soundings in and outside the cella showed that it was not built on any earlier structures. Instead, the virgin soil was cut back and leveled in preparation for the building. Foundation walls were laid down and construction fill deposited. Above the foundations and the fills, well-worked orthostate blocks were set along the exterior of the wall, put in place with the aid of pry marks. These were robbed out in antiquity. Meanwhile, much of the monolithic threshold at the southwest of the building is preserved, as well as portions of a paved surface in the pronaos. Inside the cella, paving survives in the back of the temple. Several elevated stones and cuttings near the center of the paving could relate to some type of cult installation, like a statue base. At the very center are the remains of a likely hearth.
Which deity was worshipped at this site? Based on the assemblage
and comparanda, particularly for the figurines, Athena and Artemis are candidates, and Kybele cannot be ruled out. The antlers suggest Artemis. It is of course possible that more than one deity was worshipped. Continued study should clarify the nature of the temple and place it more securely into its regional and chronological context.
Sanctuary of the Great Gods on Samothrace, Greece
Samuel Holzman
In 2023, excavations in the Sanctuary of the Great Gods, Samothrace resumed, including six Princeton team members: Hannah Smagh (A&A PhD ’22), Robert Yancey (A&A), Chiara Battisti (CLS), Eirini Spyropoulou (A&A), and Elena Evnin ’24, and me. For the first time, the collaborative American team began digging along the fortification wall of the ancient city of Samothrace to understand the connection between the urban settlement and the extramural sanctuary that
brought the island fame in antiquity. The team dug six trenches along the wall, focusing on an area we have termed the West Gate. Our work in this area—including two trenches supervised by Smagh and Yancey—began to reveal the remains of a collapsed gatehouse that may have formed the primary entry and exit point facing the sanctuary. Work will continue in this area in summer 2024. Battisti and Spyropoulou documented painted and molded plaster fragments that reveal the interior decoration of the sanctuary’s 340-foot-long stoa as well as another structure revealed by new excavation in the heart of the sanctuary. In collaboration with Brittany Dinneen, an objects conservator from the Carlos Museum at Emory University, we identified traces of pigment on marble architectural elements that will reveal their original, brightly painted appearance. We also advised in the finalization of the displays in the completely renovated Samothrace Museum, which opened to the public on July 6, 2024.
Tharros Archaeological Research Project, Sardinia
Leigh Anne Lieberman *18
Graduate student Katy Knortz and Visual Resources Digital Project Specialist Leigh Anne Lieberman returned this summer to Sardinia as part of the Tharros Archaeological Research Project, an excavation and research initiative directed by Steven Ellis of the University of Cincinnati. While Knortz spent her days digging in an area of the site that had not been previously explored, Lieberman led the efforts of the team studying the material culture that they unearthed throughout the season. Situated on the west coast of the island, the Punic-Roman city of Tharros played an important role in the network of trade routes between Spain (and the Balearics), Carthage, and Massalia. While Tharros is best known for its unusually rich Punic tombs, the team’s work focuses on the city itself—particularly its sacred spaces, residential quarters, and retail venues—in order to establish a more detailed and
Holzman sweeps the site (Photo/Kirstin Ohrt)
Early morning views at Tharros, Sardinia (Photo/Chris Motz)
Fragment of a mosaic excavated this year by members of the Tharros Archaeological Research Project (Photo/Lizzy Hallett)
Archaeology News
contextualized understanding of the city’s initial development and ultimate abandonment, phases which until now have been either poorly understood or, where more confidently attested, built upon indifferent or even nonexistent bodies of data. A more complete and evidence-based delineation of urban development, particularly one that can be anchored to chronological markers, could aid in connecting the city’s urban growth spurts and decline to broader aspects of Mediterranean history. Follow the team’s ongoing work on Instagram @uctharros
Abydos South Project (ASP), Egypt
to between the late 17th and early 18th dynasties. Early osteological analysis has also allowed the team to confirm that the population interred at the site were individuals of a high socioeconomic status based on the lack of pathologies present within the corpus.
Additional work is planned for the coming year. As of early 2024, Emily Smith-Sangster has stepped into the role of associate director of the Abydos South Project and plans to complete a number of additional successful excavation and study seasons during her tenure.
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Emily Smith-Sangster
In summer 2023 the Abydos South Project (ASP) returned to the field to complete a study season with the Ahmose Cemetery material, all of which had been excavated earlier that year. The mission’s goals were focused on the continued recording, analysis, and synthesis of the material record, with particular attention paid to the funerary material found at the site. This work allowed for the secure dating of the core of the cemetery
Excavating a World War II Crash Site in Germany Ramon Espinoza
’26
Nearly ten summers ago Ramon Espinoza had, for the first time, seen the doors of an airplane slam open mid-flight. His heart pounding, deafened by the wind rushing inside the cabin, and staring at the drop zone below, he prepared to make a strong exit out of the open door to complete his training toward becoming a paratrooper in the U.S. Army.
In the summer of 2023, he was honored to participate in a Defense POW/MIA Accounting Agency
(DPAA) partnered archaeological dig in Baden-Württemberg, Germany, that offered him a new perspective on the Airborne Corps’ history and contextualized the significance of their role during past conflicts. The project’s mission was to recover and identify missing service members from World War II—an aviation crew that crashed and went down while in the line of duty. The excavation centered around the recovery of human remains, associated artifacts, and remnants of their downed plane that may lead to finding the fallen service members inside. They were a young crew, close to the age Espinoza had been when he gritted his teeth, closed his eyes, and leaped out of that C-130 aircraft at Airborne school.
This summer field school itself was challenging yet rewarding and offered its participants a chance to understand the stages of the archaeological process under the guidance of experienced professionals. Espinoza gained familiarity with tools of the field like GPR (ground-penetrating radar) and surveying tools via total station and GPS to find and mark sites of
interest. Additionally, he had the chance to employ his knowledge from other classes and refined subjects relating to stratigraphy, excavation techniques, and artifact analysis. He gained a strong familiarity with not only soils and minerals but also varying artifacts. He learned firsthand how they look, feel, and taste. Providing a unique blend of theoretical knowledge and practical skills, the field school was critical in forming Espinoza's understanding of archaeological work that he would venture to say is impossible to replicate in a classroom setting.
Being accepted into the field school alone was a tremendous honor and an amazing opportunity for Espinoza to not only find where his identity as a veteran and academic interest intersect but also better understand the value of having Princeton’s support in the pursuit of his studies.
Emily Smith-Sangster works in one of the house labs reassembling a fragmented stela from the Ahmose Cemetery (Photo/Matthew Sangster)
Ramon Espinoza at the excavation site (Photo/Tyrell Fannel)
The Seeger Center Launches a Collaborative Archaeology Program with Two Greek Universities
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Students and faculty from A&A and Classics joined their counterparts from the University of Ioannina and the University of Thessaly in Greece at the Princeton Athens Center in May 2023 to launch the Seeger Center for Hellenic Studies’ new PITHOS (Princeton-IoanninaThessaly On-Site Seminars) initiative, which aims to strengthen ties and foster intellectual collaboration among scholars of Greek art and archaeology. Every academic year, the program will select three graduate students from each participating university to engage in faculty-led seminars, workshops, and trips in the United States and Greece organized around a theme. The first year’s theme was “regionalism,” followed by “elite cultures” in year two.
Inaugural PITHOS coordinator, Professor Nathan Arrington, joined A&A graduate student William Pedrick along with Chiara Battisti and Sarah Norvell, both graduate students in the Classics Department, for a weeklong seminar together with three graduate students
each from the partnering Greek universities.
“This innovative new program brings together scholars from Princeton and Greece, building on the Seeger Center’s unique network of Greek institutions and scholars, former Seeger fellows, and alums in Greece,” said Dimitri Gondicas, director of the Seeger Center. “Our goal for PITHOS is to help strengthen Princeton’s flourishing archaeology program founded on the University’s long and distinguished tradition in this academic field.”
Kicking off the program in Greece in May 2023, students visited archaeological sites and museums in the morning and delivered papers on the topic of regionalism in the afternoon. Sites visited included the Vale of Tempe gorge, the beehiveshaped tholos tomb at Dimini, and St. Nicholas Monastery of Paou, which serves as the University of Thessaly’s Conference and Cultural Center.
The second half of the program took place in the last week of
September 2023, with participants from the University of Ioannina and the University of Thessaly joining Princeton participants on the Princeton campus. Arrington organized a full program on and around the Princeton campus hosted by A&A and the Seeger Center. Director of Visual Resources Julia Gearhart introduced the group to A&A’s archives, Curator of Numismatics Alan Stahl presented Princeton University Library’s extensive numismatics collection, and School of Historical Studies Professor of Ancient History and Classics Angelos Chaniotis and Research Associate Aaron Hershkowitz welcomed the group to the Institute for Advanced Study to show off the second-largest epigraphic squeeze collection in the world. Local history also figured into participants’ experience of Princeton. Along with a campus and town tour led by the Princeton Historical Society, the group also visited the Princeton Battlefield State Park. The visit even offered an archaeological site to inspect;
beside the Clarke House, a barn is currently being excavated.
Finally, the group visited the Princeton University Art Museum offsite classroom to view objects from the Museum’s collection of ancient ceramics and toured the Metropolitan Museum of Art before returning to Greece.
Throughout the weeklong program, students had many opportunities to present their research and to explore and benefit from one another’s expertise
“It was immensely productive to tackle the problem of regionalism in ancient Greece from an international perspective,” said Arrington. “The papers that the graduate students delivered were of the highest quality and inspiring for all participants. That said, as so often in these programs, much of the learning emerged during conversations and dialogues as we visited sites, examined objects, and shared meals together.”
May 2024 saw the kickoff of the program’s second year, with Professor Samuel Holzman serving as the program’s coordinator. His counterparts in Greece are Professor Yannis Lolos (University of Thessaly) and Professor Andreas Vlachopoulos (University of Ioannina). Princeton’s graduate student participants in year two, A&A's Mark Paul, Eirini Spyropoulou, and Robert Yancey, look forward to welcoming their PITHOS cohort in Princeton in fall 2024.
The inaugural PITHOS fellow and faculty at bridge over the Vale of Tempe (Photo courtesy of Nathan Arrington)
The group visits the tholos tomb at Dimini (Photo courtesy of Nathan Arrington)
“Princeton archaeologists are using cutting-edge digital technologies to help reveal the ancient past” ⯈
Founded in 300 B.C.E., Antioch was one of the most important political and cultural centers of the Hellenistic East and one of the great metropolises of the Roman Empire. In the 1930s, Princeton archaeologists at Antioch tunneled trenches hither and thither for eight years based on ancient text references and hunches but never happened upon the Forum of Valens or the ancient imperial palace they set out to find.
Fast-forward to summer 2023. Silhouetted by the crimson sun swelling over the mountain range on northern Greece’s Aegean coast, Nathan Arrington and his colleagues race the heat, huddling over their work with the pickaxes, trowels, and brushes that have been emblematic of archaeology for over a century. But Arrington’s team also has a set of new additions in their toolbox that are revolutionizing the field: drone imaging, laser rangefinders, magnetometry, and more.
“We still dig dirt with trowels,” said Arrington. “But the new digital tools allow us to be more accurate, collaborative, and insightful both in and out of the field.” In the field, digital technology saves immense amounts of time and limits fruitless digging. In the classroom, VR recreations help bring the past to life.
From Princeton's Discovery Magazine
December 1, 2023
“Trade Secrets”
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With an L-square, paper, and pencil, archaeologist Samuel Holzman uncovered a 2,000-year-old trade secret held by the ancient builders on the northern Greek island of Samothrace. The finding, that the “flat arch” building technique was used in the island’s covered walkway, or stoa, alters the timeline of Greek and Roman architectural history.
