Riggio Summer Research Grant
Through the generous support of the Riggio Fund for Undergraduate Education, the department is able to offer summer research travel grants intended to facilitate the preparation of a Senior Thesis project during the summer before senior year. These competitive grants can be used for domestic and international travel to art collections, archives, architectural sites, monuments, and other places of interest, CU policy permitting.
To apply, students must complete and submit the following application with the required attachments and advisor signature as a COMBINED PDF to the Undergraduate Program Coordinator. The due date for students intending to write a Senior Thesis in 2026–27 is Monday, April 20, 2026.
Riggio Summer Research Grant Application
- Research proposal of ~750 words
- Itinerary and itemized budget
- A letter of recommendation must be emailed separately by a Barnard or Columbia faculty member in art history
- Liam Downey, CC '26 to research narrative paintings that depict the American West.
- Danielle Sung, CC '26 to research Lee Miller's wartime photographs in England.
- Georgina Brainerd, CC '25 to research Early Modern religious paintings in Bologna.
- Yadira Castillo, CC '25 to research the Mesoamerican galleries at the British Museum.
- Sara Coffield, GS '25 to research the work of Ferdinando Bibiena in Italy and Austria.
- Ethan Furdak, CC '25 to research Renaissance ecclesiastical architecture in Italy.
- Julian Hernandez, CC '25 to research Mexica sculpture in Mexico City.
- Chimene Keys, CC '25 to research contemporary arts exchange between Africa and China in Beijing and Hong Kong.
- Sylvi Stein, CC '25 to research Earthworks in Ann Arbor, Cincinnati, and Salt Lake City.
- Dominic Wiharso, CC '25 to research the works of Ashley Bickerton in Indonesia and Juan Davila in Australia.
- Isabel Schmidt, CC ’24 to research Japanese and American collecting in Tokyo, Osaka, and Boston.
- Jacqueline Yu, CC ’24 to research the National Museum of Western Art (NMWA) in Tokyo.
- Lisa Yuxin Chen, CC ’23 to research Yuan dynasty art collections in cities across the United States.
- Arrietty Ji, CC ’23 to research the works of architect Isozaki Arata in Tokyo.
- Sonia Kahn, CC ’23 to research the ways in which photographic practices impacted the work of late 19th– and early 20th–century modernist art movements in France.
- Lilly Jean Cao, CC ’22 to research site-specific commissions by Jenny Holzer and Julie Mehretu in New York.
- Alex Foo, GS ’21 to research Venetian sculptor Alessandro Vittoria.
- Bryn Evans, CC ’21 to research representations of divine and vernacular landscapes via Southern Black art traditions.
- Grace Corton, GS ’21 to research American surrealist painter Kay Sage.
- Kennedy Roese GS ’21 to research the contemporary role of performance and its return to the museum.
- Thomas Saenz, CC ’21 to research the Chicano mural art movement of the 1970s and 1980s.
- Clara Apostolatos, CC ’20 to research the works of conceptual and performance artist Teresa Margolles in Mexico City and Venice.
- Haena Chu, CC ’20 to research the works of artist Lee Bul in Seoul.
- Rosie Hausmann, GS ’20 to research sixteenth-century architectural preservation techniques in Paris.
- Jung Kim, CC ’20 to research works of Anselm Keifer in Scotland and Germany.
- Trinity Lester, CC ’20 to research the archives of Hilma af Klint, Louise Bourgeois, and Agnes Martin in New York, Amsterdam, and Taos, New Mexico.
- Owen Monroe, CC ’20 to research the photographs and archives of Francis Frith in London and Dorset.
- Mia Nicenko, CC ’20 to research the paintings of Catharina von Hemessen in England and Belgium.
- Natasha Coleman, CC ’19 to research ancient tomb sites in China.
- Alexandra Germer, CC ’19 to research exhibition archives in Kassel, Germany.
- Emerson Jones, CC ’19 to research the architecture firm Mewès and Davis in England.
- Nicole-Ann Lobo, CC ’19 to research Francis Newton Souza’s years in London.
- Kellie Zhao, CC ’19 to research mausoleum sites in Eastern Europe.
- Adam J. Elkhadem, CC ’18 to research the late classical sculpture of Skopas of Paros in Greece.
- Diana Winfield Luber, CC ’18 to research the cultural and artistic exchange of Medieval Islamic Spain.
- Amber Noé, CC ’18 to research Willem de Kooning's lithographs in Japan.
- Alicia Schleifman, CC ’18 to research the paintings of Ed Ruscha in Los Angeles.
- Iphigenia Seong, CC ’18 to research the works of Nam June Paik in South Korea.
- Sam Velasquez, CC ’18 to research the works of Oswaldo Guayasamín in Ecuador.
- Benjamin Philip Davidoff, CC ’17 to research the architecture of ancient synagogues in Israel, Turkey, and Italy.
- Geon Woo Lee, CC ’17 to research modern architect Kim Swoo Geun in Korea.
- Elizabeth Monroe, CC ’17 to research contemporary artist Mark Bradford in New Orleans.
- Isabella Rosner, CC ’17 to research nineteenth-century needlework in England and Massachusetts.
- Eleanor Crimmins Goerss, CC ’16 to research the aesthetics of religious identity in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries in the Netherlands.
- Aidan Timothy Mehigan, CC ’16 to research Pietro Belluschi at the Oregon Historical Society in Portland.
- Sarah Bell, GS ’15 to research the Jackson House in Portsmouth, New Hampshire.
- Angel Jiang, CC ’15 to research the Norwich Cathedral in the United Kingdom.
- Elizabeth Lightfoot, GS ’15 to research Edith Elmer Wood in Europe.
- Hwi Jane Lee, CC ’13 to research contemporary art in Korea.
- Andrea Lujan, GS ’11 to research her proposed thesis on the Aztec Moon Goddess.
- Diana Greenwald, CC ’11 to research American painter Thomas Moran and his portrayals of Yellowstone National Park.