Research Initiatives
The Center supports long-term and short-term research initiatives designed to contribute to the wider scholarly community. Deans’ Research Projects are long-term projects directed by a dean. Short-term events or initiatives promote collaboration and innovation.
Deans’ Research Projects
The Early History of the Accademia di San Luca
Peter M. Lukehart, Interim Dean
Valeria Federici, Postdoctoral Research Associate
Matthew J. Westerby, Digital Research Officer
Screenshot of “Navigating Our New Interface” webinar, March 2026
The Early History of the Accademia di San Luca was conceived, under the direction of interim dean Peter M. Lukehart, as a project in two parts: a volume of essays concerning the establishment of one of the first artists’ academies in late 16th-century Italy and a database of rediscovered notarial documents that support current and future study of the Accademia and its members.
In 2025–2026, the website for The Early History of the Accademia di San Luca migrated to a series of open-source platforms, offering new opportunities to search and display its extensive content. The migration’s first stage was completed in December 2025, developed by Valeria Federici. Scholarly essays were reissued and grouped into two volumes organized by year of publication. These fully digital essays are built with Quire and are available in multiple formats: as webpages, PDFs, and ePubs.
The second part of the migration was completed in January 2026, with the launch of a new resources website for notarial documents, historical maps, and guidebooks. Overseen by Matthew J. Westerby, the site was created with Canopy IIIF and organizes the display of materials, including notarial transcriptions and annotations, as IIIF manifests. The site offers a robust metadata search using key terms, artist names, location names, document types, and years. Both platforms—Quire and Canopy IIIF—rely on GitHub repositories, which are publicly available.
On March 16, 2026, the project team hosted a virtual workshop, Navigating Our New Interface, exploring the new platforms and answering questions from our international community of researchers. In June 2026, Federici and Westerby presented “Minimal Computing, Maximum Interoperability: Rebuilding the Accademia di San Luca Digital Repository on IIIF” at the 2026 IIIF annual conference in the Netherlands.
The Arts in Mental Health
Kaira M. Cabañas, Associate Dean for Academic Programs and Publications
Molly Superfine, Postdoctoral Research Associate
Test override
Running from 2023 to 2028, “The Arts in Mental Health” reevaluates the relationship between divergent psychological states and creative production, shifting the analytical focus from medical pathology to subjective agency and aesthetic innovation. The project examines the lives of modern artists like Vincent van Gogh and Antonin Artaud alongside the work of contemporary figures such as Yayoi Kusama and Javier Téllez.
Through guest dialogues and scholarly seminars, the initiative contributes to new methodological approaches to art and its histories and will result in an interdisciplinary volume to be published as part of the Center’s Seminar Papers series. Another highlight is the two-part seminar “Histories of Madness and Delirium”—organized by Cabañas in collaboration with the Museu de Arte de São Paulo—which investigates the intersections of psychiatric histories and artistic expression.
Short-Term Initiatives
Reimagining America by Design
Matthew J. Westerby, Digital Research Officer
Kara Braciale, Professorial Lecturer, Corcoran School of the Arts & Design
Meseret Oldjira, Postdoctoral Research Associate
Matthew J. Westerby and Corcoran students Caitlin Lookingbill, Thomas Janoski, and Polyxeni Ziazia in the East Building’s Prints and Drawings Study Room
In spring 2026, the collaborative class “Reimagining America by Design” hosted 24 undergraduate students from the Corcoran School of the Arts & Design at the National Gallery of Art. Taught by Kara Braciale and Matthew J. Westerby, the course drew on the Index of American Design (IAD) as a touchpoint for design history.
The class met with archives and library staff at the National Gallery and made repeat visits to the Prints and Drawings Study Room to view watercolors and discuss curatorial research for Women and the Index of American Design, curated by Amy Johnston. The class also developed initial proposals for a fall 2026 installation of IAD ephemera and archival materials, In the Library: Reimagining America by Design.
The class and outcomes are possible thanks to the contributions of many colleagues at the National Gallery of Art: Sarah Bohannan, Sarah Durkee, Amy Johnston, Michael Lapthorn, Yuri Long, Peter M. Lukehart, Shannon Morelli, Steven Nelson, Kelly Schulz, Anne H. Simmons, Anna Tomlinson, Michele Willens, and Deanna Wood.