Flat arches, Holzman discovered, appeared on Samothrace 150 years prior to what had previously been considered their debut in Rome. His discovery has architectural historians taking out their own L-squares and revisiting the drawing board on other ancient structures. “This new finding prompts the suspicion that more examples are also hiding in plain sight in other already excavated stoas, with the unexpected going overlooked,” said Holzman.
Samuel Holzman stands before the Hieron structure on Samothrace
Samuel Holzman and graduate student Eirini Spyropoulou measure a limestone block (Photos/Kirstin Ohrt)
Section Five
’ Course Offerings
Monica Bravo presents works from Princeton University Art Museum s collection in ART 248 “Photography and the Making of the Modern World” (Photo/Kirstin Ohrt)
Alanna Radlo-Dzur Reframes Nahua Women and Indigenous Scholarship ⯈
As the world begins reckoning more acutely with women’s rights, inequality, and misrepresentation, Postdoctoral Research Associate Alanna Radlo-Dzur offered the course ART 419/GSS 468/LAS 414 “Nahua Women” in spring 2024 to reframe and elevate the scholarship of indigenous art, history, and culture and women’s place in it.
“The intersectional complexities of gender and sexuality in Nahua communities are simply understudied topics, particularly in the contrasts between images made by Nahua women and those produced by others,” said Radlo-Dzur. “Likewise, the history of Nahua art and culture is still taught and mostly studied with surprisingly rigid temporal boundaries between pre-Hispanic, colonial, modern, and contemporary periods that reinforce scholarly silos with quite different methodologies despite the
field’s inherent interdisciplinarity. By bridging these various lines of demarcation in our discussions, we explored innovative approaches to both art history and indigenous studies,” she said.
“Radlo-Dzur’s course was a wonderful master class in interdisciplinary studies,” said graduate student Georgie Sánchez.
“Together, we critically reviewed antiquated temporal boundaries between pre-Hispanic, early colonial, modern, and contemporary periods that not only reinforce scholarly silos but exclude and invisiblize the lives and labor of women of color.”
“I wanted to take this course because it dealt with an Indigenous culture very close to my own,” said first-year transfer student Ixtle Montuffar. Though they grew up in Maryland, Montuffar is culturally Hñähñu, an Indigenous community
from lands now called Hidalgo, Mexico. “I was so curious to gain a greater understanding of the legacy Indigenous women have had on the world, particularly in contemporary Mexican and Xicane spaces.”
Three guests joined the class over the course of the semester.
Harvard Fellow Matylda Figlerowicz shared her research on Doña Luz Jiménez, a Nahua woman whose image appears throughout the murals of Mexico City’s national palace and other historic buildings and also in Princeton University Art Museum’s collection works by Jean Chalot . Multidisciplinary artist Marcela Torres, who joined the class via Zoom, focuses on embodied practices to reengage with Indigenous epistemologies, moving beyond the gender binary. And self-taught Nahua painter Norma Martínez from the Chicontepec region of Veracruz
in Mexico virtually presented the evolution of her painting practice and the representation of emotion in her work.
In parallel with the “Nahua Women” course, Radlo-Dzur cotaught the Early Modern Nahuatl Workshop with Nadia Cervantes Pérez (Spanish and Portuguese). “I initially organized it as an opportunity to meet regularly with Nadia in support of her Translating Mesoamerica project and to see if we could pull a few other interested parties together,” said Radlo-Dzur. A devoted group of graduate students, faculty, and other staff formed.
Alanna Radlo-Dzur and students examine a work from Princeton’s collection. From left: Nadia Cervantes Pérez, Anna Alsina Naudi (Spanish and Portuguese), Radlo-Dzur, You Jin Kim, and David Rivera Mosquera (Spanish and Portuguese) (Photo/Kirstin Ohrt)
ART 100
“An Introduction to the History of Art: Meanings in the Visual Arts”
AnnMarie Perl
ART 102/ARC 102
“An Introduction to the History of Architecture”
Basile Baudez, Carolyn Yerkes
ART 106/VIS 106/ENT 106/EGR 107
“Looking Lab: Experiments in Visual Thinking and Thinking about Visuals”
Lucy Partman
ART 203
“Roman Art”
Michael Koortbojian
ART 213
“Modernist Art: 1900 to 1950”
Hal Foster
ART 218/EAS 238
“Ten Essential Topics in Chinese Art and Culture”
Cheng-hua Wang
ART 228/HLS 228/MED 228/HUM 228
“Art and Power in the Middle Ages”
Nomi Schneck
ART 233/ARC 233
“Renaissance Art and Architecture”
Carolina Mangone, Carolyn Yerkes
ART 248
“Photography and the Making of the Modern World”
Monica Bravo
ART 273/LAS 217
“Mexican Modernism”
Monica Bravo
ART 316/HLS 316/CLA 213
“The Formation of Christian Art”
Charlie Barber
ART 323
“World Art History”
Thomas D. Kaufmann
ART 341/ARC 341
“Neo Architectures, from the Renaissance to Postmodernism”
Basile Baudez
ART 361/HIS 355/MED 361/HUM 361
“The Art & Archaeology of Plague”
Janet Kay
ART 380/JRN 380
“Photography and Fact”
Jessica Williams Stark
ART 389/GSS 390/EAS 389
“Women and Gender in Chinese Art”
Yutong Li *24, Cheng-hua Wang
ART 400
“Junior Seminar”
Beatrice Kitzinger
ART 401
“Archaeological Methods and Theory”
Nathan T. Arrington
ART 402/HUM 406/MED 402/HLS 401
“Ethics in Archaeology”
Janet Kay
ART 411/CLA 413/HLS 413
“Greek and Roman Portraits”
Michael Koortbojian, Rachel Patt
ART 412/CLA 412/HLS 407
“Ancient Greek Pottery”
Nathan T. Arrington
ART 418/HLS 418/CLA 418/PAW 418
“Antioch through the Ages: Archaeology and History”
Alan Stahl
ART 419/GSS 468/LAS 414
“Nahua Women”
Alanna Radlo-Dzur
ART 421/ECS 421/EAS 421
“Europe in the Making of Early Modern Chinese Art”
Cheng-hua Wang
ART 425/EAS 425
“The Japanese Print”
Andrew Watsky
Paige Walworth decorates her vessel Nathan Arrington’s ART 412/CLA 412/HLS 407
“Ancient Greek Pottery” ⯈ (Photo/Kirstin Ohrt)
ART 444
“The Renaissance Art of the Unfnished”
Carolina Mangone
ART 455/VIS 455/ECS 456
“Seminar in Modernist
Art & Theory: What Was Postmodernism? What Is Modernism?”
Hal Foster, Samuel J. Shapiro
ART 465/AMS 466
“Re-Reading American Photographs”
Monica Bravo
ART 466/ARC 466/URB 466
“Sicily: An Architectural History”
Basile Baudez, Sofia Hernandez
ART 474/AAS 474/AFS 474
“Art and Politics in Postcolonial Africa”
Chika Okeke-Agulu
ART 478/HIS 476/HUM 476/MED 476
“The Vikings: History and Archaeology”
Janet Kay
ART 484/ENV 484/ECS 484
“Elemental Ecologies in Early Modern Art”
Christine Göttler
ART 490/GSS 490/VIS 490
“The Feminist Critique, Fifty Years Later”
AnnMarie Perl
ART 491/SPA 491
“The Aesthetics of Hunger”
Rachel L. Price, Irene V. Small
ART 500
“Proseminar in the History of Art”
Anna Arabindan-Kesson, Irene V. Small
ART 501
“Literature of Art”
Thomas D. Kaufmann
ART 502 A, C, and D
“The Graduate Seminar”
Carolyn Yerkes
ART 535/HLS 535
“Byzantine Art: Phantasia: Dreams, Visions, and the Byzantine Imaginary”
Charlie Barber
ART 551/ARC 557
“From Above: European Maps and Architectural Plans before Aerial Observation”
Basile Baudez
ART 565/MOD 565/ARC 585
“Seminar in Modernist Art and Theory: Banal Aesthetics”
Hal Foster
ART 566
“Seminar in Contemporary Art and Theory: The Global Contemporary”
Irene V. Small
ART 569/EAS 569
“State of the Field: Historiography of Chinese Painting”
Cheng-hua Wang
ART 573/HUM 537
“The Chromapolitics of Visuality”
Tina Campt
ART 597
“Graduate Research Internship”
Carolyn Yerkes
Guest speaker Zackery Drucker addresses AnnMarie Perl and class in ART 490/GSS 490/ VIS 490 “The Feminist Critique, Fifty Years Later” ⯈ (Photo/Kirstin Ohrt)
Cross Listed Courses
AAS 245/ART 245
“Introduction to 20th-Century African American Art”
Chika Okeke-Agulu
AAS 244/ART 262/LAS 244
“Introduction to Pre-20th Century Black Diaspora Art”
Anna Arabindan-Kesson
GER 307/COM 307/ART 317
“Topics in German Culture and Society: Taste”
Juliane Rebentisch
ARC 308/ART 328
“History of Architectural Theory”
Jay Cephas
FRE 358/ECS 358/ART 358/COM 365
“Surrealism at One Hundred” Efthymia Rentzou
HUM 360/SLA 362/ART 363/AAS 333
“Medicine, Literature, and the Visual Arts”
Elena Fratto and Anna Arabindan-Kesson
AAS 341/ART 375
“Enter the New Negro: Black Atlantic Aesthetics”
Anna Arabindan-Kesson
GER 308/ECS 308/ART 383/VIS 317
“Topics in German Film History and Theory: Regimes of Spectacle in Weimar Cinema”
Thomas Levin
ECS 376/ARC 376/ART 386
“The Body in Space: Art, Architecture, and Performance”
Spyros Papapetros
VIS 392/ART 392
“Artist and Studio”
Martha Friedman
HUM 328/ENG 270/ART 396
“Language to Be Looked At”
Irene V. Small
AMS 403/ENV 403/ART 406
“Advanced Seminar in American Studies: Art, Media & Environmental Justice”
Allison Carruth
VIS 423/ART 426
“Black: The Chromapolitics of Darkness, Shadow, and Light/Life”
Tina M. Campt
AAS 411/ART 471/AFS 411
“Art, Apartheid, and South Africa”
Chika Okeke-Agulu
SLA 547/ART 511
“Worlds of Form: Russian Formalism and Constructivism”
Serguei Oushakine
ARC 525/ART 524
“Mapping the City: Cities and Cinema”
M. Christine Boyer
CLA 548/HLS 548/PAW 548/ART 532
“Problems in Ancient History: Introduction to Ancient and Medieval Numismatics”
Alan Stahl
CEE 538/ART 538
“Holistic Analysis of Heritage Structures”
Branko Glišić
Basile Baudez and students examine manuscripts in the Marquand Library rare books collection in ART 341/ARC 341 “Neo Architectures: Architecture and its past, from the Renaissance to Postmodernism” ⯈ (Photo/Kirstin Ohrt)
Monica Bravo and Princeton University Art Museum Collections Associate Joelle Collins present works to students in ART 248 "Photography and the Making of the Modern World" ⯈ (Photo/Kirstin Ohrt)
In ART 425, Students Gain Expertise in Japanese Prints and the Princeton University Art Museum Gains Six Works ⯈
ART 425 “The Japanese Print” marked the grand finale of Professor Andrew Watsky’s teaching career as he transferred to emeritus status on July 1, 2024. This seventh iteration of a course that has become a monument among A&A offerings looked, in key aspects, much the same this semester as it has since Watsky began teaching it in 2008. Students know when they enroll in the course that they will participate in the purchase of at least one print for the Princeton University Art Museum’s collection—and they spend the first half of the course earning that privilege. Watsky, who is a scholar of 16th-century Japanese art history, considers the course an opportunity to stoke his own curiosity about a genre that lies outside his focus. He finds Japanese prints to be particularly approachable subjects because of their visual appeal as well as the fact that there is so much scholarship on them in English, manifested in the 12-page bibliography Watsky provides his students.
