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Home>National Gallery of Art Communications Office>Press Releases 2023>National Gallery’s Center for Advanced Study in the Visual Arts Announces 2023–2024 Academic Year Appointments

July 31, 2023

# National Gallery’s Center for Advanced Study in the Visual Arts Announces 2023–2024 Academic Year Appointments

Center members visit the National Gallery’s photograph conservation lab.

**Press Release**

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**Press Contacts:**Christina Paluvai(202) 842-6598[email protected]

Chris Abanavas(202) 842-6358[email protected]

Washington, DC—The Center for Advanced Study in the Visual Arts (the Center) announced today its 2023–2024 academic year appointments. Every year, the Center brings distinguished scholars from around the world to its internationally renowned research institution at the National Gallery of Art. The incoming scholars include Nancy J. Troy of Stanford University as Kress-Beinecke Professor, Adriana Zavala of Tufts University as Andrew W. Mellon Professor, and Pamela H. Smith of Columbia University as Edmond J. Safra Visiting Professor. The 73rd A. W. Mellon Lecturer in the Fine Arts for spring 2024 will be actor, author, playwright, and New York University professor Anna Deavere Smith.

In addition to these appointments, six senior fellows, ten visiting senior fellows, three National Gallery of Art sabbatical fellows, three postdoctoral fellows, seven predoctoral fellows, and 12 Howard University undergraduate interns will be in residence at the Center this year. The Center also announced its fellows in the field, including 12 predoctoral fellows and four predoctoral historians of American art, who were awarded fellowships to travel abroad. 

“From undergraduate interns to senior scholars, this year’s interdisciplinary cohort brilliantly expands what the study of art, architecture, and visual culture can be,” said Steven Nelson, dean of the Center. “Their scholarship breaks new ground, allowing us to understand myriad subjects anew.”

Research topics vary widely, from Soviet architecture, climate science, and the “Other” in ancient Neo-Assyrian art to an investigation on bronze’s materiality as it relates to race in 19th-century America. Center members in residence will benefit from offices in the National Gallery’s East Building and the resources of the National Gallery of Art Library.

**About the Center**Since its inception in 1979, the Center has promoted the study of the history, theory, and criticism of art, architecture, and urbanism through the formation of a community of scholars. A variety of private sources support this fellowship program and appointments are ratified by the National Gallery’s board of trustees. In selecting its members, the Center seeks a diverse pool of scholars in the visual arts.

The Center currently supports the Kress-Beinecke Professor, a one-year appointment of a distinguished scholar; the Andrew W. Mellon Professor, a two-year appointment of a mid-career scholar; and the Edmond J. Safra Visiting Professor, a three- to six-month appointment of a scholar who advances research on subjects associated with the National Gallery’s permanent collection. In addition, the Center supports various senior fellowships, visiting senior fellowships, sabbatical fellowships for National Gallery staff, postdoctoral fellowships, predoctoral fellowships, and undergraduate internships.

The Center supports an active program of publications, including the National Gallery’s series Studies in the History of Art and Seminar Papers. Both series are available for purchase at shop.nga.gov. Volumes of Studies in the History of Art published more than five years ago can be accessed and downloaded on JSTOR. *Center*, an annual report published each fall, summarizes the research and activities that took place during the preceding academic year. Its full archive is available for free on the National Gallery website.

**Full List of Appointees**

**Kress-Beinecke Professor**Nancy J. TroyStanford University

**Andrew W. Mellon Professor**Adriana ZavalaTufts University

**Edmond J. Safra Visiting Professor**Pamela H. SmithColumbia University

**73rd A. W. Mellon Lecturer in the Fine Arts**Anna Deavere SmithWriter/Actress

**Senior Fellows**Brian D. Goldstein, Swarthmore CollegePaul Mellon Senior Fellow*If Architecture Were for People: The Life and Work of J. Max Bond Jr.*

Robb Hernández, Fordham UniversityAilsa Mellon Bruce Senior Fellow                                     *Transplanetary: Speculative Arts of the Americas*

Pamela M. Lee, Yale UniversityWilliam C. Seitz Senior Fellow*The Art of Small War*

Walter Simon Melion, Emory UniversitySamuel H. Kress Senior Fellow*Praying through Prints: Technologies of Affective Piety and Image-Based Devotion in Dutch and Flemish Prayer Books, 1480–1680*

