In the News

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May/June 2026
 
Computational Media, Arts & Cultures graduate student Hugo Idarraga Franco presented his talk, titled “From Objects to Subjects: Rethinking Machine Vision through Perspectivism” as part of a SPARKS (Short Presentations of Artworks & Research for the Kindred Spirit) session on animism on May 29. Other speakers included DKU collaborator and friend, Vivian Xu.
 
We are very proud of the student work that came out of the Duke Bass Connections class run by Brinnae Bent (Trust Lab; Dept/School: Artificial Intelligence/Pratt School of Engineering, Duke) and Professor of Art, Art History and Visual Studies, Bill Seaman entitled  - Historical Shifts and Geographical Drifts: Using AI Embeddings to Explore Human Ideas Across Time and Space. The work culminated in two different Science/Art Installations which can be viewed in this video documentation: https://youtu.be/lnxlCOY_Jvc
 
Emily Mohr (PhD, '26) has recently been awarded a postdoctoral fellowship through the Harvard University Loeb Classical Library Foundation. Congratulations, Emily!
 
Evillyn Biazatti de Araujo (Graduate Student, Art History PhD Program) has received a research fellowship from the Rockefeller Archive Foundation. Biazatti de Araujo will use the award for travel to the archive to conduct research on her dissertation concerning health architecture and politics during the Vargas era (1930-1946) in Brazil.
 
This Fall, Dana Hogan (PhD '24) will be starting a tenure-track position at Middlebury College as Assistant Professor of History of Art & Architecture. This appointment is supported by the midd.data program with a focus on the Renaissance Mediterranean and Digital Humanities.
 
Pedro Lasch, Research Professor of Art, Art History and Visual Studies, was recently interviewed in the Spanish-language business and economic newspaper, Expansión, on his traveling exhibition, Black Mirror. An English translation of the article can be read with this LINK.
 
Art History major Sam Stayn (rising Junior) has been selected for the House Course Excellence in Teaching Award for his Spring 2026 course, “Thinking Like an Architect: Introduction to Architectural Analysis.” Congratulations, Sam!
 
On May 10, the Department hosted its annual Commencement Ceremony and Graduation Reception. The Art, Art History & Visual Studies Class of 2026 included 7 graduate and undergraduate certificate recipients, 23 undergraduate degree recipients, 2 Master of Arts (M.A.) graduates, and 5 Ph.D. graduates. Congratulations!

 

Project Offers a 3D Look at the Roman Empire

A new virtual museum created by Duke researchers will be housed in an Italian museum For many people, the Roman Empire is an abstraction -- a series of facts gleaned from textbooks and museum artifacts. For the people of Reggio Emilia, in northern Italy, the look and feel of the Roman Empire is about to become much more real. The local museum in the town of 170,000 has partnered with Duke researchers to house a virtual museum bringing the empire’s aesthetics to life. Developed by a team led by Maurizio… read more about Project Offers a 3D Look at the Roman Empire »

Crossing the border, whether real or imagined

excerpt from "Movies’ Most Memorable Mexican-American Moments: From Stand and Deliver to Giant, These Are Hollywood's Strongest Cinematic Depictions of America’s Third Largest Ethnic Group" http://www.whatitmeanstobeamerican.org, May 2015. Esther Gabara Crossing the border, whether real or imagined Near the end of Cheech Marín’s 1978 Born in East L.A., the movie’s born-and-bred- Angeleno hero, who had been wrongly deported to Mexico, leads a mass dash back across the border. Neil Diamond’… read more about Crossing the border, whether real or imagined »

New Faculty Publication

Architectural Agents: The Delusional, Abusive, Addictive Lives of Buildings by Annabel J. Wharton, William B. Hamilton Professor of Art and Art History, has just been published by the University of Minnesota Press. From the Press: “Treating buildings as bodies, Annabel Jane Wharton writes biographies of symptomatic structures in order to diagnose their pathologies. The violence of some sites is rooted in historical trauma; the unhealthy spatial behaviors of other spaces stem from political and economic ruthlessness… read more about New Faculty Publication »

Oxford University Ertegun Scholarship

Oxford University Ertegun Scholarship Art History and Visual Arts senior major Tara Trahey has been offered an Ertegun Scholarship to Oxford University for their masters degree in Classical Archaeology. This scholarship covers full tuition and housing, in a community of humanities students. Tara’s presented her Graduation With Distinction project, “Visualizing an Iconographic Network Between Athens and Vulci in the 6th Century B.C.E.,” at the GWD Colloquium on Friday, April 10. Professor and chair Sheila… read more about Oxford University Ertegun Scholarship »