At the core of the course is the close relationship students are able to cultivate directly each week with works in the Museum’s collection with the help of Collections Associate Joelle Collins and works in Marquand Library’s collection presented by Japanese Art Specialist Nicole Fabricand-Person. “Pedagogically, I’ve always found that when you work with students with actual works of art it’s a totally different teaching experience,” said Watsky. His course begins with a close look at the chronological development and thematic issues of printmaking in Japan during the Edo period (1615–1868), studying relevant works from the Museum’s collection each week, first on screen and then in life. “There were almost always facets of prints that we couldn’t glean until we looked at the real objects,” said SPIA major Romit Kundagrami ’26. “Sometimes it would be subtle: slight dustings of mica, tiny lattice lines that seemed like block color before, or simply the richness of pigment. However, those differences were crucial
to understanding the art more holistically and gaining insight into the mechanisms of creating a print in 18th- to 19th-century Edo.” Along with learning about the genre itself, students become familiar with the art museum holdings’ strengths and weaknesses.
For the latter half of the semester, students worked with a group of prints preselected by Watsky and Nancy and Peter Lee Curator of Asian Art Zoe Kwok on offer from Sebastian Izzard, LLC, New York. Dr. Izzard, one of the world’s leading Japanese print dealers, presented the group of 20 prints to the students for an initial session that narrowed the group to eight prints under consideration. Kundagrami recalls at the unveiling of contenders, “At a certain point, I don’t think a print went by without an exclamation of ‘wow’ from the whole class.”
Watsky has found that this added responsibility of selecting prints for acquisition intensifies student investment in the course. “If the students have a stake, it has an
impact on their role in relationship to the work of art,” he said. “I’ve been amazed over the years at how true that is. They get very energized. It makes them understand how much input from people is needed to make a choice about a work of art.” Kundagrami confirms his own realization at how adept he and his classmates became at analyzing prints. “The extent of what we learned this semester was vast,” he said. “I can now look at prints, and without receiving information about them, I can sometimes guess the artist, discern innovative techniques or printing mechanisms, have a rough (or sometimes very specific) framework for what time period the print is from, describe some of the allusions in the visual language of the print, and more. None of us came out of the course as experts on the genre, or even close to it, but the leap from where I started to where I ended is quite large, and it’s exhilarating to be on this end of it.”
On loan for the remainder of the semester, the prints became part of each seminar discussion,
Alanna Radlo-Dzur and students examine a work from Princeton’s collection. From left: Nadia Cervantes Pérez, Anna Alsina Naudi (Spanish and Portuguese), Radlo-Dzur, You Jin Kim, and David Rivera Mosquera (Spanish and Portuguese) (Photo/Kirstin Ohrt)
with mounting investment and increasingly enthusiastic debate. The course culminated in a final vote on which works to propose to the art museum for acquisition.
Kwok and art museum director James Steward have since approved the class’s selections, and so the collection has grown by six important Japanese prints. Over the course of its seven iterations, ART 425 has contributed 15 works to the Museum’s Japanese print collection, all made possible by the Laura P. Hall Memorial Fund, which is administered by A&A. An endowment intended for the “promotion and enjoyment of the graphic arts at Princeton,” the Hall Fund has significantly enriched the art museum’s prints and drawings holdings, as well as the graphic arts collections of Princeton University Libraries.
The selected works include View of Ochanomizu by Shiba Kōkan, a hand-colored copperplate engraving, which distinguishes it from the dominant woodblock print tradition of Japan represented in the Museum’s collection. Ashiyuki Gigadō’s Arashi Rikan II as Miyamoto Musashi in Snow depicts
a Kabuki performance by the famed professional actor Arashi Rikan II in the role of the 17th-century warrior hero Miyamoto Musashi, unusual in that it places the actor in a snowy landscape setting.
Hasegawa Sadanobu’s set of four woodblock prints titled Four amateur actors performing skits as courtesans depicts highly unusual subject matter: each print shows a single male figure in the Kabuki tradition of a male actor playing a female role or, perhaps, wearing the clothes of a courtesan. The prints are rich in research potential: each figure is surrounded by copious amounts of legible text that reveal much about the circumstances behind the prints.
Watsky’s approach in this course has left an indelible knowledge base and appreciation of Japanese prints among his students. “I think the most satisfying part was the robustness of our discussion when whittling down the choices of prints,” said Kundagrami. “It became evident then just how much we had learned, and all the students’ comments were so informative and relevant to the decision-making process.
Though we were sad to see some prints excluded in the end, as a class, I think we all ended feeling very satisfied with our choices, and that’s because we had engaged so rigorously and offered all our knowledge and understanding to that process. We leveraged considerations like the strengths and weaknesses of the current museum collection, the rarity and condition of the prints we were looking at, the pedagogical value, and the printing/artistic quality itself. In doing so, we came down to a fantastic final selection, and I could not be happier with the results.”
“It is amazing the power your peers have to change your mind, to inspire you, to advocate with you,” agreed graduate student Josephine O’Neil. “I also think this is the moment when you realize how much Professor Watsky taught you, how powerful an impression he left without imposition or force. You absorb what he teaches and that becomes a part of how you move through the world looking at art. Then, there you are before a group of incredible objects, and you surprise yourself.”
Along with the excitement of seeing works in person each week and being granted the chance to select additions, a key distinguishing factor of the course was clearly the professor who taught it. “This is a man whose passion is contagious,” said O’Neil. That passion shone through even after the course’s official end. Watsky invited students from the class to join him at Green Hall for an hour to learn about the tea ensemble. Most students, along with Collins, were able to make it—and they stayed for three hours. Watsky brought a number of his own tea bowls to teach students examples from different kiln sites made by different artists of varying ages in various shapes. “The only thing it had to do with the course was that those in it were the eligible attendees,” said Watsky, “but it was a nice way to end my teaching career. To have my last classroom experience be one that was sitting around and enjoying works of art together—and drinking a bowl or two of tea.”
Shiba Kōkan (1747–1818), View of Ochanomizu, dated Kinoe-tatsu haru sangatsu (Spring, third month of 1784), hand-colored copperplate engraving, Hall Fund acquisition, Princeton University Art Museum
Josephine O’Neil examines a work in Marquand Library’s collection (Photo/Kirstin Ohrt)
Conferences Section Six and Lectures
Carolina Mangone presents at the conference “Finished? Early Modern Arts in the Imperfect Tense” (Photo/Kirstin Ohrt)
Conferences & Lectures
September 13, 2023
Rachel Silberstein, Independent Scholar
“Coming into Color: The Cloth Classic, Jiangnan Dyeworks, and the Expansion of Cotton Dyes in Qing China”
Cosponsored with the P.Y. and Kinmay W. Tang Center for East Asian Art and the East Asian Studies Program
September 28, 2023
ART 502 LECTURE SERIES
Vidya Dehejia, Columbia University
“The Thief Who Stole My Heart”
October 23, 2023
AIA THOMPSON LECTURE
William Parkinson, Field Museum of Natural History
“The First Kings of Europe: An International Exhibition about the Prehistoric Balkans”
Cosponsored with the Archaeological Institute of America (AIA)
October 27–28, 2023
Carolina Mangone, A&A, Convener Conference: “Finished? Early Modern Arts in the Imperfect Tense”
Cosponsored with the Council of the Humanities, Program in Italian Studies, and Committee on Renaissance and Early Modern Studies (CREMS)
November 2, 2023
ART 502 LECTURE SERIES
Penelope Davies, The University of Texas at Austin “Ideologies of Resilience in Ancient Roman Architecture”
November 10, 2023
KURT WEITZMANN MEMORIAL LECTURE
Christine Kondoleon, Museum of Fine Arts, Boston
“‘To put back all the things people cluttered up...To Straighten, like a diligent Housekeeper of Reality...’: The Greek, Roman and Byzantine Collections at MFA Boston Re-imagined”
Cosponsored with the Index of Medieval Art
November 11, 2023
Maria Alessia Rossi and Henry Schilb, Index of Medieval Art, Conveners Conference: “Whose East? Defining, Challenging, and Exploring Eastern Christian Art” Cosponsored with the Index of Medieval Art, Princeton Institute for International and Regional Studies (PIIRS), and the Seeger Center for Hellenic Studies, with the support of the Erric B. Kertsikoff Fund for Hellenic Studies
December 4, 2023
PHOTO HISTORY’S FUTURES SERIES
Aglaya Glebova, University of California, Berkeley
On Glebova’s book Aleksandr Rodchenko: Photography in the Time of Stalin
Cosponsored with the Princeton University Art Museum
December 7, 2023
ART 502 LECTURE SERIES
Andrea Achi, Metropolitan Museum of Art Africa & Byzantium at The Met Cosponsored with the Index of Medieval Art
January 31–February 22, 2024
Josephine Meckseper, Artist Exhibition and discussion: Scenario for a Past Future Cosponsored with the Program in Visual Arts, Humanities Council, Program in Media and Modernity, and Center for Digital Humanities
February 29, 2024
ART 502 LECTURE SERIES
Charlotte Guichard, École Normale Supérieure-PSL “Empires of Galanterie: The Transformations of the Imperial Imagination in EighteenthCentury France”
March 7, 2024
ART 502 LECTURE SERIES
Jesús Escobar *96, Northwestern University “Americans Abroad in the Seventeenth Century: People, Buildings, and the Space of Empire”
From left: Lane Marsh ’23, Evan Haley ’24, Jeff Whetstone, and Josephine Meckseper in discussion and Spyros Papapetros (architecture) at the opening of Meckseper’s Scenario for a Past Future ⯈ at Hurley Gallery, Lewis Center for the Arts (Photo/Kirstin Ohrt)
Pamela Patton, Beatrice Kitzinger, Christine Kondoleon, and Charlie Barber before Kondoleon’s Kurt Weitzmann Memorial Lecture (Photo/John Blazejewski)
March 18, 2024
Susanne Meurer, University of Western Australia
“A German Vasari? Johann Neudörffer’s ‘Notes on Nuremberg’s Artists and Craftsmen’ (1547)”
Cosponsored with Renaissance and Early Modern Studies
March 19, 2024
Ekow Eshun, Independent Curator
“In the Black Fantastic”
Cosponsored by the Program in Media and Modernity and Princeton Collaboratorium for Radical Aesthetics
March 25, 2024
AIA ETTINGHAUSEN LECTURE
Glenn Bugh, Virginia Tech
“Kevin Andrews and the Castles of the Morea”
Cosponsored with the Archaeological Institute of America (AIA)
April 5, 2024
ROBERT JANSON-LA PALME *76 CONFERENCE
Christine Göttler, Robert Janson-La Palme *76 Visiting Professor, Convener and Keynote Speaker
“Metamorphic Matter: Elemental Imagery in Early Modern Art”
April 9, 2024
Yve-Alain Bois, Independent Scholar
Benjamin Buchloh, Art Critic Hal Foster, A&A
Benjamin Buchloh: “The Ends of a Critic”
Cosponsored with the Program in Media and Modernity
April 11–12, 2024
Tina Campt, A&A, Convener
The Radical Practice of Black Curation: A Symposium
Cosponsored with Princeton Collaboratorium for Radical Aesthetics and the Program in Visual Arts
April 15, 2024
John Harvey, Director and Anna Arabindan-Kesson, Moderator Screening and Panel Discussion: Still We Rise Documentary
Cosponsored with Art Hx in partnership with BlackStar Projects, the Department of African American Studies, the Native American and Indigenous Studies Initiative, the Center for Collaborative History, Princeton Humanities Council, Land, Language, and Art: a Humanities Council Global Initiative, and the Lewis Center for the Arts
April 17, 2024
PHOTO HISTORY’S FUTURES
SERIES
Emilie Boone, New York University
On Boone’s book A Nimble
Arc: James Van Der Zee and Photography
Cosponsored with Princeton University Art Museum
April 18, 2024
ART 502 LECTURE SERIES
Kate Flint, University of Southern California
“Reading the Future in the Paintings of the Past: Bark, Beetles, and Arboreal Art”
April 19, 23, and 25, 2024
Wu Hung, University of Chicago Lecture Series:
“Rethinking Historical Evidence and Methodology”
“Rethinking Figure Painting”
“Rethinking Landscape Painting”
Cosponsored with the P.Y. and Kinmay W. Tang Center for East Asian Art and Princeton University Art Museum
April 22, 2024
Susan Dackerman, Independent Scholar and Ulinka Rublack, University of Cambridge Panel: “On Albrecht Dürer: A Public Conversation”
Cosponsored with Renaissance and Early Modern Studies
May 1, 2024
JAMES F. HALEY ’50 MEMORIAL LECTURE
Jennifer Roberts, Harvard University “The Pastel from Mars”
May 3, 2024
ROBERT JANSON-LA PALME *76 WORKSHOP
Christine Göttler, Robert Janson-La Palme *76 Visiting Professor, Convener “Rubens in 21st-Century Perspectives”
May 24, 2024
A&A REUNIONS LECTURE
Monica Bravo, A&A “Mineral Analogs: Carleton Watkins’s Photographs and the Gold Standard”
Hal Foster and Benjamin Buchloh ⯈ (Photo/Kirstin Ohrt)
Monica Bravo speaks with attendees after the lecture ⯈ (Photo/John Blazejewski)
Conferences & Lectures
A Transformative Robert Janson-La Palme *76 Visiting Professorship ⯈
Christine Göttler’s Janson-La Palme *76 Visiting Professorship was a hub of early modern art historical scholarship in spring 2024, connecting scholars from across disciplines at Princeton and from myriad other institutions.
