Release Date: November 19, 2009

National Gallery of Art Center for Advanced Study in the Visual Arts Announces 2009–2010 Appointments

Washington, DC—The Center for Advanced Study in the Visual Arts (CASVA) at the National Gallery of Art has announced the appointments of members for 2009–2010. They include Bert W. Meijer, Nederlands Interuniversitair Kunsthistorisch Instituut, Florence/Universiteit Utrecht (emeritus), as Samuel H. Kress Professor; Miguel Falomir, Museo Nacional del Prado, as Andrew W. Mellon Professor; and Roger Taylor, De Montfort University, as Edmond J. Safra Visiting Professor for spring 2010. Mary Miller of Yale University has been named the 59th A.W. Mellon Lecturer in the Fine Arts for spring 2010.

CASVA also announced the appointment of six senior and five visiting senior fellows, including a Millon Architectural History Guest Scholar for fall 2009; two postdoctoral fellows; 18 predoctoral fellows; and four predoctoral fellowships for historians of American art to travel abroad.

CASVA was founded 30 years ago to promote 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 supports the program of fellowships, and the appointments are ratified by the Gallery’s Board of Trustees.

The position of Samuel H. Kress Professor was created in 1965. It is reserved for a distinguished art historian who, as the senior member of CASVA, pursues scholarly work and counsels predoctoral fellows in residence.

Dr. Bert W. Meijer is a professor emeritus at Nederlands Interuniversitair Kunsthistorisch Insituut, Florence/Universiteit Utrecht, where he also received his Ph.D. in 1975 and was Chair of the Art History Department from 1991 to 2008. Dr. Meijer received the Tablet of Honor of the Mayor of Florence for his art historical activities in 2008, and the Dante Alighieri International Award, La Spezia, in 2001. Dr. Meijer is an Accademico Corrispondente of the Accademia dell’Arte del Disegno in Florence and has held fellowships at the British Council, the Netherlands Organization for Scientific Research, and the Fulbright-Hays Program.

The position of Andrew W. Mellon Professor was created in 1994 for distinguished academic and museum professionals. Mellon professors serve two consecutive years and pursue independent research at CASVA while collaborating in scholarly exchanges with the Mellon senior curator and Mellon head of scientific research.

Dr. Miguel Falomir serves as the Head Curator for the Department of Italian Renaissance Painting at the Museo Nacional del Prado and is a professor at the University of Valencia, where he received his Ph.D. in 1993. Dr. Falmoir has published extensively on the work of the great masters Titian and Tintoretto, most recently contributing to exhibition catalogues for the Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna, Gallerie dell’Accademia, Florence, and the Museo del Prado, Madrid. Dr. Falomir has also held fellowships at the Institute of Fine Arts at New York University and Consejo Superior Investigaciones Cientificas of Madrid.

The position of Edmond J. Safra Visiting Professor was established in 2002 through a grant from the Edmond J. Safra Philanthropic Foundation. The Safra Professor serves for up to six months, forging connections between the research of the curatorial staff and that of visiting scholars at CASVA. At the same time, the Safra Professor advances his or her own research on subjects associated with the Gallery’s permanent collection. The Safra Professor may also present seminars or curatorial lectures for graduate students and emerging scholars and curators from other institutions. The Safra Professor’s area of expertise varies from year to year, spanning the Gallery’s permanent collection—from sculpture, to painting, to works on paper of all periods.

Roger Taylor is a professor of photographic history for De Montfort University and the senior curator of photographs and head of research development for the National Media Museum in Bradford, West Yorkshire. Taylor’s exhibitions Impressed by Light and All the Mighty World have been shown at the National Gallery of Art as well as at The Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, the Musée d’Orsay in Paris, and the J. Paul Getty Museum in Los Angeles. Taylor was awarded the J. Dudley Johnston Award by the Royal Photographic Society in 2007 and the Kranza Krausz Photographic Book Award in 2003 and 2008. He has also held fellowship positions at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the J. Paul Getty Museum, and the National Gallery of Canada, Ottawa.

