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With a gift from an anonymous donor, Columbia University has established the Howard McP. Davis Professorship of Art History. The professorship honoring Davis, a respected scholar and longtime Columbia teacher of Renaissance art, will support a Columbia art historian of European art and architecture in the period from 1300 to 1700.
Michael Cole, professor and chair of the Department of Art History and Archeology, is the first Davis Professor of Art History.
Avinoam Shalem has been appointed the 24th Director of the American Academy in Rome. The appointment, which is based in Rome, will begin in July 2020.
"I very much look forward to continuing the Academy’s long tradition of promoting innovative thinking," Shalem said, "by encouraging an interdisciplinary approach that examines in-between zones, such as those between art and art history, history and prose, music and philosophy, and architecture and archaeology."
Founded in 1894, the American Academy in Rome is a leading international center for independent study and advanced research…
“Things are apart and you bring them together for strength”
-Workshop artist, September 2019
On January 23, 2020, Art X Social Justice opened their inaugural exhibition Stories in Paper on the eighth and ninth floors of Schermerhorn Hall. The artworks were made by incarcerated artists in a series of six workshops conducted within New York State’s prison system in fall 2019. Laura Betancur, Expressive Arts Therapist and El Museo del Barrio educator, led the workshops with the assistance of graduate students from the Department of Art History and Archaeology. …
The Media Center for Art History is delighted to announce that it is the recipient of a two-year Digital Art History grant from the Samuel H. Kress Foundation for the digitization and online dissemination of the Columbia University Department of Art History and Archaeology’s Photograph Collection. The collection contains over 105,000 photographic prints collected by the department’s Visual Resources Center starting in the early 20th century.
Professor Emeritus Stephen Murray received an honorary doctorate from the University of Picardy, Jules Verne in northern France. The honor celebrated the university's fiftieth anniversary and the eight hundredth birthday of the Gothic cathedral of Amiens. Murray, who has written three books on Amiens Cathedral, is the first American scholar to receive such an honor from the University of Picardy.
Denise Murrell will hold the newly created full-time position of associate curator for 19th and 20th century art. Her appointment is one of the first hires made by the Met’s director, Max Hollein. Read more about Denise in the New York Times's profile of Max Hollein.
Three Mellon Postdoctoral Teaching Fellowships/Lectureships will be offered in the Department of Art History and Archaeology at Columbia University for a period of two years beginning July 1, 2020. PhD or equivalent required. The degree must have been awarded between July 1, 2018 and June 30, 2020. Specialization may be in any field of art history. In addition to conducting their own research, Mellon Fellows/Lecturers teach Art Humanities. In the second year, they have the option of teaching an undergraduate seminar in their own field of specialization in lieu of one semester of Art Humanities…
The Department of Art History and Archaeology at Columbia University invites applications for an open rank position (Assistant, Associate, or Full Professor) in Art History with an emphasis on LGBTQ art practices, theories, methodologies, and/or movements, including feminist and queer theory, intersectionality, and trans studies. Scholars working in any geographic or historic context are encouraged to apply. Successful candidates will be expected to have and maintain a strong research agenda, demonstrate a commitment to graduate and undergraduate teaching and mentoring, and participate in interdisciplinary…
Meredith Gamer has been selected as one of the two recipients of the 2018-2019 Columbia University Faculty Mentoring Award. The Arts and Sciences Graduate Council (ASGC) instituted this award in 2004 to commemorate excellence in the mentoring of PhD and Masters (MA) students.
The Center for Comparative Media, the newest center in the Division of Humanities, has launched their website. Announcements, information about upcoming events, and associated courses are now available at comparativemedia.columbia.edu.
The Center, directed by Noam Elcott (AHAR) and Brian Larkin (Anthropology, Barnard), "gathers scholars and students from diverse disciplines to map and interrogate our mediated world across expanses of time (history and archaeology), space (globalization), and across diverse media technologies and techniques from ancient scripts and contemporary…
Posing Modernity at the Wallach Art Gallery, which started as Denise Murrell's 2013 PhD dissertation, is now expanded at the Paris Musée d'Orsay as Le modèle noir and is being hailed by French national media as a cultural break-through.
Le modèle noir has been featured in:
- The Washington Post
- CNN
- Vanity Fair (French)
- Huffington Post (French)
- La Croix (French)
- Les Voix du Monde (French)
- l'Humanité (French)
- Le Point (French)
- Le Point (French)
- Libération (French)
- France Culture (French)…
Anne Higgonet was awarded a Radcliffe Institute fellowship for 2019-20 and will spend the year at Harvard University. The Radcliffe Institute Fellowship Program annually selects and supports 50 leading artists and scholars who have both exceptional promise and demonstrated accomplishments.
Zainab Bahrani has been named a 2019 Andrew Carnegie Fellow. Bahrani is the first Columbia University faculty member to win this prestigious Fellowship. Each year the Andrew Carnegie Fellows program awards grants to a select group of extraordinary scholars and writers whose groundbreaking work decodes some of the world’s most intractable problems. Bahrani has focused her work in the area of monument preservation, conservation, and the politics of cultural heritage. Since 2003, Bahrani has written widely on the destruction of the cultural heritage of Iraq.
