Penn State Department of Art History

08/15/2026

Congratulations to Gabriella Heidorn, the College of Arts and Architecture's summer 2026 student marshal. She will graduate today during the University's undergraduate summer commencement ceremony with a B.A. in art history, a minor in French and Francophone studies, and a museum studies certificate.

“I have put a lot of time and effort into my studies at Penn State and still can’t believe I was chosen to represent the college I love so much,” Heidorn said. “It makes me feel very validated in my dedication to my degree in art history and with the college itself, as I have challenged myself numerous times and took risks that have truly paid off.”

Gabriella Heidorn has been selected as the College of Arts and Architecture’s student marshal for the summer 2026 commencement ceremony scheduled for 9:30 a.m. on Aug. 15 at the Bryce Jordan Center.

06/11/2026

Two projects from the Center for Virtual/Material Studies were recently featured on the Imagining America website: the flax field at the Arboretum and pigment-making from purple corn.

“Art-making has relied on the skills of farmers and ranchers for millennia, so understanding much of art’s history requires an understanding of agriculture. We are eager to share what we’ve learned and hope to gain new inspiration for future research," said CVMS Director Sarah Rich.

In this month's member spotlight, we showcase two multi-disciplinary projects at Pennsylvania State University that explore material collaborations with the natural world through land-based projects that center artistic practice. Both projects are connected to the Center for Virtual/Material Studies...

06/10/2026

Congratulations to alumna Theresa Kutasz Christensen, who was named a 2026-27 Getty Scholar. Her research centers on the location of historical women in museums and the art market with a focus on developing tools to locate underrepresented and anonymized individuals in object provenances. She will be in residence January-March 2027.

After adjunct teaching at Penn State, she was recently named assistant curator of provenance at the Art Gallery of Ontario in Toronto, Canada.

05/27/2026

Congratulations, Professor Mansfield!

Elizabeth C. Mansfield, distinguished professor of art history in the Penn State College of Arts and Architecture, has been named a Guggenheim Fellow and a scholar at the Institute for Advanced Study for the 2026-27 academic year, during which time she will work on a book project about the visual cu...

04/21/2026

When the School of Music presented "Non più nascoste" (Hidden No More), a fully staged Baroque pastiche opera that explored the hidden musical world of the city’s historic orphanages through the story of a young musician studying with Antonio Vivaldi, patrons got a taste of Baroque Venice through an exhibition in the lobby co-curated by Art History doctoral candidates Emily Hagen (left) and Holli Turner. They worked with School of Music Distinguished Professor Ma**ca Tacconi (far right in second photo), who spearheaded the opera project with Assistant Professor Dawn Pierce (far left in second photo). The interdisciplinary undertaking also included faculty and students from the School of Theatre.

04/19/2026

Congratulations to master's student Nathan D. Manna, recipient of Penn State's Distinguished Master's Thesis Award.

Nathan fuses medievalism and q***r theory to introduce the concept of “q***r relics,” which describes how contemporary artists transform bodily traces, intimate objects and charged mementos into sacral objects that preserve memory, desire and devotion. He currently is working on an installation that crystalizes the ideas of his thesis into a tangible form that can be viewed and experienced — a novel contribution to the field of art history. Nathan's thesis will appear in a special issue of the journal "Different Visions" in 2027.

Read more: https://tinyurl.com/4u65xrx2