The A. W. Mellon Lectures in the Fine Arts were established by the Board of Trustees of the National Gallery of Art in 1949 "to bring to the people of the United States the results of the best contemporary thought and scholarship bearing upon the subject of the Fine Arts." The program is named for Andrew W. Mellon, the founder of the National Gallery of Art, who gave the nation his art collection and funds to build the West Building, which opened to the public in 1941.

Mary Miller is the dean of Yale College and Sterling Professor of History of Art. Specializing in the art of the ancient New World, Dean Miller curated the exhibition Courtly Art of the Ancient Maya at the National Gallery of Art, Washington, and the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco. She is the author of Maya Art and Architecture (1999), The Gods and Symbols of Ancient Mexico and the Maya: A Dictionary of Mesoamerican Religion (with Karl Taube, 1993), The Art of Mesoamerica: From Olmec to Aztec (1986), The Murals of Bonampak (1986), and The Blood of Kings: Dynasty and Ritual in Maya Art (with Linda Schele, 1986). Dean Miller has won national recognition including a Guggenheim Fellowship and election to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. She is completing her archaeological project to document and reconstruct the Maya wall paintings at Bonampak, Mexico.

Casva Members for 2009–2010

Members of the Center for Advanced Study in the Visual Arts (CASVA) for the 2009–2010 academic year are listed below with their current affiliations and research topics.

Paul Mellon Senior Fellow

Suzanne Preston Blier
Harvard University
Imaging Amazons: Dahomey Women Warriors In and Out of Africa

Samuel H. Kress Senior Fellows

Jaime Lara
Yale University
Flying Francis: Catastrophes, Insurrections, and Art in the Colonial Andes

Evonne Levy
University of Toronto
Barock: Art History and Politics from Burckhardt to Hitler, 1844–1945

Ailsa Mellon Bruce Senior Fellows

David J. Getsy
School of the Art Institute of Chicago
Abstract Bodies, Postwar Sculpture, and Designating the "Human"

Jonathan M. Reynolds
Barnard College
Allegories of Time and Space: The Visualization of Japanese Identity in Architecture, Photography, and Popular Culture

Michael J. Schreffler
Virginia Commonwealth University
Inca Baroque: Colonial Architecture and the Image of the State in Cuzco, Peru

Paul Mellon Visiting Senior Fellows, fall 2009

Andrew Hopkins
Università degli Studi dell'Aquila
Beyond Ceremony: Architectural Retreats in Early Modern Italy

Ruth E. Iskin
Ben-Gurion University of the Negev
Women and Modernity in Posters, 1880s–1900s

Anna Minta
Universität Bern
Contested Historicisms: Uses and Interpretations of Architectural Formulas in Washington, DC

Ailsa Mellon Bruce Visiting Senior Fellow, fall 2009

Giovanni Careri
École des hautes études en sciences sociales
The Ancestors of Christ: Christians and Jews in the Sistine Chapel

Ailsa Mellon Bruce Visiting Senior Fellow/Millon Architectural History Guest Scholar, fall 2009

Margaret Haines
Villa I Tatti: Harvard University Center for Italian Renaissance Studies
The "Grande Sorella" of Brunelleschi's Dome of Santa Maria del Fiore: A Comparative Examination of the Structural and Administrative History of the Construction of the Dome of Saint Peter's

Postdoctoral Fellows

Hendrik W. Dey
A. W. Mellon Postdoctoral Fellow, 2009–2010
Hunter College of the City University of New York
Architecture, Ceremony, and the Construction of Authority in Late Antiquity

Megan E. O'Neil
A. W. Mellon Postdoctoral Fellow, 2009–2011
University of Southern California
The Lives of Ancient Maya Sculptures: Objects of History, Objects of Ritual

Predoctoral Fellows (in residence)