Professor Carolina Mangone described Göttler’s presence in A&A as “utterly stimulating.” Göttler taught ART 484 “Elemental Ecologies in Early Modern Art,” convened the international conference “Metamorphic Matter: Elemental Imagery in Early Modern Art,” and hosted a graduate student workshop along with a workshop titled “Rubens in 21st-Century Perspectives.” Princeton University Art Museum’s Distinguished Curator and Lecturer Ronni Baer said, “Christine accomplished more in her short time at Princeton than many of us do in years.”
Among the most meaningful of Göttler’s contributions was her investment in bringing colleagues together. “Christine has a gift for creating community and conversation across students, faculty, and curators alike and around topics both familiar and fresh,” said Mangone.
In ART 484, Göttler examined with students the art history of the early modern period through the lens of science—and vice versa. “We explored
how early modern artists conceived of or pictured the ultimate particles of which they believed the physical world was made, and which were alternately called ‘elements,’ ‘principles,’ ‘corpuscles,’ and ‘atoms.’”
Göttler selected Netherlandish art by Jan Brueghel the Elder and Hendrick Goltzius, among others, considering representations of the four elements, enigmatic iconographies of pagan gods and their elemental kingdoms, and “a range of representations of chaos and winds, fire and light, snowflakes and raindrops, and, finally, of natural disasters (storms, earthquakes, volcanic eruptions),” said Göttler.
Cross-listed with environmental studies and European cultural studies, the interdisciplinarity of the course was evident in the subject matter as well as in the students, with the majority majoring in a science.
Assistant Curator of Prints and Drawings Jun Nakamura showed the class Princeton University Art Museum’s Goltzius’s chiaroscuro woodcuts of the Seven Deities and his engravings of the Four Disgracers. Baer and Chief Conservator Bart Devolder investigated two late oil sketches made by Peter Paul Rubens for King Philip IV of Spain and the conservation challenges they pose.
“Christine Göttler is the kind of art historian conservators love to work with,” said Devolder
“She is open-minded and understands that the materials that make up a work of art contribute to the stories it can tell.”
The class also benefited from a presentation by Professor Jennifer Rampling (history) of Princeton’s two spectacular Ripley Scrolls (scrolls containing emblematic and alchemical imagery produced in late 16th- and early 17th-century England, respectively).
Finally, Göttler arranged a visit to the Metropolitan Museum of Art, where, to everyone’s delight, Nadine Orenstein, curator of drawings and prints, showed many more works than Göttler had requested.
“For an art historian seeking to push the boundaries of disciplinary research and with a special interest in early modern intellectual history and the history of science, Princeton University is a truly transformative place.”
—Christine Göttler, Janson-La Palme 76 Visiting Professor *
In April 2024, Göttler convened the conference “Metamorphic Matter: Elemental Imagery in Early Modern Art.” She brought
Bart Devolder examines Cupid Supplicating Jupiter with participants of the Rubens workshop (Photo/Kirstin Ohrt)
together ten scholars from various institutions to unpack the topic, including Princeton's own Carolina Mangone and Carolyn Yerkes.
“The idea of the ‘Metamorphic Matter’ conference at Princeton University grew out of my own ongoing research on Peter Paul Rubens’s engagement with artists’ materials, and all kinds of elemental matter, including subtle, celestial matter,” said Göttler.
As though adding its voice to the discussion, the earth literally began to rumble as Susan Dackerman (independent scholar) pointed out the uncanny coincidence of the idea of extinction and lithography surfacing together in 1796 at the Solnhofen Limestone quarry, where it was understood that the earth recreated images of creatures rather than hosting their relics. Dackerman, who will be the spring 2025 Janson-La Palme Visiting Scholar, found the conference capacious and enriching.
In May, Göttler convened scholars of Peter Paul Rubens for the workshop “Rubens in 21st-Century Perspectives,” broken into three sessions: “Rubens’s World,” “Rubens’s Laboratory,” and “Encounter and Interactions.”
“Looking at our two oil sketches and large painting attributed to the Flemish master with scholars from Europe and America gave us the opportunity to look at paintings ‘in the flesh’ and led to lots of lively discussion. Christine pulled off another incredibly well-conceived and executed event!” said Baer.
Reflecting on the semester, Göttler said, “For an art historian seeking to push the boundaries of disciplinary research and with a special interest in early modern intellectual history and the history of science, Princeton University is a truly transformative place. I found the wide range of lectures, conferences, and workshops offered throughout the academic year thrilling and benefited enormously from conversations with students and colleagues, both within the department and across campus.”
Princeton University Art Museum Curator of Academic Engagement Janna Israel concluded, “Christine Göttler’s residency has sealed her reputation as one of the most rigorous, curious, creative, and intellectually generous scholars working in the history of art.”
Christine Göttler and class watch as Bart Devolder illuminates a section of Peter Paul Rubens’s Death of Adonis, 1639, Princeton University Art Museum collection (Photo/Kirstin Ohrt)
Janson-La Palme Conference participants; from left: Ivano Dal Prete (Yale University), Carolyn Yerkes, David Young Kim (Institute for Advanced Study), Shawon Kinew (Harvard University), Christine Göttler, Felipe Pereda (Harvard University), Maria Loh (Institute for Advanced Study), Vera Keller (University of Oregon), Susan Dackerman (Independent Scholar), Cloe Cavero de Carondelet (Princeton University), Andrew Morrall (Bard Graduate Center), Janna Israel (Princeton University), and Christopher Richards (New York University); not pictured: Carolina Mangone (Photo/Kirstin Ohrt)
Conferences & Lectures
A&A Field Trips
A&A faculty, staff, and students toured two exhibitions on African art and culture.
In December 2023, a group visited the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s Africa and Byzantium ⯈ exhibition, guided by curator Andrea Myers Achi, who also delivered the final lecture in the fall 2023 semester’s A&A 502 lecture series. Graduate student Megan Coates said, “As I walked through Africa and Byzantium, what became clear was how sculpture, pottery, paintings, manuscripts, textiles, and mosaics have come together to tell a new and complex story of medieval Africa’s relationship with Byzantium from perspectives that have been long overdue, and the themes in the exhibition are relevant to topics that are important today.”
In February 2024, a group traveled to the Walters Art Museum to see Ethiopia at the Crossroads ⯈, curated by Christine Sciacca, who gave the group a tour. Art History Specialist at the Index of Medieval Art Jessica Savage said, “The exhibition was arranged to draw you into some of these major intersecting locations in a brilliantly balanced selection of over two hundred devotional and daily objects, including from Ethiopian, Coptic, and Armenian cultures, which represent visual traditions in the three Abrahamic faiths.”
The A&A group on the steps of the Metropolitan Museum of Art (Photo/John Blazejewski); Below, The Princeton group of travelers to see the Ethiopia at the Crossroads exhibition at the Walters Art Museum in Baltimore (Photo courtesy of Mo Chen)
Megan Coates captures an icon made of encaustic wax, on loan from the Saint Catherine’s Monastery at Mount Sinai in Egypt (Photo/John Blazejewski)
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Megan Coates paints an icon at the Index Wintersession course
(Photo/John Blazejewski)
P.Y. and Kinmay W. Tang Center for East Asian Art ⯈
In the 2023–24 academic year, the Tang Center, led by Director Andrew M. Watsky and Deputy Director Dora C. Y. Ching, organized diverse activities ranging from lectures to visits by artists and a major publication on Korean art.
The Tang Center coordinated two lectures with the East Asian Studies Program. In early September, Rachel Silberstein, an independent scholar based in Seattle, presented “Coming into Color: The Cloth Classic, Jiangnan Dyeworks, and the Expansion of Cotton Dyes in Qing China.” Silberstein analyzed
the text The Cloth Classic in relation to the artistic and technical production of textiles, revealing new insights, especially into the manufacturing and dyeing of cotton. The Tang Center teamed up again with the East Asian Studies Program to cosponsor “Technocracy and Porcelain Manufacture at the Early to Mid-Qing Court (1720s–1750s),” a lecture by Kai Jun Chen (Brown University). Chen examined the roles multiethnic technocrats played in the creation of artistic styles as well as the relationship between ceramics and the creation of identity at the Manchu court.
Throughout the year, the Tang Center collaborated with the Princeton University Art Museum, working together on lectures, artists’ talks, painting viewing sessions, and an art acquisition.
In November 2023, Eleanor Hyun (Metropolitan Museum of Art) introduced the exhibition she curated, Lineages: Korean Art at The Met, to provide context for the mixed-media work of MiKyoung Lee, the focus of the Art Museum’s exhibition Threading Memories On a separate occasion, Zoe S. Kwok, curator of the exhibition, interviewed Lee about her textile art
practice. Also in November, the Tang Center hosted Chinese artist Peng Wei for a week, during which time she visited Professor Cheng-hua Wang’s undergraduate class, met with graduate students, held a painting demonstration for students in the Program in Visual Arts (Figure 1), and attended a painting viewing session. Peng Wei also participated in a talk moderated by Kwok, in which she discussed the evolution of her artistic styles and how she learned to make animations of her paintings while sequestered during the pandemic. In February 2024, the Tang Center joined the Art Museum to host Beijing-based painter Liu Xiaodong, the Sarah Lee Elson, Class of 1984, Artist-in-Residence. Last year, to commemorate the Tang Center’s 20th anniversary, the Tang Center and the Art Museum acquired Liu’s large-scale oil painting The Loafers (2022), making his participation in an artist’s talk and painting viewing session, along with many visits to classes, even rarer and more meaningful experiences (Figure 2).
