This academic year, the Center welcomed an extraordinary community of fellows whose work expands the possibilities of research in the visual arts. At any given moment, nearly 50 scholars were conducting research with the Center’s support, both in residence in Washington, DC, and across the globe. This year’s cohort reflected the extraordinary range and vitality of art-historical inquiry. Fellows examined topics including pollution and visual culture in 19th-century Britain, optical devices in Ming and Qing China, the long history of Igbo-Ukwu culture in Nigeria, and contemporary Indigenous art, among many others. Together, their work demonstrated the ways art history continues to evolve through interdisciplinary approaches and global perspectives. In our lectures, publications, and collaborative initiatives, the Center remained committed to fostering rigorous scholarship while broadening the geographic, temporal, cultural, and methodological conversations through which art history is imagined and practiced.

This year, we welcomed Evelyn Lincoln as our Kress-Beinecke Professor. Her research and public presentations on early modern Rome, including her colloquium, “Wood Work: The Parasole Woodblock Carvers in Early Modern Rome,” opened new conversations about women and printmaking, labor, and artistic production at the turn of the 17th century. Roland Betancourt completed his second and final year as Andrew W. Mellon Professor, presenting new work on “The Byzantine in the Modern Imagination,” while encouraging expansive discussions about the afterlives of Byzantine aesthetics across cultures and time periods. We celebrated Roland’s new book, Disneyland and the Rise of Automation: How Technology Created the Happiest Place on Earth, published a few days after his colloquium in April 2026.

We were also delighted to host Christian Scheidemann as Edmond J. Safra Visiting Professor. His lecture and colloquy, “Care and Repair in Art and Societies,” brought conservators, historians, artists, and theorists together to consider repair not merely as technical intervention but as a broader ethical and cultural practice. We at the Center were not alone in appreciating Christian’s presence; his warmth and generosity also touched our colleagues in conservation, who likewise found his residency deeply rewarding.

The Center’s public programs this year reflected a similarly wide-ranging intellectual ambition. We celebrated Art & Histories, the inaugural volume in our new series Art &, with a public discussion at DC’s premier independent bookstore, Politics and Prose. Kaira M. Cabañas, series editor and associate dean for academic programs and publications, introduced the book and two of its contributors, art historian Lisa Gail Collins and artist Glexis Novoa. Art & situates the study of art within broader interdisciplinary conversations and foregrounds experimental approaches to the book form. Our publications team also advanced work on future volumes, including Art & Water and Art & Abilities, each of which continues the series’ commitment to connecting visual culture with urgent social, environmental, and political questions.

Our long-standing research initiative concerning the history of art academies has continued to flourish. This spring, we celebrated the forthcoming publication of Academies of Art in Europe and the Americas, 1600–1900, edited by Ulrich Pfisterer, Oscar E. Vázquez, and me. The event included a book discussion and a public lecture by Elizabeth Fuentes Rojas, who explored the roles women occupied within the Academia de San Carlos in Mexico City, illuminating both institutional exclusion and artistic resilience. The Early History of the Accademia di San Luca digital research project also reached an important milestone: the launch of a redesigned web interface that allows users to navigate hundreds of early modern documents, maps, and guidebooks. Workshops and public programs connected these digital tools to broader questions about archives, historiography, and accessibility.

This year’s major lectures invited audiences to reconsider foundational assumptions inherent in various fields of art histories. After a delay due to the government shutdown in the fall, Emanuele Lugli delivered the 29th Sydney J. Freedberg Lecture on Italian Art in March 2026, examining “love at first sight” as a framework for understanding attraction, emotion, and artistic experience in early modern Italy. Jennifer Raab’s Wyeth Lecture in American Art explored photographs of the US Civil War as evidence of violence, mourning, advocacy, and inequity, asking what images can reveal about public memory and historical accountability. Capping off our programming for the year, we were honored to host Aden Kumler (former predoctoral fellow) for the 75th A. W. Mellon Lectures in the Fine Arts. Across four richly textured lectures, Kumler examined ambiguity, obscurity, and difficulty as central values in medieval European art. Her series challenged conventional narratives of medieval clarity and transcendence, offering instead a compelling account of art that embraces uncertainty, disorientation, and material contingency.

The Middle Atlantic Symposium in the History of Art, now in its 55th year, once again brought together graduate students, faculty, and museum professionals from across the region. From Safavid painting and Ottoman imperial symbolism to environmental histories and colonial legacies, the symposium highlighted the breadth of emerging scholarship in the field today. Nancy Um’s George Levitine Lecture on the past and future of Indian Ocean art history further emphasized the importance of trans-regional and global approaches to visual culture.

The Center’s invitational programs continued to foster sustained scholarly exchange. Hugo Shakeshaft organized this year’s predoctoral seminar, “On Seeing and Describing,” guiding fellows through intensive discussions on language, perception, and interpretation. Dialogues following the Freedberg, Wyeth, and Mellon Lectures created opportunities for fellows, National Gallery staff, and invited guests to engage directly and more deeply with visiting scholars in smaller settings that encouraged experimentation and conversation. The Center also remained actively engaged with National Gallery staff through the Works in Progress series, which provides our colleagues with an opportunity to share independent research and ongoing projects. These gatherings continue to remind us that scholarship at the National Gallery emerges through both external and internal collaboration.

This year also marked an important moment of transition for the Center. In April the National Gallery announced the appointment of C. D. Dickerson III as the new dean. A distinguished scholar and curator who has worked at the National Gallery since 2015—as well as the Center’s Ailsa Mellon Bruce Senior Fellow in 2014—C. D. brings a strong commitment to rigorous scholarship, mentorship, and public engagement. His leadership promises to build thoughtfully upon the Center’s long-standing mission while guiding it toward new conversations and possibilities in the years ahead.

As I write this report in my last days as interim dean, I am once again struck by the generosity, wisdom, and creativity of the Center’s community. The past year has affirmed for me the importance of institutions that support sustained research, intellectual exchange, and public engagement at a moment when the humanities face profound challenges and transformations. Through our lectures, publications, digital initiatives, and fellowships, the Center continues to serve as a place where ideas are shared and tested, histories reconsidered, and new forms of knowledge are produced collectively through scholarly dialogue. It has been a privilege to work alongside Center staff, fellows, and National Gallery colleagues in sustaining that mission, and I look forward to the conversations and discoveries still to come.