Sinem Arcak
Andrew W. Mellon Fellow, 2008–2010
[University of Minnesota]
Gifts in Motion: Ottoman-Safavid Cultural Exchange, 1501–1639

Wen-shing Chou
Ittleson Fellow, 2008–2010
[University of California, Berkeley]
Where Our Journeys End: Visions, Exchanges, and Encounters in Early Modern Representations of Mount Wutai

Ivan Drpić
David E. Finley Fellow, 2007–2010
[Harvard University]
Kosmos of Verse: Art and Epigram in Late Byzantium

George F. Flaherty
Twenty-four-Month Chester Dale Fellow, 2008–2010
[University of California, Santa Barbara]
Mediating the Third Culture at Tlatelolco, Mexico City

Albert Narath
Paul Mellon Fellow, 2007–2010
[Columbia University]
The Baroque Effect: Architecture, History, and Politics in Austria and Germany

Andrei Pop
Samuel H. Kress Fellow, 2008–2010
[Harvard University]
Neopaganism: Henry Fuseli, Theater, and the Cultural Politics of Antiquity, 1765 – 1825

Tobias Wofford
Wyeth Fellow, 2008–2010
[University of California, Los Angeles]
Constructing Africa: The Visualization of Homeland and Diaspora in African-American Art of the 1960s and 1970s

Predoctoral Fellows (not in residence)

Benjamin Anderson
David E. Finley Fellow, 2009–2012
[Bryn Mawr College]
World Image after World Empire: The Ptolemaic Cosmos in the Early Middle Ages

Priyanka Basu
Andrew W. Mellon Fellow, 2009 – 2011
[University of Southern California]
Kunstwissenschaft and the "Primitive": Excursions in the History of Art History, 1880–1925

Shira Brisman
Samuel H. Kress Fellow, 2009–2011
[Yale University]
The Handwritten Letter and the Work of Art in the Age of the Printing Press, 1490 – 1530

Sonja Drimmer
Robert H. and Clarice Smith Fellow, 2009–2010
[Columbia University]
The Visual Language of Vernacular Manuscript Illumination: John Gower's Confessio Amantis (Pierpont Morgan MS M. 126)

Christina R. Ferando
David E. Finley Fellow, 2008–2011
[Columbia University]
Staging Neoclassicism: Exhibitions of Antonio Canova's Sculptures

Ralph Ghoche
Twelve-Month Chester Dale Fellow, 2009–2010
[Columbia University]
Ornament, Aesthetic Theory, and Expressive Signs in Second Empire French Architecture: Victor Ruprich-Robert and the Flore Ornementale

Dipti Khera
Ittleson Fellow, 2009–2011
[Columbia University]
Urban Imaginings between Empires: Mapping from Udaipur to Jaipur, 1707–1832

Beatrice Kitzinger
Paul Mellon Fellow, 2008–2011
[Harvard University]
Crucifix and Crucifixion in Ninth- through and Tenth-Century Breton Gospel Books: The Early Medieval Liturgical Cross and Its Representations

Jason David LaFountain
Wyeth Fellow, 2009–2011
[Harvard University]
The Puritan Art World

Lisa Lee
Twenty-four-Month Chester Dale Fellow, 2009–2011
[Princeton University]
Sculpture's Condition/Conditions of Publicness: Isa Genzken and Thomas Hirschhorn

Jennifer M. S. Stager
Paul Mellon Fellow, 2009–2012
[University of California, Berkeley]
The Embodiment of Color in Ancient Mediterranean Art

Ailsa Mellon Bruce Predoctoral Fellowships for Historians of American Art to Travel Abroad

Lacey Baradel
[University of Pennsylvania]

Joe Madura
[Emory University]

Lucy Mulroney
[University of Rochester]

Breanne Robertson
[University of Maryland]

For more information about CASVA programs and fellowships, please call (202) 842-6482 or visit the Gallery’s Web site at www.nga.gov/resources/casva.shtm.