During a research trip to Japan in fall 2023, Watsky, Museum Director James Steward, and Curator Zoe S. Kwok identified paintings and objects as potential additions to the Art Museum’s collections. Since making its first acquisition in 2002, a boxed set of books from Xu Bing’s Book from the Sky, the Tang Center has sought to find works that complement the Art Museum’s collection but also open up new avenues of research. This year, the Tang Center purchased Ainu Bear Sacrifce Ceremony, a 19th-century painting attributed to Hirasawa Byozan (1822–1876), the first work in the Museum’s collection focused on the Ainu, the indigenous people of the northern Japanese archipelago (Figure 3). The Ainu have attracted increasing interest
for East Asian Art by scholars, despite difficulties narrating their cultural practices, beliefs, and art, which are so often seen through the lenses of others, especially the Japanese, Chinese, Western Christian missionaries, and Russians. However, with the acquisition of this painting, students and scholars can begin discussions about the subject matter and artistic treatment of Ainu traditions, such as the bear ceremony ritual depicted in this scroll, thereby enriching our understanding of contemporaneous art forms such as Edo period ukiyo-e prints and paintings, and contextualizing the Ainu and their place in the wider Japanese cultural context.
This year’s collaborations with the Museum culminated with the
Figure 1: Peng Wei painting at the workshop in Visual Arts on December 4, 2023 (Photo/Kirstin Ohrt)
Figure 2: Liu Xiaodong in front of his painting The Loafers, 2022, at a viewing session at the Art Museum on February 20, 2024 (Photo/Dora Ching)
Figure 3: Attributed to Hirasawa Byozan (born 1822 in Hanamaki City, Japan; died 1876 in Hakodate, Japan), Ainu Bear Sacrifice Ceremony, mid- to late 19th century. Hanging scroll; ink and color on paper, 200 × 45 cm. Princeton University Art Museum, Gift of the P.Y. and Kinmay W. Tang Center
Tang Center’s main scholarly event, the lecture series “Rethinking the Tenth Century: A Pivotal Period in the History of Chinese Painting,” featuring Wu Hung (University of Chicago). In his series of three lectures, Wu first reviewed historical evidence and methodology, and then dedicated one lecture each to figure painting (Figure 4) and landscape painting. He introduced newly discovered tomb paintings and discussed their spatial signification within the tombs, then integrated the archaeological material with long accepted “monuments” in Chinese painting history, offering a new way of looking at both media. Each of his lectures drew over 70
attendees in person and over 150 participants online. Wu Hung will expand these themes along with others into a book-length study that will be published by the Tang Center in association with Princeton University Press.
The Tang Center was also pleased to publish, in association with Princeton University Press, Recording State Rites in Words and Images: Uigwe of Joseon Korea by Yi Song-mi *83, who developed the book from workshops and lectures she presented at the Tang Center in 2014. The first comprehensive study of its kind in English, Recording State Rites provides an engaging, unparalleled exploration of the large corpus of illustrated court statutes compiled during the Joseon dynasty (1392–1910) (Figure 5).
Finally, in early May we celebrated Andy Watsky, P.Y. and Kinmay W. Tang Professor of Japanese Art and Tang Center director, who retired after 16 years in the Department of Art and Archaeology (Figure 6). A rare teacher, generous colleague, and thoughtful friend, Andy has made many lasting contributions to the department, the Art Museum, the Tang Center, and the field of Japanese art—for which we express deep gratitude.
Please visit the Tang Center’s website for details about its activities: tang.princeton.edu
Lectures
September 13, 2023
Rachel Silberstein, Independent Scholar
“Coming into Color: The Cloth Classic, Jiangian Dyeworks, and the Expansion of Cotton Dyes in Qing China”
Organized by the Tang Center; Cosponsored by the East Asian Studies Program and the Department of Art and Archaeology
November 9, 2023
Eleanor Hyun, Metropolitan Museum of Art
“Threading Histories: Locating the Past in Contemporary Korean Art”
Organized by the Princeton University Art Museum; Cosponsored by the Tang Center
November 30, 2023
Artist Conversation: Peng Wei
Organized by the Princeton University Art Museum; Cosponsored by the Tang Center
December 7, 2023
Artist Conversation: MiKyoung Lee
Organized by the Princeton University Art Museum; Cosponsored by the Tang Center
February 14, 2024
Kai Jun Chen, Brown University
“Technocracy and Porcelain Manufacture at the Early to Mid-Qing Court (1720s–1750s)”
Organized by the East Asian Studies Program; Cosponsored by the Tang Center
Tang Center Lecture Series
Wu Hung, Harrie A. Vanderstappen
Distinguished Service Professor of Art History and the College, University of Chicago
“Rethinking the Tenth Century: A Pivotal Period in the History of Chinese Painting”
April 19, 2024
“Rethinking Historical Evidence and Methodology”
April 23, 2024
“Rethinking Figure Painting”
April 25, 2024
“Rethinking Landscape Painting”
Cosponsored by the Princeton University Art Museum and the Department of Art and Archaeology
Figure 4: Wu Hung delivering a lecture (Photo/Dora Ching)
Figure 5: Cover of Yi Song-mi’s Recording State Rites in Words and Images: Uigwe of Joseon Korea, published in 2024 by the Tang Center in association with Princeton University Press
Figure 6: Cary Liu, Zoe Kwok, Andy Watsky, and Dora Ching at Andy’s retirement celebration on May 6, 2024 (Photo/ John Blazejewski)
Learning from Beijing-based Artist Peng Wei ⯈
Beijing-based artist Peng Wei visited Princeton in late November 2023 to present her work in three contexts: as a lecture in the course ART 389/ GSS 390/EAS 389 “Women and Gender in Chinese Art” cotaught by Professor Cheng-hua Wang and graduate student Yutong Li, as a painting workshop for the Program in Visual Arts and in conversation with Princeton University Art Museum curator Zoe Kwok. Across all venues, Wei spoke with gracious and disarming honesty about her approach, inspiration, reservations, and triumphs.
Wei’s focus in her works on the lived experience of everyday life especially resonated with Wang, who saw in them “the quality, poetics, and incremental sense of what life is about,” how the body is embedded in these.
Wei led a workshop to illustrate her brushwork technique in the visual arts building. She introduced the ink, pigments, paper types, and brushes, but above all, she spoke about her visceral, rooted approach. “I put my brain outside of the room,” she said, focusing on her breath and following her brush.
Cary Moore ’24 found Wei’s brushwork demonstration very impactful. “I was sitting right in front of Peng Wei as she painted and felt a palpable charge as soon as she began her brushwork,” said Moore. “It was very real.”
Peng Wei advises Cary Moore on brushstrokes and breathing
(Photo/Kirstin Ohrt)
Peng Wei demonstrates her technique (Photo/Kirstin Ohrt)
The year 2023 marked the introduction of an exciting new offering from Visual Resources (VR): an annual research award.
Every year VR hosts several visiting scholars to consult department collections. While VR welcomes visitors, they recognize that having the ability to travel to Princeton is an undertaking many cannot afford. And while VR is taking steps to digitize these collections, many collections remain accessible only through on-site visits. To assist scholars in using these resources, VR is providing a residency award for short-term stays and will prioritize early career scholars and those with limited funding options. For more information, visit visualresources.princeton.edu; and please spread the word!
Throughout the year, Senior Image Collections Specialist Michele Mazeris has made excellent headway in readying the collection for the impending move into the new building by deaccessioning, reorganizing, inventorying, and repacking the archive, while also offering faculty valuable support in obtaining image permissions for their forthcoming publications.
In October, for International Archaeology Day, VR partnered with the Princeton Public Library for an event called “Color the Past” (Figure 1). Participants helped themselves to coloring supplies as well as copies of pen-and-ink drawings by Howard Crosby Butler during his campaigns to Sardis and Greece. Funding for materials and supplies was obtained from the Archaeological Institute of America (AIA) by Digital Project Specialist Leigh Anne Lieberman (who also serves as the secretary of Princeton’s AIA chapter). VR looks forward to collaborating with different organizations within and beyond the campus community to promote and celebrate archaeology and the legacy of the department within the history of the discipline. VR offered two popular courses for the University’s annual Wintersession curriculum. Curator of Asian Collections and Digital Specialist Yichin Chen organized a course titled “Fans of Chinese Ink Paintings” (Figure 2). The workshop not only offered attendees a unique opportunity to appreciate and learn about Chinese ink paintings thanks to an informative presentation by graduate student
Figure 1: An original drawing from the Howard Crosby Butler Archive scanned and converted into a coloring page by Yichin Chen (Photo/Yichin Chen)
Figure 2: Artist Mansheng Wang demonstrates holding a brush to students in the “Fans of Chinese Ink Paintings” Wintersession workshop (Photo/John Blazejewski)
Figure 3: Will Pedrick (standing, second from left) and Leigh Lieberman (far right) show excavation materials from Morgantina during the “Sicilian Stories” Wintersession workshop (Photo/John Blazejewski)
A&A Affiliates
Yutong Li but also treated them to a showcase and demonstration by guest artist Mansheng Wang. After practicing on paper, attendees painted and created their work on a handheld fan. In “Sicilian Stories: Tales and Treats from the American Excavations at Morgantina,” graduate student Will Pedrick and Lieberman introduced participants to the Sicilian site that has captivated Princeton audiences for almost 70 years: Morgantina. Participants in this workshop learned about Morgantina’s rich history as well as Princeton’s excavations through the archival material in VR (Figure 3).
Four talented undergraduates worked with VR this year: Noe Iwasaki ’26 and Giselle Schrier ’26 continued digitizing the glass lantern slides of Greece, while Nadia Makuc ’26 and Talia Goldman ’27 have completed digitizing the entire collection of photographic negatives that Professor Kurt Weitzmann captured during his trips to Mount Athos in the 1930s (Figure 4). The Seeger Center for Hellenic Studies, among others, contributed funds for their work as part of the “Connecting Histories: The Princeton and Mount Athos
Legacy” project. VR is excited to be a major part of this multiyear, interdisciplinary project that has also received funding from the Mount Athos Foundation of America, the Princeton Institute for International and Regional Studies, and the Princeton Humanities Council. Equally talented graduate students Meseret Oldjira *24 and Katy Knortz contributed to the cataloging work on various projects, and VR owes them their gratitude.
Photographer John Blazejewski has continued to make progress photographing oversized drawings in the collection, and even photographed students looking at these drawings as they were examined in precepts for ART 102 “A History of Architecture” (Figure 5). Lieberman introduced digital methods to the A&A community in two ways this year. The first was a graduate student working group launched in the fall that focused on data management strategies, digital scholarship, and computational methods for art historical and archaeological research. Future sessions will explore the complex landscape of digital image permissions; experiment with various platforms
for digital exhibitions; examine and reverse engineer various existing digital projects; and dive into more topics that members of the group have defined. Then, in spring 2024, Lieberman cotaught a course with Caroline Cheung (Classics) called “The Science of Roman History” (CLA 247) (Figure 6). In it, students engaged with STEM and digital humanities methods as they considered historical questions. Throughout the semester, students focused their efforts on an object from the Princeton University Art Museum or Firestone Special Collections; their final projects outlined various
scientific analyses that one could pursue to learn more about that object (e.g., XRF, isotope analysis, statistical study, spatial study, etc.). These final projects were transformed, using ESRI’s ArcGIS StoryMaps, into a collaborative, multimodal publication, giving the students an opportunity to gain some experience writing for public audiences. The success of the integration of digital tools into this course will be a great example for the future and is already informing course planning for the upcoming academic year.