Kellie Jones was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences as part of its 239th class. Membership in the Academy honors the outstanding achievements of individuals in academia, the arts, business, government, and public affairs. According to David W. Oxtoby, President of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, "With the election of these members, the Academy upholds the ideals of research and scholarship, creativity and imagination, intellectual exchange and civil discourse, and the relentless pursuit of knowledge in all its forms."
Learn more about the The Euretta J. Kellett Fellowship here.
The College Art Association announced today the recipients and finalists of the 2019 Awards for Distinction. Zeynep Çelik Alexander's book, Kinaesthetic Knowing: Aesthetics, Epistemology, Modern Design, will be awarded the Charles Rufus Morey Book Award at the convocation of the College Art Association Annual Conference in New York, Wednesday, February 13.
Avinoam Shalem has been named a Getty Guest Scholar at the Getty Research Institute during the Spring 2019 semester. Every year since 1985 the Research Institute has invited scholars, artists, and other cultural figures from around the world to work in residence at the Institute on projects that bear upon its annual research theme; the 2018-19 academic year will be devoted to "monumentality." While in residence, Scholars pursue their own research projects, make use of Getty collections, and participate in the intellectual life of the Getty Center and the Getty Villa…
Barry Bergdoll (Columbia University) and Jean-Philippe Garric (Université Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne) were selected as grantees in the Alliance Program's 2018 call for Joint Projects for their project “Overlapping perspectives on an artistic correspondence: editing the Roman letters of Léon and A.L.T. Vaudoyer (1826-32)”.
Their project aims to prepare a critical edition of this correspondence by bringing together a scholarly world as vibrant and interdisciplinary as the world’s described by the Vaudoyers. Historians of architecture, of archaeology, of language,…
David Freedberg received the Sigillum Magnum of the University of Bologna, the highest honour of the Alma Mater, from Rector Francesco Ubertini on October 10, 2018. The event is presented in collaboration with Genus Bononiae - Musei nella Città and the Accademia Nazionale di Agricoltura di Bologna, which will give him the title of Honorary Academician.
Read more from the University of Bologna.
In Artificial Darkness: An Obscure History of Modern Art and Media, Elcott explores how artificial darkness shaped modern art, film, and media, and addresses seminal and obscure works alongside their sites of production - such as photography darkrooms, film studios, and laboratories - and their sites of reception. Artificial Darkness won the Society for Cinema and Media Studies (SCMS) Anne Friedberg Innovative Scholarship Award and was a finalist for the Modernist Studies Association First Book Prize.
Jones will be a senior consultant to the recently-announced African American Art History Initiative, through the Getty Research Institute. The Initiative's first major acquisition is the papers of assemblage artist Betye Saar.
“The Getty is telling the world, through its actions, that American art has many facets,” said Jones. “The Getty has set out to create benchmarks and expand the field of art history. This initiative and its focus on archives is another approach to embracing a bigger idea of what art history is, by creating an important repository that will greatly impact the…
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This award will support a study of historic gardens in Suzhou, China, and Seoul, Korea as part of his research project, "Nature in Cities: Urban Gardens in Pre-Modern East Asia." The field research will contribute to a book project examining the relationship between eighteenth-century imperial gardens in Beijing, urban gardens in China’s Lower Yangzi region, and royal gardens of Korea’s late Joseon dynasty. The research will also help him develop an undergraduate travel seminar on urban gardens in pre-modern East Asia.
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Kellie Jones's book Mickalene Thomas, co-authored with Roxane Gay and Mickalene Thomas, was named one of the Best Black Art Books of 2022 by Culture Type. The book is the first comprehensive monograph dedicated to Thomas's work.
Julia Bryan-Wilson has been named a 2024 Visiting Scholar by the Phi Beta Kappa Society. The mission of The Phi Beta Kappa Society is to champion education in the liberal arts and sciences, foster freedom of thought, and recognize academic excellence.
Professor Emerita Vidya Dehejia is one of two recipients of the 2023 Freer medals from the National Museum of Asian Art. Read more about the Freer Medal and this year's recipients on the Smithsonian's website.
The award ceremony honoring Professor Dehejia will be held in April:
Freer Medal Lecture and Award Ceremony: Honoring Vidya Dehejia
April 28, 2023, from 6–8 p.m. EST at the Freer Gallery of Art
Tickets are free, and registration is required here.
The Media Center for Art History is delighted to announce that it is the recipient of a two-year Digital Art History grant from the Samuel H. Kress Foundation for the digitization and online dissemination of the Columbia University Department of Art History and Archaeology’s Lantern Slide Collection. The collection contains approximately 77,000 glass lantern slides collected by the department starting in the early 20th century. An important image resource, the collection offers a glimpse into the early years of the department, not only containing rare photographs of art, architecture, and archaeological…
Julia Bryan-Wilson, Professor Contemporary Art and LBGTQ+ Theory
Subhashini Kaligotla, Barbara Stoler Miller Associate Professor of Indian and South Asian Art
Barry Bergdoll has won an Arthur Ross Award for Excellence in the Classical Tradition, for History and Writing, from the Institute of Classical Architecture and Art.