Kathryn Blair Moore, University of ConnecticutSamuel H. Kress Senior Fellow*The Other Space of the Arabesque: Italian Renaissance Art at the Limits of Representation*

Alla Vronskaya, Universität KasselAilsa Mellon Bruce Senior Fellow*Environmental Colonization: Architecture, Climate, and Geography in the Cold War Soviet Union*

**Visiting Senior Fellows**Adeyemi Akande, University of LagosLeonard A. Lauder Visiting Senior Fellow, summer 2023*Dimensionality and Replacement: Photographs as Surrogates in West African Cultures and Religion*

Alejandro Anreus, William Paterson UniversityLeonard A. Lauder Visiting Senior Fellow, fall/winter 2023*Dictatorships, Exile, and Recovery: Caribbean Artists, 1960–1980; Trujillo, Duvalier, and Castro Dictatorships and the Narrative of 11 Contemporary Artists*

Courtney R. Baker, University of California, RiversideBeinecke Visiting Senior Fellow, fall/winter 2023*Cinematic Slavery and Its Fine Arts Precedents*

Angela Cerasuolo, Museo e Real Bosco di CapodimonteBeinecke Visiting Senior Fellow, fall/winter 2023*“Avvertimenti de’ quali non fa bisogno ragionare”: Pigments and Mixtures in Literary Sources of the 16th Century, between Recipe Books and Art Theory*

Mohamed Elshahed, Mexico CityPaul Mellon Visiting Senior Fellow, summer 2023*A History of Egypt in 100 Objects*

Margaret L. Laird, Wilmington, DEPaul Mellon Visiting Senior Fellow, fall/winter 2023*Drawing Beasts: Narrativity and the Ancient Roman Imagination*

Gregory Sholette, Queens College, City University of New YorkPaul Mellon Visiting Senior Fellow, summer 2023*Backstories of Art and Activism*

Petra Trnkova, Institute of Art History, Czech Academy of SciencesPaul Mellon Visiting Senior Fellow, fall/winter 2023*Copy Relations: The Mechanical Reproduction of Art in the Mid-19th Century*

Tomáš Valeš, Masarykova UniverzitaBeinecke Visiting Senior Fellow, summer 2023*Human Bodies, Gender, Race, and the Academy of Fine Arts in Late 18th-Century Vienna*

James A. van Dyke, University of MissouriPaul Mellon Visiting Senior Fellow, fall/winter 2023*Shell Oil and the Political Confrontation of the Arts*

**Ailsa Mellon Bruce National Gallery of Art Sabbatical Fellows**James MeyerDepartment of Modern and Contemporary Art, National Gallery of Art*What Happened to the Institutional Critique?*

Andrea NelsonDepartment of Photographs, National Gallery of Art*Reading Modern Photobooks*

Susan B. WertheimOffice of Architecture and Engineering, National Gallery of Art*Contemplating Contemplative Spaces: The Power of Abstraction in Modern Architecture*

**Postdoctoral Fellows**Maria Gabriella Matarazzo, Villa I Tatti, Harvard UniversityBeinecke Postdoctoral Fellow, 2023–2025*Beyond “Buon Fresco”: Experimenting with Oil in Wall Painting, c. 1500–1700*

Benjamin O. Murphy, Case Western Reserve UniversityA. W. Mellon Postdoctoral Fellow, 2022–2024*Second-Order Images: Reflexive Strategies in Early Latin American Video Art*

**Predoctoral Dissertation Fellows (in Residence)**Meghaa Parvathy Ballakrishnen, Johns Hopkins UniversityAndrew W. Mellon Fellow, 2022–2024*Untitled: Nasreen Mohamedi, Geeta Kapur, and Abstraction in Internationalist India, 1950–2016*

Justin M. Brown, Yale UniversitySamuel H. Kress Fellow, 2022–2024*Afro-Surinamese Calabash Art in the Era of Slavery and Emancipation*

Christopher Daly, Johns Hopkins UniversityDavid E. Finley Fellow, 2021–2024*Painting in Lucca in the Late 15th Century: A Problem in Artistic Geography*

Erin Dickey, University of North Carolina at Chapel HillTwenty-Four-Month Chester Dale Fellow, 2022–2024*“Bad Information”: Networks, Knowledges, and Feminist Art in the 1980s*

