Department of Art History, Indiana University Bloomington

03/10/2026

Join us for our next Burke Lecture Guest, Dr. Sampada Aranke presenting "The Hammons Effect" on Friday March 27th at 4pm in Martin Commons at the Eskenazi Museum of Art. Dr. Aranke is an Associate Professor of History of Art and Comparative Studies at The Ohio State University.

This talk will consider the ways that famed Black American conceptual artist David Hammons cites, leverages, and operationalizes white, western canons to probe the generative limits
of art historical discourse and canonization. The artist’s intentional engagement with the practices and legacies of artists whose oeuvres have formed an avant-garde western canon like Duchamp, Klein, Matta-Clark, is not about mere adoration, but in fact a strategic assessment, if not deformation, of art historical discourses. Operating like a trojan horse, Hammons has seamlessly created opportunities for alignment and association, making it so that named collectors of Duchamp and museums that collect Matta-Clark have incomplete collections if they do not own a work by Hammons. This project will work alongside two key Hammons works, The Holy Bible: Old Testament (2002) and Days End (2021) to consider how the artist reeks disciplinary canons in order to make radically renewed associations.

Sponsored by the Robert E. & Avis Tarrant Burke Lecture
Fund in the Department of Art History
Events are free and open to the public.

Images: David Hammons, Day’s End, 2014. Graphite on Paper, sheet: 8.5 x 11in. (21.6 x 27.9 cm). Whitney
Museum of American Art, New York; gift of the artist 2021.11
Bottom: David Hammons, Day’s End, 2014–21. Stainless steel I=and precast concrete, overall: 52 x 65 x
325 feet. © David Hammons. Photo: Timothy Schenck

02/18/2026

Join us for Art History Association's 2026 Graduate Symposium- "UGLY: Unruly Aesthetics in the Humanities"
Thursday February 26th from 9am-5pm in Martin Commons at Eskenazi Museum of Art. Swipe for the full schedule.
We are joined by keynote speaker Dr. Gretchen Henderson from Rhodes College, who will present "Ugly Waters: (de) Composing Arts & Aesthetics with Blue Humanities".

Events are free and open to the public.

02/12/2026

Mark your calendars for our upcoming Art History lectures! These events are free and open to the public. Read more and RSVP for each by clicking the link in our bio.

02/10/2026

The Department of Art History applauds Chaeri Lee, who recently completed her Ph.D. in Art History!

Dr. Lee described her dissertation:
The title of my dissertation is “Ās̲ār: Visualizing Vestiges of Time in Late Nineteenth-Century Iran,” and it examines nineteenth-century Iranian visual and material engagements with the ancient past through the term ās̲ār, which at its core, signifies “traces” and “effects”. Since the early Islamic period, Muslim authors described the physical remnants of pre-Islamic civilizations as ās̲ār—a rhetorical practice rooted in the Qur’an, which portrays pre-Islamic ruins as edifying traces of divine power. In my dissertation, I argue that the metaphysical and philosophical connotations of the Islamic concept of ās̲ār resonated deeply in the nineteenth-century Iranian re-discovery of ancient Persian vestiges.

Click the link in our bio to read more! Congratulations Chaeri!

Image: Detail from Mirza Muhammad Nasir Husayn "Fursat" Shirazi (1854 - 1920), Ās̲ār-i ‘Ajam (Vestiges of Ancient Persia), 1896.

01/20/2026

Join us for this community event on Saturday January 24th! Hear student presentations on uncovered documentation and a proposed historical marker for American sculptor Ira. Correll's statue of Abraham Lincoln in Odon.
Learn more and register at go.iu.edu/8ws8.

Join us January 24 at the Odon Winkelpleck Public Library to explore new findings on sculptor Ira A. Correll and his Abraham Lincoln statue in Odon, including student research and newly donated materials.

Learn more and register at go.iu.edu/8ws8.

IU College of Arts and Sciences Daviess County Historical Society Museum

12/15/2025

Graduate student Olivia Kalish recently gave a tour of the exhibition she co-curated, "Radius: Helen Frankenthaler Prints in Context", to the Art History Department and curators at the Eskenazi Museum of Art. The exhibition celebrates the gift of fifteen prints from the Helen Frankenthaler Foundation along side other prints in the museum's collection. The show runs through Sunday, February 15, 2026.

Congratulations Olivia!