Guggenheim Fellowship

Pinar Yoldas, An Ecosystem of Excess (TR), 2014. Installation: drawings, projections and sculptures. Doctoral student Pinar Yoldas has received a prestigious 2015 John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation Fellowship in the Fine Arts category. In its ninety-first competition for the United States and Canada, the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation has awarded 173 Fellowships (including two joint Fellowships) to a diverse group of 175 scholars, artists, and scientists. Appointed on the basis of prior… read more about Guggenheim Fellowship »

Mellon Postdoctoral Fellowship

Mellon Postdoctoral Fellowship Doctoral candidate Camila Maroja has received the prestigious two-year Mellon Postdoctoral Fellowship at The Cogut Center for the Humanities at Brown University. Camila will be researching, writing, and teaching across an interdisciplinary cohort that includes the departments of History of Art and Architecture, Hispanic Studies, History, Portuguese and Brazilian Studies, the John Carter Brown Library, and the Center for Latin American and Caribbean Studies. All Mellon fellows… read more about Mellon Postdoctoral Fellowship »

Visualizing Venice: The Biennale and the City

Visualizing Venice: The Biennale and the City       Digital Visualization Workshop - 4th edition http://www.univiu.org/shss/seminars-summer-schools/visualizing-venice-summer-workshop June 1-12, 2015 Faculty: Caroline Bruzelius, Mark Olson, Victoria Szabo and Hannah Jacobs, Duke University, Donatella Calabi, Ludovica Galeazzo and Chiara Di Stefano, Università Iuav di Venezia        Program   What is it about?… read more about Visualizing Venice: The Biennale and the City »

Featured Summer Courses

ARTHIST 290-02 / ECON 390-02 Art, Money, and Labor 1830—Today The aim of this course is to explore how the contradiction between artistic ethics and artistic value has been expressed over time, integrated as it was, into the polemic writings of artists and art critics, artistic studio practices, and the theoretical percepts of artistic production itself. E. Luse ARTHIST 290-01 / VMS 290-01 The Visual Culture of News, Past and Present This class will explore the visual culture of news from Early Modernity to the… read more about Featured Summer Courses »

Featured Summer Courses

ARTHIST 101D Prehistory to Middle Ages Explore art’s role in the human activities of dwelling, worship, death and exchange, from prehistoric cave drawings to Roman arenas and Medieval relics. E. Narkin ARTHIST 102D Renaissance to 20th Century Explore art’s role in religious worship, private and public spaces, and the art market and exhibitions, from the Renaissance to the twentieth century. K. Desplanque   read more about Featured Summer Courses »

Visualizing Postwar Tokyo: Bombing, The Olympics, Youth Culture and the Marginal

Rethinking Global Cities Presenter: Shunya Yoshimi, University of Tokyo 03/30/2015 at 04:30 PM Sponsors: Duke University Middle East Studies Center, Asian Pacific Studies Institute (APSI), and Japanese Culture Club Location: East Duke 108 - Map Webcast: Watch here When: 03/30/2015 at 04:30 PM to 03/30/2015 at 06:00 PM Contact: Ahmed, Iyman Email: iyman.ahmed@duke.edu Phone: 668-1920 Please join us for a public lecture delivered by Dr. Shunya Yoshimi, from the University of Tokyo, for the next installment… read more about Visualizing Postwar Tokyo: Bombing, The Olympics, Youth Culture and the Marginal »

Graduate Student Symposium

2015 AAHVS GRADUATE STUDENT SYMPOSIUMThursday, February 19, 2015Keynote 6:00 PM A266, Collision Space, Bay 10, Smith Warehouse “Japan’s Venice and the Ends of Art” Ignacio Adriasola Assistant Professor Department of Art History, Visual Art & Theory University of British Columbia, VancouverFriday, February 20, 2015Symposium Papers 1:30-3:00 PM A266, Collision Space, Bay 10, Smith Warehouse Rosalia Romero “Transborder Visions of Freedom:… read more about Graduate Student Symposium »

Faculty Book Award

Professor Patricia Leighten's recent book, The Liberation of Painting: Modernism and Anarchism in Avant-Guerre Paris (Chicago, 2013) has won Choice magazine's CHOICE Outstanding Academic Title Award. Choice is a publication of the Association of College & Research Libraries (ACRL), a division the American Library Association (AMA). From Choice: “Stereotypical views of modern art long have associated its complex visual languages with radical politics, variously calling modern paintings ‘anarchic’ and ‘revolutionary.’ In… read more about Faculty Book Award »

Places & Spaces: Mapping Science

EXHIBITIONSSecond Floor Bay 11, Smith WarehouseJanuary 12 – April 10, 2015 This spring, Duke University is hosting the Places & Spaces: Mapping Science exhibition, curated over the past ten years by Dr. Katy Borner, director of the Cyberinfrastructure for Networks Science Center in the Department of Information and Library Science at Indiana University. The Places & Spaces exhibition, a labor of love by internationally renowned visualization… read more about Places & Spaces: Mapping Science »

Workshops in Washington, D.C.

