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Art History at American University, 4400 Massachusetts Avenue NW, Washington D.C., DC (2025)

04/22/2025

Student Highlight✨

Second-year MA students Jessica Ban and Olivia Agate visited Yale University to conduct in-person research for their capstone projects. Jessica saw Paolo Uc***lo’s cassone (wedding chest) at the Yale University Art Gallery. Olivia saw John Martin’s Belshazzar’s Feast at the Yale Center for British Arts.

“To understand how domestic goods were once seen and used, it is critical to experience them in person. Uc***lo’s cassone is no exception: beyond the flatness of a photo, its sculptural form and massive scale come alive, revealing details only physical examination can unlock. Seeing the delicate faces of the women painted on the chest—preserved for centuries—sparked a personal connection, not unlike one the women who once used these objects might have felt. It’s a kind of intimacy and comprehension that does not happen unless encountering your object in real life.” - Jessica Ban

“I think something that we should never forget as art historians is how important it is to see a work in person. So much changes in comparison to the photos of it. The colors are different, there are details a camera could never pick up, and sitting in front of it allowed me to think about its exhibition and reception in a way a photograph never could.” - Olivia Agate

🖼️: Paolo Uc***lo, Battle of Greeks and Amazons before the Walls of Troy and Recumbent N**e, ca.1460-70. Tempera on panel. 35 × 77 1/2 × 29 in., Yale University Art Gallery

🖼️: John Martin, Belshazzar’s Feast (half-size copy), 1820, oil on canvas, 80 x 120.7 in., Yale Center for British Art

04/17/2025

✨Student Highlight✨

Combined BA/MA student Jordan Delgado represented AU at the 30th Annual Graduate Symposium in Art History & Undergraduate Poster Session at the University of Alabama at Birmingham. She presented “Questioning Relationships in Andrea del Castagno’s Uomini Famosi (1448-1451)”. Jordan proposes a new way to interpret the relationship between the key figures in the work. Keep up the good work, we are so proud of you!

04/14/2025

Congratulations to AU art historians Amy Abraham and Jessica Papay for their wins in the College of Arts & Sciences 35th Annual Robyn Rafferty Mathias Student Research Conference! Amy Abraham’s presentation, “Quiet dignity on display: Laura Wheeler Waring’s portrait of Anna Washington Derry” has been awarded the prize in the Graduate Arts category, and Jessica Papay’s presentation, “Manet’s Political Allusions: Mademoiselle V… in the Costume of Empress Eugénie” has won the award in the Undergraduate Arts category.

04/11/2025

Join us on Wednesday, April 23rd from 12-4pm for a drop-in art making afternoon. In conjunction with the student curated exhibition, Alone, Together: Viewpoints from the Corcoran Legacy Collection at the American University Museum, you are invited to respond to the presented artworks creatively by writing and sketching in the gallery. No registration is required, but we ask that you bring your own supplies (pencils and paper only), and coffee and snacks will be served while supplies last.

04/04/2025

The Spring 2025 Curatorial Practices Course has been working on an exhibition for the American University Museum in the Katzen Arts Center. The show will be in the second-floor project space from April 19 to May 18.

In today’s world, people often feel disconnected from themselves and each other — how can we change that? Alone, Together: Viewpoints from the Corcoran Legacy Collection explores art as a form of social connection, presenting works by Washington-area artists from 1967–1998, including Rebecca Davenport’s Self-Portrait, Lani Irwin’s Queen of Hearts, and William Woodward’s Promenade, to invite viewers into domestic, natural, and abstract spaces for reflection, conversation, and shared experience.

🖼️: Lani Irwin, Queen of Hearts, 1997-1998, oil on canvas, gift from the Trustees of the Cocoran Gallery of Art (Gift of Lani Irwin).

03/28/2025

Join us Tuesday, April 8 for our Spring Lecture in Katzen 201 (Welcome Center). Professor Jenny Anger from Grinnell College will present “Surrealist Women Artists & Mental Illness.”The reception begins at 5:30pm and the lecture will follow at 6.

03/25/2025

Alumni Careers Night is Tuesday, April 1 from 6pm-7:30pm via Zoom.