Figure 4. Detail, Hilandar diptych, late 13th–early 14th century, perhaps Venetian (Photo/Professor Kurt Weitzmann, 1935)
Figure 5. Professor Basile Baudez introduces students in his ART 102 precept to the Howard Crosby Butler drawings (Photo/John Blazejewski)
Figure 6. Students in Lieberman and Cheung’s class, “The Science of Roman History,” enjoying a feast inspired by ancient recipes at New College West (Photo/Leigh Lieberman)
The Index of Medieval Art ⯈
The Index of
The launch of free database access at the Index of Medieval Art in July 2023 had very positive results: the number of online users has been three to four times its prior totals. Over the course of 2023 alone, Index staff responded to an all-time high of 134 remote research inquiries from as far away as Krakow and Melbourne and as close by as our own undergraduate program. In
response to this new interest, Jon Niola has continued moving forward with accessibility improvements while Index specialists Alessia Rossi and Jessica Savage offered online tutorials and Catherine Fernandez coordinated requests for research assistance and classroom visits. While we are proudest of the increase in research inquiries from our own University students, we
were also very pleased this year to host a special guest: the Very Reverend Archimandrite Porphyrios of Saint Catherine’s Monastery at Mount Sinai, who visited Princeton to examine the Kurt Weitzmann Collection in Visual Resources and meet with staff about the new Index database (Figure 1).
This year’s Index conference, “Whose East? Defining, Challenging,
and Exploring Eastern Christian Art,” was held on November 11, 2023. Organized by Alessia Rossi and Henry Schilb with assistance from Fiona Barrett, the well-attended conference considered how perceptions of the concept of “The East” have shaped study of the medieval artistic traditions of Syria, the Caucasus, and Eastern Europe. Speakers included Anthi Andronikou (University of St Andrews), Jelena Bogdanović (Vanderbilt University), Jana Gajdošová (Sam Fogg), Gohar Grigoryan (University of Fribourg), Christian Raffensperger (Wittenberg University), Erik Thunø (Rutgers University), Tolga Uyar (Nevşehir Hacı Bektaş Veli University), and Margarita Voulgaropoulou (Ruhr-Universität Bochum); Antony Eastmond (Courtauld Institute of Art) and Mirela Ivanova (University of Sheffield) provided responses (Figure 2). Rossi and Schilb are now working with the speakers to produce a peer-reviewed volume on the conference theme.
In 2023–24 the Index also hosted Index workshops with Éric Palazzo (University of Poitiers) and Fatih Han (A&A graduate student), as well as a Wintersession class on Byzantine icon painting, featuring local icon painter Maureen McCormick and A&A graduate student Megan Coates (Figure 3). Spring 2024 saw the publication of volume 45 of the Princeton-hosted journal Studies in Iconography, which now bears a new subtitle: A Journal of Medieval Visual Cultures The addition preserves a main title that has been recognized by readers, indexes, and databases for almost 50 years while signaling the journal’s fresh commitment to representing the visual cultures of the medieval world more expansively and inclusively, both by publishing articles addressing a widened range of regions,
Figure 1. Visit of the Archimandrite Porphyrios to the Index. Left to right: Jessica Savage, Catherine Fernandez, Archimandrite Porphyrios, Alessia Rossi, Pamela Patton, Earnestine Qiu (Photo/John Blazejewski)
Figure 3. Megan Coates speaking in the Index Wintersession course (Photo/John Blazejewski)
Figure 2. Participants in the “Whose East?” conference (Photo/John Blazejewski)
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cultures, and visual traditions and by welcoming new methodologies. The current volume bears out this mission with articles on beard-pullers in early medieval art and thought, pictorial wordplay in Anglo-Saxon art, the interplay of narrative and the architectural frame, and animal symbolism in the medieval Haggadah (Figure 4).
Index staff continue to collaborate with scholars and institutions both on and off campus. The interface of the Index with the Princeton Dante Project, spearheaded by Simone Marchesi (French & Italian), is nearing completion, and with the support of Susan Boynton, professor of musicology at Columbia University, and a student team affiliated with her Musiconis group, a round of updates to the musical instrument subjects in the Index database is now actively under way. In January 2024, the Index also served as site host for a highly successful conference “The Medieval Multiple,” organized by Sonja Drimmer (University of MassachusettsAmherst) and Ryan Eisenman (University of Pennsylvania).
As always, the research staff of the Index also advanced their individual scholarly work. From
Catherine Fernandez’s talk on A. Kingsley Porter for the Medieval Congress at Kalamazoo to Jessica Savage’s paper on erasure and annotation at the University of Limerick and from Henry Schilb’s essay on epitaphioi for a forthcoming Index volume to the May 2024 publication of Alessia Rossi’s new monograph, Visualizing Christ’s Miracles in Late Byzantium (Cambridge University Press), Index scholars continue to produce, as well as to assess and present, specialized scholarship that advances current understanding of medieval art and its history (Figure 5).
PAMELA PATTON
Pamela Patton worked with A&A graduate student Eddie Maza this spring in a reading course on historiography and methodology in the study of Jewish art in medieval Europe and gave guest lectures in several courses, including ART 100 and ART 400. In 2023, along with PUL collaborators April Armstrong, Mireille Djenno, Mathilde Sauquet, and Eric White, Patton was awarded a Princeton Histories Fund grant for a small exhibition on the Princeton career of Belle da Costa Greene, which will coincide with the major exhibition at the Morgan Library
& Museum in fall 2024. Patton’s publications this year included a catalog essay for the exhibition El Espejo Perdido/The Lost Mirror: Jews and Conversos in Medieval Spain, which opened at the Prado Museum in October 2023; a short article on artistic improvisation in the Cantigas de Santa María in the volume Repenser l’art médiéval: Hommage à Xavier Barral i Altet, edited by Miljenko Jurković, Elisabetta Scirocco, and Arnaud Timbert (IRCLAMA, 2023); and, with coeditor Alessia Rossi, the Index conference volume Out of Bounds: Exploring the Limits of Medieval Art. Along with Diliana Angelova (UC-Berkeley), Patton continues as coeditor of the Princeton-based journal Studies in Iconography: A Journal of Medieval Visual Cultures
Figure 4. Studies in Iconography 45 (2024). Cover design: Medieval Institute Publications
Figure 5. Alessia Rossi, Visualizing Christ’s Miracles in Late Byzantium (2024). Cover design: Cambridge University Press
Cover of the exhibition catalog El Espejo Perdido: Judíos y conversos en España medieval, ed. Joan Molina Figueras (Museo del Prado, 2023)
’ A&A P Section Eight artners
(In)Visible Wild exhibition by students in Professor of Visual Arts Jeff Whetstone s spring 2024 course, “The Visible Wild” (Photo/Jon Sweeney)
Lewis Center for the Arts ⯈
The Program in Visual Arts kicked off the year with a powerful exhibition and performance series, The Movement-Image, in the Hagan Gallery at 185 Nassau Street in October. Curated by Lecturer in Visual Arts Colleen Asper, the series unspooled the motion picture to situate performance in a continuum with film looking across disciplinary divides to a long history of movement. The six artists in the exhibition, Amy Beecher, Xavier Cha, Sahra Motalebi, Maho Ogawa, Will Rawls, and Leila Weefur, view the living body as a force of continuous invention.
Starting the season in the Hurley Gallery at the Lewis Arts complex was Mindscapes Unveiled, an exhibition by Princeton’s Ida B. Wells Just Data Lab 2022–23 Artist-in-Residence Chanika Svetvilas. The culmination of a yearlong project, the show uplifted the individual lived experiences of Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders who have a mental health difference or condition through mapping their survey data about health-care access and stigma. The exhibition and artist’s talk included drawings, video, sculpture, and mixed media and centered accessibility by providing drawings interpreted as relief prints, audio
descriptions, touchable sculptures, captioned videos, docent guides, and ASL interpretation.
Following in the Hurley Gallery, 2022–23 Hodder Fellow sidony o’neal presented The Pudding Butcher. o’neal’s work considers histories of interface in cultural and computational environments.
The annual Open Studios event each November is one the entire community anticipates. Juniors and seniors pursuing a certificate or minor in the Program in Visual Arts or a degree in the Department of Art & Archaeology’s Practice of Art track open their studios to share their works-in-progress with the campus and wider community.
In December the student-run Rah Rah Arts magazine made its debut. Princeton students, alumni, staff, and faculty were invited to submit work in any art form that helps them process the world around them and express their voice. A second edition was published in May.
The spring semester started with a cutting-edge exhibition by artist Josephine Meckseper, Scenario for a Past Future. Meckseper, a former Belknap Visiting Fellow in the Humanities Council and A&A, presented an interactive multimedia installation in the Hurley Gallery. Projected life-size for the first time, her virtual artwork, which is based on 3D virtual models she produced in partnership with the digital arts organization DMINTI and architect Hani Rashid, took visitors inside a modernist glass vitrine inspired by Lilly Reich and Mies van der Rohe’s Barcelona Pavilion and Bruno Taut’s Alpine architecture. Visitors were able to experience and enter the virtual environment in real time at the gallery. A panel within the virtual space of the exhibition featured Meckseper, Rashid, and architectural historian Daniela Fabricius to discuss modernist models for immersive architecture
with which Meckseper engages critically in her work, possibilities and limitations of contemporary digital architecture, and cultural implications of inhabiting digital environments. The exhibition was organized by Brigid Doherty and Jeff Whetstone in collaboration with Meckseper. The panel discussion was cosponsored by the Humanities Council, Center for Digital Humanities, and Program in Media and Modernity.
In February for the annual Book and Poster Show, juniors exhibited their artist’s books made as part of junior seminar and seniors shared posters they designed in senior seminar.
From February through May, 18 seniors presented exhibitions of independent bodies of work. In solo, two-, or three-artist shows, students completing a certificate or majoring in the Practice of Art track exhibited new work that often employed multiple media, combining such elements as photography, sculpture, prints, drawing, sound, performance, video, animation, textiles, and painting to explore a range of issues and ideas.
A highlight of the spring was “The Radical Practice of Black Curation: A Symposium” hosted jointly by the Princeton Collaboratorium for Radical Aesthetics led by Tina Campt, Roger S. Berlind ’52 Professor in the Humanities, and the Park Avenue Armory in New York City. The symposium assembled an influential, emerging transnational group of curators of color to examine the significance of the current conjuncture by reflecting on their collaborative curatorial practice and the ways such collaborations are opening vibrant new spaces in the contemporary art world. The symposium was supported in part by the Terra Foundation for American Art,
Spring 2024 Junior Exhibition (Photo/Jon Sweeney)
the Racial Reckoning in Art and Performance at Yale University, and Princeton’s Department of African American Studies.
In April, juniors exhibited their work in the show they titled A Basement in Cleveland Ohio Two shows concluded the exhibitions season. Students in Jeff Whetstone’s spring course, “The Visible Wild,” shared work from a class that combined visual art with environmental science. Students learned techniques of ecological research and wildlife surveillance photography, using remote trail cameras to document animal populations on and around Princeton’s campus. Through a photographic gaze, the exhibition explored the secret lives of animals and posed questions about humans’ relationships with them.
In late May, Lecturer in Visual Arts
Daniel Heyman presented Flight/ Air/Fire, an installation of 30 paper pulp banners made while he was in residence at the Awagami Paper Factory in Japan. Using traditional techniques with dyed Japanese mulberry and gampi pulp, Heyman created vibrantly colored paper banners in the form of traditional Japanese nobori that, taken as a whole, allude to extreme climate and weather events as a flock of geese navigates a winter storm by the Rhode Island coast.