10/29/2025

Current students and alumni, of the dual Art History M.A./MLS program with the Luddy School, connected during recent travels by the Society of Art Librarianship Students (SALS). Read here on their experiences networking, attending conferences, and hands on experience at museums and art libraries.
Future SALS travel plans include Chicago for the ARLIS/NA Midstate's chapter meeting and the annual conference in Montreal.

Interested in our MA/MLS dual degree program? Visit our website, linked in the bio, for more information! The application deadline is January 5th.

Art Librarianship Students Travel Across the Midwest by Sarah Carter The last twelve months have been very busy for students in the Society of Art Librarianship Students (SALS). This small but committed group of graduate students from the Department of Information and Library Science has logged over...

10/21/2025

The Department of Art History at Indiana University Bloomington is pleased to announce that its Ph.D. and dual M.A./M.L.S. programs will be accepting applications during the 2025-26 admissions cycle.

The Ph.D. program offers courses of study in the art and culture of Africa, the Americas, Asia, Europe, West Asia and North Africa, and in contemporary art. The M.A./M.L.S. program offers these courses alongside M.L.S. specializations in Rare Books and Manuscripts, Archives and Records Management, and the Digital Humanities.

https://arthistory.indiana.edu/graduate/index.html

Application deadline: January 5

10/13/2025

Join us for our next Robert E. & Avis Tarrant Burke Lecture: Dr. De-nin Lee!

Friday, October 17 — 4:00 p.m. — Martin Commons, EMA
Robert E. and Avis Tarrant Burke Lecture
Dr. De-nin Lee, Professor of Art History and Assistant Dean in the School of Film, Television and Media Arts; Emerson College

"Tectonic Shifts: Earth's History and Art History"
How often do we look at an artwork and think not only of its antiquity but also of the age of our planet? Can the consideration of an artist’s biography be set meaningfully within the history of the successive stages of life on Earth? Could art history offer a means to foster affection and stewardship of our shared, planetary home? The Anthropocene thesis that human activities, due to their prevalence and range, now constitute a major factor altering Earth’s systems implies the convergence of human history with geological history, spurring new questions for art history. This lecture takes landscape paintings of Song-dynasty scholar-artist Li Gonglin as a point of departure to explore intersections of earth’s history and art history.

De-nin D. Lee is Professor of Art History and, currently, the Assistant Dean in the School of Film, Television, and Media Arts at Emerson College in Boston, Massachusetts. She earned her master’s and doctoral degrees in art history from Williams College and Stanford University, respectively. Dr. Lee’s current research focuses on the intersection of Chinese landscape and environment.

Lecture will be followed by questions and a light reception.

10/13/2025

We are excited to announce that Professor Faye Gleisser has been awarded by Smithsonian American Art Museum and the Renwick Gallery the Charles C. Eldredge Prize for her book "Risk Work: Making Art and Guerrilla Tactics in Punitive America, 1967–1987" (University of Chicago Press, 2023).

The annual Eldredge Prize, named in honor of the museum’s former director (1982–1988), recognizes originality and thoroughness of research, excellence of writing, and clarity of method; it has been awarded since 1989.

SAAM writes: The jury described Risk Work as a “gamechanger” noting that “through the lens of ‘punitive literacy’ and with bold pairings of well-known and understudied artists, Gleisser presents an original rethinking of the relational, embodied, and situated knowledge that informed artistic and performative practice in the United States from the late 1960s to the late 1980s. This turbulent period, marked by social and political revolutions, the advent of for-profit carceral institutions, and advances in surveillance technology, resulted in a profound expansion of policing and prosecution. Gleisser persuasively argues that the police state is a structural field that shapes artists’ creative decisions and that the artist’s race, class and gender inform their punitive literacy, which in turn shapes their art.” The trio also commended Gleisser’s interdisciplinary approach that “draws together art history, performance studies, black feminism, q***r of color critique, legal studies, and carceral studies, to show how guerilla art between 1967 and 1987 requires attention to punitive literacy.”

Congratulations Faye!

10/07/2025

Join us this Thursday 10/9 for Indiana University African Studies Program Colloquium "Launch of Volume 1, Orbis Africa Journal". Panel Speakers include Bárbaro Martínez-Ruiz, Jeffrey Saletnik, Alemayehu Fentaw Weldemarlam, and Grant Parker.

5:00pm Global International Studies Building room 3067
We hope to see you there!