Release Date: August 26, 2015

National Gallery of Art's World-Renowned Center for Advanced Study in the Visual Arts (CASVA) Announces 2015–2016 Academic Year Appointments

Participants in American Watercolor: 1850–1950, a CASVA colloquy organized by Kathleen A. Foster, Edmond J. Safra Visiting Professor, in May 2015, at the National Gallery of Art.

Washington, DC—The world-renowned Center for Advanced Study in the Visual Arts (CASVA) at the National Gallery of Art has announced the appointments of members for 2015–2016. They include Iain Boyd Whyte of the University of Edinburgh as Samuel H. Kress Professor; Paul B. Jaskot of DePaul University as Andrew W. Mellon Professor; Thomas Kren of the J. Paul Getty Museum as Edmond J. Safra Visiting Professor for spring 2016; and Vidya Dehejia of Columbia University as the Sixty-Fifth A. W. Mellon Lecturer in the Fine Arts for spring 2016.

"This year, CASVA's topics range from the gold discs of Chichen Itza to the encounters between art and science in the work of Hungarian artist György Kepes," said Earl A. Powell III, director, National Gallery of Art. "This incoming class of CASVA appointees exemplifies the Center's diverse and dynamic nature."

In addition, six senior and four visiting senior fellows have been appointed to CASVA, along with two postdoctoral fellows, seven predoctoral fellows working in residence, and 11 predoctoral fellows working at their respective institutions and abroad. Melissa Beck Lemke, the Gallery's image specialist for Italian art, has been awarded the Ailsa Mellon Bruce Sabbatical Curatorial Fellowship, which will enable her to take a leave of absence from the Gallery to conduct special research on the art historian and photographer Clarence Kennedy.

About CASVA
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 supports the program of fellowships, and the appointments are ratified by the Gallery's Board of Trustees.

CASVA currently supports the Andrew W. Mellon Professor, a two-year appointment of a midcareer scholar; the Samuel H. Kress Professor, an appointment of one academic year of a distinguished scholar; the Edmond J. Safra Visiting Professor, a six-month appointment of a scholar who advances his or her own research on subjects associated with the Gallery's permanent collection; and senior fellows, visiting senior fellows, postdoctoral fellows, and predoctoral fellows. A board of advisors, composed of seven art historians appointed to rotating terms, serves as a selection committee to review all fellowship applications.

In 1949, the Gallery commenced the A. W. Mellon Lectures in the Fine Arts to bring to the people of the United States the results of the best contemporary thought and scholarship in the fine arts. The program is named for Andrew W. Mellon, the Gallery's founder, who gave the nation his art collection and funds to build the West Building, which opened to the public in 1941.

The Center publishes the proceedings of symposia, part of the Gallery's series Studies in the History of Art, and Seminar Papers. Both series are available for purchase on shop.nga.gov. Volumes of Studies in the History of Art published more than five years ago can be accessed and downloaded on JSTOR. An annual report, Center, published each fall, summarizes research and activities that took place during the preceding academic year. The full archive of Center is available for free download on CASVA's publications page on the Gallery website.

Full List of Appointees
Samuel H. Kress Professor
Iain Boyd Whyte, University of Edinburgh

Andrew W. Mellon Professor
Paul B. Jaskot, DePaul University

Edmond J. Safra Visiting Professor, spring 2016
Thomas Kren, J. Paul Getty Museum

Sixty-Fifth A. W. Mellon Lecturer in the Fine Arts, spring 2016
Vidya Dehejia, Columbia University

Paul Mellon Senior Fellow
Mary E. Miller, Yale University
Rethinking the Gold Disks of Chichen Itza in the Reign of K'ak'upcal

William C. Seitz Senior Fellow
Angela L. Miller, Washington University in St. Louis
Countermodernism: Reason and Magic in American Art at Mid-Twentieth Century

Samuel H. Kress Senior Fellows
Morten Steen Hansen, Independent Scholar
Painting Duplicity: Giovanni da San Giovanni and the End of Florentine Painting

Mauro Mussolin, Scuola Normale Superiore di Pisa / New York University Florence
Michelangelo and Paper as Palimpsest

Ailsa Mellon Bruce Senior Fellows
Barbara E. Mundy, Fordham University
The Embodiment of the Word: European Book Culture and New World Manuscripts, 1540–1600

Mabel Wilson, Columbia University
Building Race and Nation: How Slavery Influenced the Civic Architecture of Antebellum America

Ailsa Mellon Bruce National Gallery of Art Sabbatical Curatorial Fellow, 2015–2016
Melissa Beck Lemke, Library Image Collections
Clarence Kennedy in Focus

