Washington, DC—The Center for Advanced Study in the Visual Arts (the Center) has announced its 2021–2022 academic year appointments. They include Lowery Stokes Sims, Museum of Arts and Design (emerita), as Kress-Beinecke Professor; Huey Copeland of University of Pennsylvania as Andrew W. Mellon Professor; Aruna D'Souza of Williamstown, Massachusetts, as Edmond J. Safra Visiting Professor; and Richard J. Powell of Duke University as the 71st A. W. Mellon Lecturer in the Fine Arts.

In addition to this list of distinguished appointees, seven senior fellows and six visiting senior fellows have been appointed to the Center, along with two National Gallery of Art sabbatical fellows, two postdoctoral fellows, seven predoctoral fellows in residence, 11 predoctoral fellows not in residence, and four predoctoral historians of American art who were awarded fellowships to travel abroad when it is safe to do so.

"This year's incoming members embody the Center's commitment to excellence in research and scholarship. We're particularly excited that this year's group of professors and lecturers is our most diverse ever," said Steven Nelson, dean of the Center.

For the safety of members and staff, all programs will be held virtually for fall 2021. Members will reside in Washington and benefit from offices in the National Gallery's East Building Study Center 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 the program of fellowships, and the 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 midcareer 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 to various senior fellowships, visiting senior fellowships, postdoctoral fellowships, and predoctoral fellowships, the Center announced in March 2020 the creation of the Leonard A. Lauder Visiting Senior Fellowship to support scholars researching historically underrepresented areas of art-historical study. A board of advisors, composed of seven or eight art historians appointed to rotating terms, serves as a selection committee to review all fellowship applications.

In 1949 the National Gallery commenced the A. W. Mellon Lectures in the Fine Arts to bring the people of the United States the results of the best contemporary thought and scholarship in the fine arts. The program, now under the Center's auspices, is named for Andrew W. Mellon, the National 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 its symposia proceedings as the National Gallery's series Studies in the History of Art Symposium Papers, as well as Seminar Papers. Both series are available for purchase on shop.nga.gov. Volumes of Studies in the History of Art Symposium Papers 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 download on the National Gallery website.

Full List of Appointees

Kress-Beinecke Professor, 2021–2022

Lowery Stokes Sims
Museum of Arts and Design (emerita)

Andrew W. Mellon Professor, 2020–2022

Huey Copeland
University of Pennsylvania

Edmond J. Safra Visiting Professor, Spring 2022

Aruna D'Souza
Williamstown, MA

71st A. W. Mellon Lecturer in the Fine Arts, Spring 2022

Richard J. Powell
Duke University

Paul Mellon Senior Fellow

Jeffrey Moser
Brown University
Moral Depths: Making Antiquity in a Medieval Chinese Cemetery

William C. Seitz Senior Fellow

Kaira M. Cabañas
University of Florida
Deviant Histories: Radical Psychiatry and Art as Creative Care

Samuel H. Kress Senior Fellows

Fabio Barry
Stanford University
The Endless Revolution: The Dome, from Vault of Heaven to Hypersphere

Christopher J. Nygren
University of Pittsburgh
Sedimentary Aesthetics: Painting on Stone and the Ecology of Early Modern Art

Ailsa Mellon Bruce Senior Fellows

Shira Brisman (Spring 2022)
University of Pennsylvania
The Goldsmith’s Debt: Conceptions of Property in Early Modern Art

Kathleen James-Chakraborty
University College Dublin
Expanding Agency: Women and Modern American Architecture and Design, 1923–1972

Juliet Koss
Scripps College
Model Soviets

Ailsa Mellon Bruce Visiting Senior Fellows
Fall 2021/Winter 2022

Lisa Gail Collins
Vassar College
Love Lies Here: Grief, a Quilt, and the Community of Gee's Bend, Alabama

Homay King
Bryn Mawr College
Go West: A Mythology of California's Silicon Valley

Pamela O. Long
Washington, DC
Machines on Paper: From Leonardo da Vinci to Vincenzo Scamozzi

Leonard A. Lauder Visiting Senior Fellow
Winter 2022

Nicole L. Woods
University of Notre Dame
Acid Visions: Happenings, Expressionist Painting, and the Afro-Futurism of Bob Thompson

Paul Mellon Visiting Senior Fellows
Fall 2021/Winter 2022

Douglas Brine
Trinity University
Brazen Splendors: The Art of Brass in the Burgundian Netherlands