In the area of film studies, two filmmakers were appointed in April to the faculty: Christopher Harris, whose films and video installations read African American historiography through the poetics and aesthetics of experimental cinema; and Nicolás Pereda,
whose films integrate fiction and documentary to create fractured, elliptical narratives of everyday life. In February, the Program in Visual Arts again partnered with the Thomas Edison Film Festival to present the premiere screening of the 43rd season of the internationally renowned festival. A second screening in March featured three jury-selected films by two Princeton students and an alumnus.
In May five seniors and five juniors screened their independently produced film or video work. Nine Princeton students received awards in the 2024 NJ Young Filmmakers Festival.
In April, of 52 applicants, 29 students were invited into the minor or Practice of Art program.
The 2023–24 academic year culminated with 16 members of the Class of 2024 earning certificates in visual arts and seven earning a degree in A&A's Practice of Art track. Practice of Art major Ayla-Rose Kapili’ulaokekaupoku Naehu-Ramos was one of two recipients of the Lewis Center’s prestigious Toni Morrison Prize, and Practice of Art major Magnolia Wilkinson was one of two recipients of the Action Based Community Engagement Award.
Visual Arts minor Magnus von Zigesar ’25 and Lecturer in Visual Arts Colleen Asper refect on Ziegesar’s self portrait at 2023 VIS Open Studios (Photo/Kirstin Ohrt)
Lecturer in Visual Arts Tim Szetela and Practice of Art major Audrey Zhang ’25 discuss Zhang’s work at 2023 VIS Open Studios (Photo/Kirstin Ohrt)
Marquand Library ⯈
The staff of the Marquand Library are now diligently preparing for the move back to McCormick Hall in 2025. As service to patrons is the primary goal, Marquand is taking this opportunity to make targeted improvements to cataloguing, addressing preservation needs, and accessing the materials in the renowned collection. Marquant continues to acquire new and rare materials, to coordinate over 40 classes a semester (enabling faculty to use the rare collections in teaching), and to provide outreach through participation in exhibitions. This year, for example, Marquand contributed thirty items to the Ulises Carrión: Bookworks and Beyond exhibition in the Ellen and Leonard Milberg Gallery (Firestone Library) (Figure 1) and loaned a rare exhibition catalog to the Barnes Foundation (Philadelphia) for the Sapphic Paris exhibition (fall 2023). Marquand also purchased over 1,200 rare titles. Highlights of Western acquisitions include many illuminated manuscript facsimiles, such as the Hitda Codex (ca. 1000) (Figure 2), featuring a donor portrait of Abbess Hitda of Meschede; Die Maynung des Buchleins (1521), a devotional book with woodcuts of reliefs sculpted by Adam Krafft
to mark the Stages of the Cross followed to the cemetery of St. John’s Church, Nuremberg; two early modern drawing manuals: Jean de Saint-Igny, Elemens de pourtraicture … [1630] and Stefano della Bella, Livre pour apprendre a designer pour les Ieuns Orfevres [1640s]; Giovanni Andrea Moniglia, Ercole in Tebe (1661), a lavish festival book recording a multimedia performance to celebrate the wedding of the Medici rulers of Florence, with illustrations
by Valerio Spada, including one showing Giovanni Buonaccorsi, a renowned enslaved Black singer at the Medici court; Il Gran Teatro di Venezia, a spectacular two-volume album of large-format prints by notable artists, depicting 65 architectural views and 57 early reproductions of major works of Venetian art, commissioned in 1703 by Venetian patricians to publicize civic prosperity but published between 1720 and 1752 by Domenico Lovisa (Figure 3); catalogs of early exhibitions at the Julien Levy Gallery, New York, by Max Ernst (1932), René Magritte (1938), and Joseph Cornell (1933, 1939) from Cornell’s own library; Jean Bruno, Les Misères des Gueux, clandestinely published in 1872, illustrated with 59 wood engravings derived from paintings by the incarcerated Gustave Courbet (Figure 4); Micrographie décorative (1931), an album of photogravures of microphotographs of natural forms, produced by Laure Albin-Guillot as a tribute to her collaboration with her deceased husband, a specialist in microscopy
Figure 1. Juan J. Agius and Ricardio Ocampo, eds., Ulises Carrión: Catalogue
Figure 2. Donor portrait from facsimile of Hitda Codex manuscript, c. 1000–1020
Figure 3. Domenico Lovisa, “Campo di San Zaccaria,” Il Gran Teatro di Venezia … [c. 1720–1752]
(Figure 5); and more than 300 documents from the 1970s–1980s, recording the activities of Centro de Arte y Comunicación (CAYC), the international network of avant-garde artists founded ca. 1968–1969 by Jorge Glusberg in Buenos Aires. Notable acquisitions among Marquand’s Chinese art holdings have included additions to the teaching facsimiles collection, 1930s periodicals, historical architecture of the Lei family archive, late 19th- to early 20th-century photography, contemporary woodblock prints, and contemporary art. Rare evidence of Chinese artists’ reception of and involvement with worldwide modernist art movements is provided in an issue of the journal Yi feng (3.1 [1935]), focusing on Surrealism. Compiled by a group of Chinese Independent Art Association students who were part of the Juelan she, or “Storm Society” movement, the issue published a translation of Breton’s Surrealist Manifesto, several European modernist works, and articles about the art and artists most associated
with the Surrealist movement in Europe. Two contemporary art additions to Marquand’s holdings include the female woodcut artist Guo Shuang’s Fang yang de tong nian (A Carefree Childhood, 2023), a suite of woodcuts taking an intimate look at the modern-day lived experience of rural China; and Liu Zheng’s Jing meng/Dream Shock (2008) (Figure 6), a follow-up to his series “The Chinese” that foregrounds the topics of sex and death through the lens of bodily narrative and visual politics, in which he stages “historical” events, legends, and folkloric tales in tableaux-like reenactments.
Exciting news! Marquand Library has received approval to mount a major exhibition of its collection of Japanese rare illustrated books. Slated for spring 2026, The Art of Japanese Publishing: A Selection of Books from the Collection of Marquand Library, 1660–1960, will be on view in the Milberg Gallery (Firestone Library) and feature 300 years of important published works of art. Important acquisitions to the Japanese rare book collection
this year included Hyakunin jorō shinasadame (One Hundred Women Classified According to Their Rank ) (1723) by the renowned artist Nishikawa Sukenobu and two works by Kitagawa Utamaro: Fugenzō (Statue of the Bodhisattva Fugen) (1790) and Ehon toko no ume (Picture Book: Plum of the Bed Chamber) (1800). Much of the collecting focus was on early 20th-century material and included a set of four design books (1905–1907) by Furuya Kōrin (Figure 7) and several interesting items related to the Tōkaidō Road, such as Hiroshige ga gojūsantsugi genjō shashin taishō (Hiroshige's Fifty-Three Stations of the Tokaido and Corresponding Taisho Era Photographs) (1918).
Subscribe to Marquand’s blog ReMarquable marquandrarebooks.princeton. edu for highlights of new acquisitions and other notable titles in the rare book collection.
Figure 4. Les Misères des Gueux [par] Jean Bruno (1872), wood engraving by Fortuné Méaulle after Gustave Courbet
Figure 5. Laure Albin-Guillot, Micrographie décorative (1931), pl. XIV “Saligenin”
Figure 6. Liu Zheng, “Bei wuru de funümen” (Women being dishonored [reimagined], 2001), after Dream Shock/Jing meng (2008)
Figure 7. Furuya Kōrin, Date moyo hana-tsukushi (Compilation of Flamboyant Flower Patterns ) (1905)
Ulises Carrión: Bookworks and Beyond ⯈
The Ulises Carrión: Bookworks and Beyond exhibition at Firestone Library’s Ellen and Leonard Milberg Gallery in spring 2024, co-curated by recent Ph.D. graduate Javier Rivero Ramos *23 with Princeton University Library’s Metadata Librarian for Special Collections Sal Hamerman, struck a chord with students and faculty alike. Professor Irene Small, who mentored Ramos, explored the exhibition with students in her spring 2024 course HUM 328 “Language to Be Looked At” and led a panel discussion on the exhibition.
Mexican-born artist Ulises Carrión Bogard reconceived the book as a fundamentally collaborative work that is at once material, symbolic, and social. “Carrión was interdisciplinary before that was a thing,” said Rivero Ramos, whose dissertation was focused on mail art. Carrión’s practice included artists’ books, mail art, sound poetry, performance, curating, and archiving.
Representing the largest U.S. retrospective exhibition of his
work to date, Carrión included several iconic objects purchased specifically for the exhibition and featuring holdings drawn from the Marquand Library of Art & Archaeology and PUL’s Special Collections.
“When you organize a show,” said Rivero Ramos, “you kind of stir the bottom of the water, and more things come to the surface. … You create a moment that you hope will galvanize the career of an artist. We already had a substantial collection. And now it’s really expanded.” Students of Small’s course enjoyed special access to the exhibition, which left an indelible impression. “After we went to the Ulises Carrión exhibit in class, I found myself going back the following week because I couldn’t stop thinking about the art,” said English major with minors in creative writing and music composition Cassadie Royalty ’25. Luke Shannon ’24, a computer science major with a minor in visual arts, said he felt a pronounced connection to the objects in the exhibition. “I was most surprised
by how relevant the Ulises Carrión exhibition felt to me right now,” he said, “and how mail art brought new perspectives to our networked condition today.”
The interdisciplinarity of Carrión reverberated through Small’s course, which was born from a seed grant from the Humanities Council and extended beyond art history and English, delving into the disciplines of linguistics, history, philosophy, music, and sociology, to name a few. “My first love was modernist poetry,” said Small, “but now, as an art historian, I am far more attentive to the materiality of language at a visual and pictorial level. I’m even more fascinated by the way language penetrates into the structure of works of art.”
On March 6, 2024, A&A cosponsored a discussion on the exhibition in the Chancellor Green Rotunda moderated by Small with Zanna Gilbert, Senior Research Specialist at the Getty Research Institute, and Mónica de la Torre, Distinguished Lecturer and Chair in Literature at Brooklyn College, joining Hamerman on the panel. Examining Carrión through each panelist’s uniquely tuned lens made for a rich discussion of his innovative work; the panel explored Carrión as a mediator of interactions with books, a pivotal figure in the mail art movement, and a cultural revolutionary waging war on literature.
Concluding the discussion, Small pointed out the irony of exhibiting Carrión’s work at the sort of elite institution he may have done battle with. “How do we not make it a ‘cemetery for books,’ as Carrión put it?” she challenged, underscoring the importance of taking in Firestone Library’s exhibition and, thereafter, making use of its remarkable collections—like this one.
Co-curators Sal Hamerman and Javier Rivero Ramos at exhibition opening (Photo/Brandon Johnson, Princeton University Library)
Princeton University Art Museum ⯈
Walking around the construction site for the new Museum in the heart of campus, it becomes easier almost by the day to envision the new 144,000-square-foot building as it will function beginning in fall 2025. The building’s nine pavilions are now fully enclosed, while inside the architectural features which characterize this new Museum—from heavy timber roofing beams to terrazzo and hardwood flooring—are also being fleshed out. From the multipurpose Grand Hall to light-filled galleries to object study rooms, state-ofthe-art conservation labs, and the Museum’s first restaurant, the anticipated substantial completion of construction in September 2024 means that more and more of the long-planned details are coming into view, for the benefit of A&A students and indeed all Princeton students for generations to come.
Boasting six object study rooms, the new Museum will provide more students and faculty than ever before the opportunity to examine objects from our globe-spanning collections. Two creativity labs will be outfitted as spaces for artmaking, allowing for hands-on creative practice under the auspices of a multitalented studio manager inside
the Museum walls. Two lecture halls—one large (the Grand Hall) and one smaller seating 65—two seminar rooms, and conservation labs supporting the treatment of paintings, objects, and works on paper round out the Museum’s spaces devoted to teaching, learning, and research.