Pedro Lasch, associate research professor of visual arts, conducted two workshops on November 23, 2014 at the National Portrait Gallery and Smithsonian Latino Center in Washington, D.C. on “Portraiture, Citizenship, and Abstraction – A Site-Specific Social Art Project.” Taking the form of a 90-minute workshop, this social art project for youth, teens and college students of all ages focused on new ways of thinking about identity and culture. During the workshop, participants used Lasch’s specially designed mirror masks to… read more about Workshops in Washington, D.C. »

Wired! awarded Kress Grant

The Samuel H. Kress Foundation has generously provided the Wired! Visualizing the Past initiative with $24,000 for student research projects. For the ongoing research initiatives of the Wired! group, see http://www.dukewired.org/research/. Through its Grant Programs, the Kress Foundation supports scholarly projects that promote the appreciation, interpretation, preservation, study and teaching of European art from antiquity to the early 19th century. These competitive grants are awarded to institutions only. The Digital… read more about Wired! awarded Kress Grant »

Susanna Temkin ('07)

For one art history alumna, Duke provided deep exposure to Latin American art and history that has fueled her graduate work. Susanna Temkin, Trinity ’07, is now a Ph.D. candidate studying art history at the Institute of Fine Arts at New York University. Temkin is blending her majors from Duke—art history and Spanish—to advance her exploration of Latin American art, with a focus on Cuba. Temkin also works in a gallery called Cecilia de Torres Ltd in the Soho district of New York City. There, she is working on the catalogue… read more about Susanna Temkin ('07) »

Sarah Strauss ('98)

Sarah Strauss, Trinity ’98, realized that she wanted to spend her time at Duke pursuing a passion for architecture after traveling abroad to India and Nepal. But first, she had an intellectual journey to make. Strauss came to Duke as a pre-medical student, and took several courses in the sciences. During her sophomore year, she took an anatomy class and realized she was “too squeamish” to pursue a career in medicine. Instead of majoring in the sciences, Strauss made the most of the pre-med courses she had already taken and… read more about Sarah Strauss ('98) »

Kristin Posehn ('01)

After graduating with distinction in visual art from Duke in 2001, Kristin Posehn is now making her living as an artist. Working as both an artist and writer in Los Angeles, she has received numerous international commissions and accolades for her work. Posehn said she values her visual arts undergraduate experience in part because of the breadth of the liberal arts education Duke provided. It’s not something that a strictly art school would have provided. “I had experiences that none of my friends who went to art school… read more about Kristin Posehn ('01) »

Tara Trahey ('14)

Using her educational experiences around the globe, Senior Tara Trahey, from Concord, N.C., is shedding light on the ancient trade of vases. Trahey, a Dean’s Summer Research Fellow, began her research on ancient vase trade between Athens and Vulci, an ancient city in what is now known as Tuscany, Italy, during her freshman year. She was conducting research for the class Women in the Classical World, taught by Sheila Dillon, professor of art history and classical studies. She stumbled upon two nearly identical vases—both… read more about Tara Trahey ('14) »

Brian Frank ('01)

From art museums to tech startups, Bryan Frank, Trinity ’01, has been able to mold his Duke art history degree to every professional endeavor in his life. Frank entered the job force after graduating from Duke, only to realize that he missed the academic study of art history. With the encouragement and support of Patricia Leighten, professor of art, art history and visual studies, Frank quit his job and pursued a MA in art history from Williams College in 2005. Once he received his master’s degree, the director of the… read more about Brian Frank ('01) »

Molly Superfine ('13)

Alumnus Molly Superfine is using her global Duke education to shape her passion for art history in her post-graduate life. Superfine, Trinity ’13, dedicated herself to studying the arts while at Duke and double majored in Spanish. She worked at several museums, studied art abroad and participated in DukeEngage, which shaped her perspective on the relevance of street art in contemporary culture. Currently, Superfine works at Fredericks @ Freiser, an art gallery in New York City. She is exploring careers in museums and art… read more about Molly Superfine ('13) »