Join us as we get to know some amazing AU Art History alumni! In addition to the panel discussion, students will have the opportunity to ask questions.

Kate Hatcher received her MA in Art History from American University, and her BA in Art History from Ohio University. She currently works as a Curatorial Assistant at the Canton Museum of Art in Canton, Ohio.

Zola Hoehn currently works at Sotheby’s New York, as the Department Assistant, Business Coordinator, Old Master Paintings. She received her MA from AU specializing in Italian Renaissance, and her BA from the University of Florida, double majoring in Art History and International Studies with a minor in French. She has held internships with the Feminist Art History Conference, and the Harn Museum of Art.

Virginia Apperson is the Digital Media Coordinator for Chrysler Museum of Art in Norfolk, VA. She earned her MA in Art History from AU and her BA from Santa Clara University, where she majored in Art History with minors in Studio Art and Italian.

Dr. Maddie Ullrich is an Assistant Professor of Popular Culture and Media Studies in the Department of Women’s and Gender Studies at the University of Oklahoma. Dr. Ullrich’s research and teaching explores representations of gender, sexuality, and feminism on contemporary and 20th-century U.S. television.

Michael Quituisaca is a PhD student in the Department of Art and Archeology at Princeton University specializing in 19th and 20th-century North American Art. He received his MA in Art History from AU and a BA in Art History from Marymount Manhattan College.

03/24/2025

Recently, Professor Jesse Locker (Portland State University) was a guest lecturer for Dr. Butler’s ARTH-307 International Baroque Art course. In this lecture, Dr. Locker discussed his exciting recent discovery, the master copy of Artemisia Gentileschi’s Penitent Mary Magdalene (1625)!

He walked students through his fascinating detective work: from examining archival documents to tracing provenances in order to track down. Commissioned by a Spanish duke and taken to Seville, the painting was copied in Artemisia's workshop and believed lost. After locating the painting in a private American collection, Dr. Locker examined it along with another Artemisia expert, Dr. Sheila Barker.

The work’s superior technique and details confirmed its authenticity as an original master painting. Key elements, like the reflective quality in the pewter jar and the pentimenti, distinguish this from other very high-quality copies. The newly authenticated painting was then acquired by the Kimbell Art Museum in Fall 2024. For more on this beautiful artwork, see the
Kimbell Art Museum website. The find raises questions about its journey and encourages further study of Artemisia!

03/08/2025

✨Happy International Women’s Day✨

Today and everyday we celebrate the accomplishments of ALL women everywhere. Keep fighting, keep making art, keep learning, and keep loving 🫶🫶🫶

1. Mickalene Thomas, Self-Portrait in Afro Goddess Looking Forward, 2015, Copyright Mickalene Thomas, Courtesy of the Barnes Foundation
2. Ida Jervis, Portrait of Alma Thomas in her Studio, 1971, Anacostia Community Museum, Smithsonian Institution
3. Tamara de Lempicka, Autoportrait (Tamara in a Green Bugatti), 1929, private collection
4. Suzanne Valadon, Self-Portrait, 1989, Museum of Fine Arts, Houston
5. Claude Cahun, Que me veux tu?, 1929, Musée d’Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris
6. Dmitri Kasterine, Barbara Kruger, 1986, National Portrait Gallery, Smithsonian Institution
7. Mary Cassatt, Self-Portrait, c. 1880, National Portrait Gallery, Smithsonian Institution
8. Amrita, Sher-Gil, Self-Portrait as a Tahitian, 1934, Collection of Vivan and Navina Sundaram

02/27/2025

✨Faculty Spotlight✨

On February 26th, Dr. Bellow delivered the fourteenth annual Robert Rosenblum Lecture titled, “Dancing an Orphist ‘Egypt’: The Delaunays and Artistic Imperialism”. In her talk, Dr. Bellow
explored the intersection of Sonia and Robert Deluyney’s designs for the Ballets Russes’s Cléopâtre with the transnational movement’s development in Paris.
The lecture coincided with the  Harmony and Dissonance Orphism in Paris, 1910-1930 exhibition, which features over 90 artworks that engage with the impact that dance, music, and poetry had on art and politics of the time.