Even as construction and exhibition planning continue apace, the Museum’s engagement with current students and faculty grows.
In 2023–24, 70 University professors from 39 different departments made over 250 visits to Museum spaces. Collectively these University visitors examined over 4,600 objects from our ever-growing global collections that now number more than 115,000 objects. Extended hours in our off-site classroom, the continued use of an object classroom in Firestone Library, and a strong roster of courses taught by Museum staff and faculty continue to make heavy use of collections objects in teaching even during the years of construction. For example, in fall 2023, Katherine Bussard taught a new course titled “Photography of Violence and the Violence of Photography,” while in spring 2024, Bryan Just taught a survey of Olmec art, which included
architecture and monumental sculpture, ceramic vessels and figurines, and small-scale sculpture in jade and other precious materials.
The Museum welcomed faculty and students into our two downtown gallery spaces again this year with a vigorous schedule of exhibitions. Opening in our photo-forward gallery space Art on Hulfish in August 2023 was Art about Art: Contemporary Photographers Look at Old Master Paintings, a particular favorite for its reimagining of canonical works by early modern European artists. Multiple Exposures, a survey of the photography of Los Angeles–based Christina Fernandez, opened in Art on Hulfish in spring 2024. The series of layered black-and-white works that inspired the title of the exhibition, Untitled Multiple Exposures (1999), appropriates images taken by modernist photographers such as Manuel Álvarez Bravo. These connections and others were impactful in a variety of University courses, including Monica Bravo’s course on Mexican Modernism.
At Art@Bainbridge, Cycle of Creativity: Alison Saar and the Toni Morrison Papers brought
Perrin Lathrop, assistant curator of African art, leads undergraduate students in a conversation about the ethics of looking and issues concerning restitution and repatriation in an event organized by the Art Museum Student Advisory Board (Photo/Kirstin Ohrt)
Princeton University Art Museum
sculpture, prints, and paintings by the mixed-media artist Alison Saar into conversation with the work of Toni Morrison, whose papers from her career as a novelist, essayist, playwright, professor, and editor are held in the Princeton University Library. Princeton students know well that access to an archive such as Morrison’s is an invaluable opportunity for primary research. This year, the Museum became home to another important archive: the photographic archive of Professor Emeritus Emmet Gowin, who was recruited to Princeton by Peter Bunnell, then the inaugural David Hunter McAlpin Professor of the History of Photography and Modern Art and subsequently director of the art museum. This is the Museum's first acquisition of a photographic collection since Bunnell’s tenure. With materials that span six decades of Gowin’s career, his photographic archive will continue to grow as the artist produces new work. The Gowin archive joins the Museum’s existing archival holdings of notable photographers Clarence H. White, Minor White, and Ruth Bernhard. The Museum’s wider acquisition program continues to grow at a
rapid pace as we approach the end of construction. Among this year’s noteworthy acquisitions are a magnificent pair of six-panel folding screens from 17th-century Japan. Titled Scenes in the Entertainment District, the screens are rare surviving examples of early Edo ukio-e, or “pictures of the floating world,” painting. Andrew Watsky accompanied Museum director James Steward and Zoe Kwok in fall 2023 to visit dealers in Kyoto and Tokyo with an eye to enhancing the Museum’s holdings of Japanese art. The trip was a resounding success, resulting in multiple acquisitions that continue the process of elevating the richness of the Museum’s Japanese holdings—a process sure to continue now that Kit Brooks has joined the Museum as assistant curator of Asian art, with a specialization in Japan. Among other collaborative highlights this year, thanks to the Laura P. Hall Memorial Fund and with leadership
and advocacy from A&A professor Bridget Alsdorf, the Museum also acquired an extraordinary Georges Seurat drawing of a fragment of the Parthenon frieze. Acquisitions such as these enrich the object-based study that remains a hallmark of a Princeton education—one of the many reasons that curators and faculty all look forward to the new Museum coming to fruition.
As the collections grow, so does our curatorial expertise. In addition to Kit Brooks, who joined us in May, Carolyn Laferrière, now in her second academic year with the Museum, was recently promoted to associate curator of Ancient Mediterranean Art. Meanwhile, global searches are well underway for our next Haskell Curator of Modern and Contemporary Art and for the first Curator of Provenance, a new position created to advance the Museum’s deep commitment to understanding the history of the objects within its care.
Artist Christina Fernandez gave a tour to Monica Bravo and her ART 273 students in her exhibition Christina Fernandez: Multiple Exposures at Art on Hulfsh (Photo/Kristina Giasi)
Emmet and Edith Gowin visit James Steward and Katherine Bussard at Green Hall (Photo/ Joseph Hu)
P Section One tion N eople ine
Catherine Fernandez, honored in 2024 for 10 years of service
(Photo/Pamela Patton)
Marilyn Hansen Retires after 42 Years in A&A
A ballerina, artist, rodeo rider, harpsichordist, motorcyclist, and former Pan Am flight attendant, Marilyn Hansen is, in the words of Professor Thomas DaCosta Kaufmann, “a Renaissance woman.”
A colleague since Hansen began her A&A career, Kaufmann recalls “how helpful she has always been and how many classes of mine she has rescued.”
Hansen landed in A&A shortly after college, a contemporary of the graduate students in the department, who would include Professor Andy Watsky and Dora Ching. “I have enjoyed a friendship with Marilyn since my grad student days in the department in the 1980s,” Watsky said, “and working with her after I returned to Princeton in 2008 to teach has been a great pleasure—she was always a welcome presence in every lecture course I’ve taught at Princeton, fixing the projection problems that inevitably arise and making my classes run smoothly, always with a smile.”
Having majored in art, Hansen had an inclination toward art history
from the start with a particular love of the Pre-Raphaelites. She was hired as a “projectionist,” tasked with placing lantern slides into four projectors at a time “like an octopus!” “I was in every classroom, all day long,” she said, describing the work environment as “very gentlemanly” in those days, though not without its comic relief. For April Fools’ Day, Hansen would insert rogue slides into the projector when Professor John Wilmerding wasn’t looking, to the delight of the students, and remove them before he could catch her. “After a while they all got to know I might be pulling a trick, so Wilmerding would say ‘Marilyn, no funny business,’” she said. “I’d still stick his head on an Adonis or a Campbell Soup can.”
Throughout her long career, Hansen has maintained the activities she thrives on. A ballerina accepted to the NY School of Ballet, Hansen danced for Princeton Ballet for over two decades, and even shared the stage at the Metropolitan Ballet with Mikhail Baryshnikov and Rudolf Nureyev. Hansen looks forward
to having more time to create art; she describes her work as gentle and romantic in a harmonious palette. A lifelong equestrian, Hansen learned both English style riding and jumping as well as her favorite, western rodeo, with her horse, Carmela. She also loves to ride “Lolita,” her Honda Shadow Aero motorcycle ornamented with Swarovski crystal along with her own hand-painted designs and in her care since 2007.
In addition to nurturing her diverse passions, she has fostered the friendship with her French pen pal since she was 12, visiting her in Paris annually for over 30 years. She’s saved a rock from McCormick Hall and will be taking home “Medusa,” the cactus Professor Gillett Griffin gifted a coworker over 40 years ago that Hansen has been tending since.
If there’s a leitmotif running through these many years, it’s that Hansen hangs on to what she loves. “It’s been an amazing, wild ride,” she said. “I identify with this place, and I won’t be a stranger.”
Marilyn Hansen with her cactus “Medusa” (Photo/Kirstin Ohrt) Colleagues celebrated Marilyn Hansen’s retirement with a festive lunch (Photo/John Blazejewski)
A&A Staff Recognized for Years of Dedicated Service
Princeton honored A&A staff members in recognition of their combine 85 years of service!
Congratulations to :
MARILYN HANSEN, media specialist and image data technician: 40 YEARS
JULIE ANGARONE, computing support specialist: 25 YEARS
CATHERINE FERNANDEZ, art history specialist: 10 YEARS
MICHELE MAZERIS, senior image collections specialist: 10 YEARS
From left: Julie Angarone and Marilyn Hansen (Photo/Nathan Arrington)
From left: Pamela Patton and Catherine Fernandez (Photo/Nathan Arrington)
People ⯈
Faculty
Bridget Alsdorf
Anna Arabindan-Kesson
Nathan Arrington
Charlie Barber
Basile Baudez
Monica Bravo
Tina M. Campt
Rachael Z. DeLue
Brigid Doherty
Hal Foster
Samuel Holzman
Thomas DaCosta Kaufmann
Beatrice Kitzinger
Michael Koortbojian
Carolina Mangone
Chika Okeke-Agulu
Irene V. Small
Cheng-hua Wang
Andrew M. Watsky
Carolyn Yerkes
Visiting Faculty
Christine Göttler
Lecturer with Rank of Professor
James Steward
Lecturers
Ronni Baer
Mateusz Falkowski
Caroline I. Harris
Janna Israel
Janet Kay
Lucy Partman
Sucharita Ray
Alan M. Stahl
Eleni Stavroulaki
Danai Thomaidis
Veronica White
Researchers
Annemarie Iker*
AnnMarie Perl*
Alanna S. Radlo-Dzur*
Nomi Schneck*
Jessica Williams Stark*
The Index of Medieval Art
Fiona Barrett
Catherine Fernandez
Jon Niola
Pamela Patton
Maria Alessia Rossi
Jessica Savage
Henry Schilb*
Marquand Library
Nicola J. Shilliam
Tang Center for East Asian Art
Dora C. Y. Ching
Visual Resources
John Blazejewski
Yichin Chen
Julia Gearhart
Leigh Anne Lieberman
Michele Mazeris
Administrative Staff
Julie Angarone
Silvana Bishop (Temporary)
Stacey Bonette
Mo Chen
Jonathan Finnerty
Marilyn Hansen
Maureen Killeen (Until March 2024)
Jennifer D. Loessy (Beginning May 2024)
Gina Migliaccio-Bilinski
Barbara Mooring (Temporary)
Kirstin Ohrt * Also Lecturer
In the Nation’s Service and the Service of Humanity
In compliance with Title IX of the Education Amendments of 1972, Section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act of 1973, and other federal, state, and local laws, Princeton University does not discriminate on the basis of age, race, color, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity or expression, religion, national or ethnic origin, disability, or status as a disabled or Vietnam era veteran in any phase of its employment process; in any phase of its admission or financial aid programs; or other aspects of its educational programs or activities. The associate provost is the individual designated by the University to coordinate its efforts to comply with Title IX, Section 504 and other equal opportunity and affirmative action regulations and laws. Questions or concerns regarding Title IX, Section 504 or other aspects of Princeton’s equal opportunity or affirmative action programs, should be directed to Michele Minter, Vice Provost for Institutional Equity and Diversity, Princeton University, 205 Nassau Hall, Princeton, NJ 08544 or 609-258-6110. Further, inquiries about the application of Title IX and its supporting regulations may also be directed to the Assistant Secretary for Civil Rights, Office for Civil Rights, U.S. Department of Education.
Front cover
Leela DuBois ’26 examines artifacts excavated in Antioch in Princeton University Art Museum’s collection (Photo Kirstin Ohrt)
Contents page
Professor Basile Baudez and students examine manuscripts in the Marquand Library rare books collection in ART 341/ARC 341 “Neo Architectures: Architecture and its past, from the Renaissance to Postmodernism” (Photo/ Kirstin Ohrt)
Back cover
Professors Beatrice Kitzinger and Charlie Barber examine a work in the Africa and Byzantium exhibition at the Metropolitan Museum of Art (Photo/ John Blazejewski)
