Annabel J. Wharton

William B. Hamilton Distinguished Professor of Art and Art History

Education

• Ph.D., University of London (UK) 1975

• M.A., University of Chicago 1969

• B.S., University of Wisconsin at Madison 1966

Overview

ANNABEL WHARTON, William B. Hamilton Professor of Art History, Duke University, and Vincent Scully Visiting Professor at the Yale School of Architecture in 2014, received her Ph.D. at the Courtauld Institute, London University. Initially her research focused on Late Ancient and Byzantine art and culture (Art of Empire [Penn State] and Refiguring the Post-Classical City [Cambridge]). Then she began to investigate the effects of modernity on ancient landscapes, notably in Building the Cold War: Hilton International Hotels and Modern Architecture (Chicago, 2001). She has combined her interests in the Ancient and the Modern in her last two books: Selling Jerusalem: Relics, Replicas, Theme Parks (Chicago, 2006) and Architectural Agents: The Delusional, Abusive, Addictive Lives of Buildings (Minnesota, 2015). Architectural Agents considers material and digital buildings as agents that both endure pain and inflict it. She has begun work on a new project treating the theory and practice of models, conceptual and material, analog and digital, tentatively titled Manipulating Models.

Expertise

Early Christian & Byzantine Architecture, architectural history, medieval architecture, modern architecture, religious visual culture, new technologies for visualizing historical materials