Paul Mellon Visiting Senior Fellows, fall 2015
Elizabeth Bartman, Saratoga Springs
"Manoeuvering the Marble": The Modern Restoration of Ancient Sculpture

Nassos Papalexandrou, The University of Texas at Austin
Monsters, Fear, and the Uncanny in the Preclassical Mediterranean

Ailsa Mellon Bruce Visiting Senior Fellows, fall 2015
Tom Gunning, University of Chicago
The Invention of the Moving Image

Ruth E. Iskin, Ben-Gurion University of the Negev
Degas and Cassatt: Constructing Their Relationship, Legacy, and Value

Postdoctoral Fellows
Lihong Liu, A. W. Mellon Postdoctoral Fellow, 2014–2016
The Real Scene: Painting and Place in China, 1450–1550

Fernando Loffredo, A. W. Mellon Postdoctoral Fellow, 2015–2017
A Sea of Marble: Italian High Renaissance Fountain Sculpture in a Mediterranean Context

Predoctoral Dissertation Fellows (in residence)
John R. Blakinger, Twenty-Four-Month Chester Dale Fellow, 2014–2016
[Stanford University]
Artist under Technocracy: György Kepes and the Cold War Avant-Garde

Monica Bravo, Wyeth Fellow, 2014-2016
[Brown University]
Picturing Greater America: US Modernist Photography and the Mexican Cultural Renaissance, 1920–1945

Esther Chadwick, Paul Mellon Fellow, 2013–2016
[Yale University]
The Radical Print: Graphic Experiments in Britain, 1776–1827

Robert Fucci, David E. Finley Fellow, 2013–2016
[Columbia University]
Jan van de Velde II (c. 1593–1641): The Printmaker as Creative Artist in the Early Dutch Republic

Brendan C. McMahon, Andrew W. Mellon Fellow, 2014–2016
[The University of Southern California]
Colors of Deceit: The Arts of Iridescence in Viceregal Mexico

Eiren L. Shea, Ittleson Fellow, 2014–2016
[University of Pennsylvania]
Fashioning Mongol Identity in China (1250–1400)

Kelli Wood, Samuel H. Kress Fellow, 2014–2016
[University of Chicago]
The Space of Play: Games in Early Modern Italy

Predoctoral Dissertation Fellows (not in residence)
Magdalene Breidenthal, Paul Mellon Fellow, 2015–2018
[Yale University]
Leaving "Heaven on Earth": The Visual Codes of Byzantine Church Exits, 900–1200

Seth Estrin, Paul Mellon Fellow, 2014–2017
[University of California, Berkeley]
Objects of Pity: Art and Emotion in Archaic and Classical Greece, 520–380 BCE

Aaron Hyman, Andrew W. Mellon Fellow, 2015–2017
[University of California, Berkeley]
Rubens in a New World: Prints, Authorship, and Transatlantic Intertextuality

Denva Jackson, Samuel H. Kress Fellow, 2015–2017
[Harvard University]
In the Footsteps of Our Fathers: Identity Construction and the Rise of the Eremitical Ideal in the Morgan Library's Vitae patrum, M. 626

Michael Kubo, Wyeth Fellow, 2015–2017
[Massachusetts Institute of Technology]
Architecture Incorporated: Anonymity in Postwar Modernism

María  Lumbreras, David E. Finley Fellow, 2015–2018
[Johns Hopkins University]
"Verdaderos retratos": Evidence, Naturalism, and the Practice of Portraiture in Golden Age Spain

Michelle McCoy, Ittleson Fellow, 2015–2017
[University of California, Berkeley]
Astrology and Astronomy in the Art of Liao-Yuan China and Inner Asia

Jason Nguyen, Robert H. and Clarice Smith Fellow, 2015–2016
[Harvard University]
Constructing Classicism: Theory, Practice, and the Creation of Architectural Expertise in Late Seventeenth-Century Paris

Alice Sullivan, Twelve-Month Chester Dale Fellow, 2015–2016
[University of Michigan]
The Painted Fortified Monastic Churches of Moldavia: Bastions of Orthodoxy in a Post-Byzantine World

Phil Taylor, David E. Finley Fellow, 2014–2017
[Princeton University]
Raoul Ubac's Photographic Surrealism

Leslie Wilson, Twenty-Four-Month Chester Dale Fellow, 2015–2017
[University of Chicago]
Past Black and White: The Color of Post-Apartheid Photography in South Africa, 1994–2004