Press Release
The 72nd A. W. Mellon Lectures in the Fine Arts
Vital Signs: The Visual Cultures of Maya Writing
Stephen D. Houston, Brown University
The lectures will be held over six consecutive Sundays between April 16 and May 21, 2023.
News from the Center
View updates from the Center for Advanced Study in the Visual Arts, including upcoming and recent programs, fellowship deadlines, recordings, and publications.
Press Release
2022–2023 Academic Year Appointments
“One of our largest classes on record, this year’s members represent the future of art history scholarship,” said Steven Nelson, dean of the Center. “Their research will further our collective understanding of artistic histories that have been traditionally underexplored.”
New Videos
The 71st A. W. Mellon Lectures in the Fine Arts
Colorstruck! Painting, Pigment, Affect
Richard J. Powell, Duke University
View the lecture playlist on YouTube here.
New Video
Reflections on the Collection
Does Sculpture Need a Building? Penelope Curtis on Henry Moore
Penelope Curtis, 2021 Edmond J. Safra Visiting Professor
Recent Publication
Chinese Art and Dynastic Time
Wu Hung, April 2022
Part of the Bollingen Series of Princeton University Press, this publication follows Hung’s 2019 presentation of the 68th A. W. Mellon Lectures in the Fine Arts.
Recent Publication
Twelve Caesars: Images of Power from the Ancient World to the ModernMary Beard, October 2021
What does the face of power look like? Who gets commemorated in art and why? And how do we react to statues of politicians we deplore? In this book—against a background of today’s “sculpture wars”—Mary Beard tells the story of how for more than two millennia portraits of the rich, powerful, and famous in the Western world have been shaped by the image of Roman emperors.
Part of the Bollingen Series of Princeton University Press, this publication follows Beard’s 2011 presentation of the 60th A. W. Mellon Lectures in the Fine Arts.
Recent Annual Report
Center 41: Record of Activities and Research Reports, June 2020–May 2021
This year the Center welcomed fellows in residence affiliated with institutions in the United States and United Kingdom. Fellowships were virtual, with members offered the option to either safely relocate to housing provided in Washington, DC, or remain remote, whichever benefited their research. The fellows joined us virtually from across the United States, Europe, and Asia.
Website Redesign
History of Early American Landscape Design (HEALD)
We invite you to explore the redesigned website for the History of Early American Landscape Design (HEALD) project. With thousands of texts and citations and around 1,700 images, HEALD is an inquiry into the language of early American landscape aesthetics and garden design. Considerable changes were made to improve the site’s navigation and exploration, including the dynamic new Image Collection. Encouraging a contextualized approach to data analysis, HEALD allows you to search, read, sort, and parse. The project is built on the open-source platform MediaWiki, with custom code freely available for re-use.
Postponed
The 69th A. W. Mellon Lectures in the Fine Arts
Transparence and Ambiguity: The Modern Space of Axonometry
Yve-Alain Bois, Institute for Advanced Study, Princeton, NJ
Dates to be announced.