02/21/2025

✨Faculty Spotlight✨

Dr. Butler is one of four art historians invited to join a project titled “Before Michelangelo: ‘Revisioning’ Sixtus’s Sistine Chapel as sensorium.” Funded by the Australian Research Council, the project:
“aims to take a new approach to understanding the history of the wall frescoes of the Vatican’s Sistine Chapel, a complex artistic program which has never been satisfactorily explained by scholars. Emphasizing the interplay of oral and visual media in the period, the project seeks to demonstrate how preachers and artists shared practices and resources to construct transformative messages. The project expects to provide new insights into this remarkable (UNESCO) world heritage site, using an innovative methodology at the intersection of aural, visual, and performative cultures.”

The international working group of scholars, which includes historians of religion, preaching, and liturgical music, met in Rome in October to present their research, exchange ideas, and enjoy a private study session in the Chapel. Dr. Butler’s contribution focuses on the integration of poetics into images of beautiful women from the Old Testament serving as typologies for the Virgin Mary, which she argues were uniquely designed to engage all five bodily senses (sight, touch, taste, hearing, and smell) of viewers in the Chapel.

🖼️: Botticelli, Zipporah and Her Sister Meeting Moses at the Well detail, c. 1482, Sistine Chapel
🖼️: Botticelli, Zipporah and Her Sister Meeting Moses at the Well, c. 1482, Sistine Chapel
🖼️: The working group of scholars, including Dr. Butler, standing below the Sistine Chapel choir

02/14/2025

Happy Valentine’s Day! Today, we celebrate all kinds of love 🩷

Artist Dorit Levenstein explores the relationship between love and art through her hand-painted aluminum sculptures. Many of her sculptures pay homage to famous artists like Gustav Klimt and Roy Lichtenstein. What are some artists that you love?

1: Dorit Levenstein, New Love Pink, 2017, hand-painted aluminum, EDEN Gallery

2: Dorit Leventsein, Color of Love, 2018, hand-painted aluminum, EDEN Gallery

3: Dorit Levenstein, New Love - Homage to Klimt, 2023, hand-painted aluminum, EDEN Gallery

4: Dorit Levenstein, New Love - Homage to Lichtenstein, 2023, hand-painted aluminum, EDEN Gallery

01/30/2025

BA art history student Aidan Dowell (BA ’26) is currently studying abroad in Madrid, Spain. He recently met up with AU alumna Esther Rodriguez (MA ’21) at the Galería Leandro Navarro. Rodriguez is a Graphic Designer and Content Manager for the gallery. She led Aidan through the new Moulin à Café exhibit, featuring many well-known avant-garde artists such as Henri Matisse and Gustav Klimt. We’re thrilled to see the AU art history community’s international reach!

01/20/2025

Today we honor the legacy of Martin Luther King Jr. At times like these it is important to remember his perseverance and strength in the face of adversity.

We want to highlight some valuable recourses here at AU available to all students.

🖼️: Martin Luther King, Jr. Memorial, Washington, D.C.

01/13/2025

Wake up! It’s the 2025 Spring semester📚

Welcome back everyone! We hope you had a restful break and are ready to start the semester. And congrats to the 2nd year MA students for completing their comp exams!

🖼️: Laura Theresa Alma-Tadema, World of Dreams, 1876, oil on canvas, 46cm x 31cm.

12/12/2024

Our undergrads took a break from finals this afternoon to make art history (and cat) inspired buttons. Thank you to the amazing staff at the AU Library Makerspace for your help and hospitality!

12/09/2024

mood this week 📚

You’re almost done! Good luck to everyone on your finals this week. You got this! Work hard, but don’t forget to make time for yourself.

🖼️: Ramon Casas, Jove Decadent, 1899, oil on canvas, 18.25 x 22 in., Museu de Montserrat, Spain

12/05/2024

New blog posts are up! Recap the AU/GW Symposium and explore The Norma Broude and Mary D. Garrard Feminist Art History Library in the Visual Recourse Center. Check out the link in our bio!

Art History at American University