Sabine Kriebel
University College Cork
Objectivity Viewed Obliquely: The New Vision Photography of Florence Henri and Germaine Krull

Ailsa Mellon Bruce National Gallery of Art Sabbatical Curatorial/Conservation Fellows

Sarah Battle
National Gallery of Art, Department of Academic Programs
An Oral History Project: The Black Artistic Community in Louisville, Kentucky, 1950–1970

Barbara H. Berrie
National Gallery of Art, Department of Scientific Research
Clear or Colored: Artists' Use of Glass in Paint

A. W. Mellon Postdoctoral Fellow, 2020–2022

Ellen Tani
Washington, DC
Black Conceptual Practice in Contemporary Art

Beinecke Postdoctoral Fellow, 2021–2023

Nisa Ari
University of Houston
Cultural Mandates, Artistic Missions, and "The Welfare of Palestine," 1876–1948

Predoctoral Dissertation Fellows (in residence)

Luke A. Fidler
Paul Mellon Fellow, 2019–2022
[University of Chicago]
Henry the Lion and the Art of Politics in Northern Europe, c. 1142–1195

Christine Garnier
Wyeth Fellow, 2020–2022
[Harvard University]
Amalgamating the West during the American Silver Age (1848‒1893)

Isabella Lores-Chavez
Samuel H. Kress Fellow, 2020–2022
[Columbia University]
Plaster Casts in the Life and Art of 17th-Century Dutch Painters

Mohit Manohar
Andrew W. Mellon Fellow, 2020–2022
[Yale University]
The City of Gods and Fortune: An Architectural and Urban History of Daulatabad, 1200‒1500

Rachel Catherine Patt
David E. Finley Fellow, 2019–2022
[Emory University]
Meaning, Materiality, and Pothos in Late Antique Gold-Glass Portraits

Catherine H. Popovici
Ittleson Fellow, 2020–2022
[The University of Texas at Austin]
Stones of Statehood: Art, Politics, and Placemaking in a Classic Maya Landscape

Erhan Tamur
Twenty-Four-Month Chester Dale Fellow, 2020–2022
[Columbia University]
Site-Worlds: An Account of Material Lives from Tello (Ancient Girsu)

Predoctoral Dissertation Fellows (not in residence)

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

Anna Aline Mehlman Dumont
Twelve-Month Chester Dale Fellow, 2021–2022
[Northwestern University]
From Design Reform to Fascist Craft: Textiles and Italian Women's Labor, 1870–1945

Davida Fernández-Barkan
David E. Finley Fellow, 2020–2023
[Harvard University]
Mural Diplomacy: Mexico, the United States, and France at the 1937 Exposition Internationale in Paris

Rheagan Eric Martin
Samuel H. Kress Fellow, 2021–2023
[University of Michigan]
Printed, Painted, and Illuminated: The Expanding Visual Culture of Venetian Printed Books (1469–1517)

Anthony J. Meyer
Andrew W. Mellon Fellow, 2021–2023
[University of California, Los Angeles]
The Givers of Things: Nahua Religious Leaders and the Art of Making Gifts in the Mexica and Early Modern Worlds

Aleksander Musiał
Paul Mellon Fellow, 2021–2024
[Princeton University]
Immersion: Classical Reception and Eastern European Transformations of Hygiene Architecture, c. 1680–1830

Cleo Nisse
Paul Mellon Fellow, 2020–2023
[Columbia University]
Unraveling Canvas: Textile Supports and Venetian Painting from Bellini to Tintoretto

Christopher T. Richards
Robert H. and Clarice Smith Fellow, 2021–2022
[New York University]
Picturing Desire and Desiring Pictures: The Ovidian Manuscript Tradition

Delphine Sims
Wyeth Fellow, 2021–2023
[University of California, Berkeley]
(Re)surfacing Black Presence: Photography, Black Women's Bodies, and Geographies

Zsofi Valyi-Nagy
Twenty-Four-Month Chester Dale Fellow, 2021–2023
[University of Chicago]
Vera Molnár's Programmed Abstraction: Computer Graphics and Geometric Abstract Art in Postwar Europe

Zhenru Zhou
Ittleson Fellow, 2021–2023
[University of Chicago]
Between the Virtual and the Real: A New Architecture of the Mogao Caves (Dunhuang, China), 781–1036 CE

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

Brandon P. Eng
[New York University]

Emma Kennedy
[Northwestern University]

Tyler Shine
[University of Pennsylvania]

Zoe Weldon-Yochim
[University of California, Santa Cruz]