Bianca Hand, Johns Hopkins UniversityTwenty-Four-Month Ittleson Fellow, 2022–2024*What Is Assyria without the Other: The Subversive Role of Alterity in the Reliefs and Architecture of Sargon II’s Royal Palace at Khorsabad*

Aleksander Musiał, Princeton UniversityPaul Mellon Fellow, 2021–2024*Immersion: Classical Reception and Eastern European Transformations of Hygiene Architecture, c. 1600–1830*

Kelvin Parnell Jr., University of VirginiaWyeth Fellow, 2022–2024*Casting Bronze, Recasting Race: American Sculpture and the Bronze Economy (1840–1890)*

**Predoctoral Dissertation Fellows (Not in Residence)**David P. Bardeen, University of California, Los AngelesDavid E. Finley Fellow, 2022–2025*Arboreal Formations: The Dynamics of Wood in Italian Intarsia and Painting, 1450–1525*

Robyn A. Barrow, University of PennsylvaniaPaul Mellon Fellow, 2022–2025*Tracking North: Art, Ecology, and Exchange in the Medieval Nordic World*

Chasitie Brown, The University of Texas at AustinTwelve-Month Ittleson Fellow, 2023–2024*The Dormant Scar: Embodying Blackness in the*Queloides*Exhibition Series in Cuba, the United States, and Spain (1997–2012)*

Rowanne Dean, University of ChicagoPaul Mellon Fellow, 2023–2026*Valuing Virtuosity: Goldsmiths’ Work in Northwestern Europe, c. 1350–1500*

Ryan Eisenman, University of PennsylvaniaDavid E. Finley Fellow, 2023–2026*The Limoges Champlevé Enamel Industry, c. 1180–1280*

William Green, Rutgers, The State University of New JerseyTwelve-Month Chester Dale Fellow, 2023–2024*Looking Back/Looking Ahead: Alternative and Antiquated Process Photography in North America, c. 1970*

Hannah Kaemmer, Harvard UniversityRobert H. and Clarice Smith Fellow, 2023–2024*Expertise and Empire: Fortification Building and the English Ordnance Office, 1660–1714*

Chaeri Lee, Indiana UniversityTwenty-Four-Month Ittleson Fellow, 2023–2025*Āthār: Visualizing Vestiges of Time in 19th-Century Iran*

James H. Miller, Princeton UniversityTwenty-Four-Month Chester Dale Fellow, 2023–2025*Fossils for a Future Time: David Smith and the Sculpting of Traces*

Celia Rodríguez Tejuca, Johns Hopkins UniversityAndrew W. Mellon Fellow, 2023–2025*From the Ground Up: Picturing Scientific Knowledge in the Late 18th-Century Spanish Americas*

Julia Silverman, Harvard UniversityWyeth Fellow, 2023–2025*Unmaking Tradition: Native Designers and the Representation of Knowledge during the “Indian New Deal”*

Wenjie Su, Princeton UniversitySamuel H. Kress Fellow, 2023–2025*Simulating Time: Cosmological Analogies, Cross-Cultural Similes, and the Transmission of Clockwork Objects between Early Modern Europe and China*

**Ailsa Mellon Bruce Predoctoral Fellowships for Historians of American Art to Travel Abroad**Kale Doyen, University of PittsburghJulia Hamer-Light, University of DelawareEmily Kang, University of California, BerkeleyJoseph Mizhakii Zordan, Harvard University

**Howard University Undergraduate Interns**Keauna Brantley, 2022–2024Jada Brooks, 2023–2025Clay Cauley, 2023–2025Amaya Charley, 2022–2024Aletheia Couts, 2023–2025Dana Goodridge, 2022–2024Aneesah Lawrence, 2023–2025Kennedy Martin, 2022–2024Sacha Reid, 2022–2024Miles Kenyan Stewart, 2023–2025Munyang Tengen, 2022–2024Elroi Yonatan, 2023–2025

# Contact Information

**General Information**For additional press information please call or send inquiries to:Department of CommunicationsNational Gallery of Art2000 South Club DriveLandover, MD 20785phone: (202) 842-6353e-mail: [email protected]

**Chief of Communications**Anabeth Guthriephone: (202) 842-6804e-mail: [email protected]

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