This May, he received an honorary doctorate from the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT) in Germany.
Bergdoll was also elected a Fellow of the Guild Hall Academy of the Arts. The Academy’s members mentor younger artists in the community, with the intention of extending the legacy of the Hamptons as one of the country’s most storied art colonies.
Please visit the Wallach website for more information about the shows Living With Ghosts and A.K. Burns' Negative Space: Prepositions of the Future.
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Barry Bergdoll has won an Arthur Ross Award for Excellence in the Classical Tradition, for History and Writing, from the Institute of Classical Architecture and Art.
This May, he received an honorary doctorate from the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT) in Germany.
Bergdoll was also elected a Fellow of the Guild Hall Academy of the Arts. The Academy’s members mentor younger artists in the community, with the intention of extending the legacy of the Hamptons as one of the country’s most storied art colonies.
Please visit the Wallach website for more information about the shows Living With Ghosts and A.K. Burns' Negative Space: Prepositions of the Future.
The Department of Art History and Archaeology is pleased to announce the formation of the Arts and Race Critical Collective (ARCC), a graduate student-led initiative that aims to build sustainable networks and promote academic advancement for students of color. Click here for more information about the ARCC.
For more information, please visit the Society of Columbia Graduates.
Nicole Meily is one of three recipients of the 2021 Chinweike Okegbe Service Award. This award (formerly GSAC Service Award) is presented annually by the Arts and Sciences Graduate Council to three members of the GSAS community (students and non-students) for service to the Columbia graduate community. This award is a student initiative; selections are made entirely by graduate student representatives from GSAS based on student nomination letters spanning across all disciplines. The nomination letters submitted on Nicole's behalf emphasized her dedication to the graduate students in Art History…
El arte antes de la historia: Para una historia del arte antiguo andino (or, Art before History: Toward a History of Ancient Andean Art) addresses the methodological stakes and intellectual potential for writing the history of art in an era of world history without textual archives.
Michael Cole's newest book, Sofonisba's Lesson: A Renaissance Artist and Her Work, was reviewed in the London Review of Books.
Holger A. Klein has written an op-ed piece for the Art Newspaper, Why we should be concerned about President Erdogan turning museums into mosques.
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This award will support a study of historic gardens in Suzhou, China, and Seoul, Korea as part of his research project, "Nature in Cities: Urban Gardens in Pre-Modern East Asia." The field research will contribute to a book project examining the relationship between eighteenth-century imperial gardens in Beijing, urban gardens in China’s Lower Yangzi region, and royal gardens of Korea’s late Joseon dynasty. The research will also help him develop an undergraduate travel seminar on urban gardens in pre-modern East Asia.
Eleonora Pistis, Associate Professor of Art History and Archaeology, is the winner of the 2025 Berger Prize, the leading book prize in the field of British art history.
Her study—Architecture of Knowledge: Hawksmoor and Oxford (London/Turnhout: Harvey Miller Publishers, 2024)—has been defined by the Chair of the judging panel as “A rare example of true interdisciplinarity,” a one that “breaks new ground in the field of intellectual history as well as architectural history.
this month dynamic
This award will support a study of historic gardens in Suzhou, China, and Seoul, Korea as part of his research project, "Nature in Cities: Urban Gardens in Pre-Modern East Asia." The field research will contribute to a book project examining the relationship between eighteenth-century imperial gardens in Beijing, urban gardens in China’s Lower Yangzi region, and royal gardens of Korea’s late Joseon dynasty. The research will also help him develop an undergraduate travel seminar on urban gardens in pre-modern East Asia.
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Jin Xu was Awarded the Early Career Scholarship Support Grant by Columbia University Faculty Advancement
This award will support a study of historic gardens in Suzhou, China, and Seoul, Korea as part of his research project, "Nature in Cities: Urban Gardens in Pre-Modern East Asia." The field research will contribute to a book project examining the relationship between eighteenth-century imperial gardens in Beijing, urban gardens in China’s Lower Yangzi region, and royal gardens of Korea’s late Joseon dynasty. The research will also help him develop an undergraduate travel seminar on urban gardens in pre-modern East Asia.
Zainab Bahrani is the winner of the 2025 CAA/American Institute for Conservation Award for Distinction in Scholarship and Conservation
Eleonora Pistis' book Architecture of Knowledge wins the prestigious 2025 Berger Prize
Eleonora Pistis, Associate Professor of Art History and Archaeology, is the winner of the 2025 Berger Prize, the leading book prize in the field of British art history.
Her study—Architecture of Knowledge: Hawksmoor and Oxford (London/Turnhout: Harvey Miller Publishers, 2024)—has been defined by the Chair of the judging panel as “A rare example of true interdisciplinarity,” a one that “breaks new ground in the field of intellectual history as well as architectural history.