On March 3, Kyle Marini presented “Two-Ply Art History: Parsing Threads of Iconographic Continuity and Rupture in Colonial Inca Embroidery” at the Center for Advanced Study in the Visual Arts and the National Gallery’s Middle Atlantic Symposium. He was introduced by his advisor, Prof. Amara Solari. On March 9, Ph.D. student Han Chen presented “Trading Aesthetics in the Early 18th Century: The Eccleston Screen and the Transcultural Visual Trope” at the American Society for Eighteenth-Century Studies Conference in St. Louis. Kenta Tokushige was awarded the Spiro Kostof Fellowship to present his paper, “Mapping Cosimo I de’ Medici’s Secret Town in the Vatican’s Gallery of Maps” at the annual conference of the Society of Architectural Historians in Montréal on April 13. He also presented “Building Fortifications: A Comparative Study of the Administrative Structure under Cosimo I de’ Medici” at the annual conference of the Renaissance Society of America in San Juan. Rounding out spring conference presentations was Amy Orner, who presented “Yon Empress of the North: Edinburgh’s New Town as a City of Empire” at the Society of Architectural Historians of Great Britain annual conference in London on May 12.

At Penn State’s spring 2023 commencement, the department congratulated Caroline Koch and Maialen Martinez Marquina on receiving M.A. degrees. After defending her dissertation, “Skin Inscriptions: The Tattoo Medium in Contemporary Art,” Karly Etz was awarded the Ph.D.; her advisor was Prof. Sarah Rich.

During summer 2023, our graduate students’ research took them to different parts of the world, including M.A. student Ariana Ramirez in Oxkutzcab (Yucatán), Mexico; Ph.D. student Holli Turner in Venice and Florence, Italy; and Kyle Marini in Chinchero, Peru. Kenta Tokushige did research in Portoferraio on the Island of Elba in Italy, and while in Italy, led Penn State’s study abroad program in Todi. Ph.D. student Emily Hagen also carried out dissertation research in Italy and taught “History and Culture of Southern Italy” for Penn State Global Programs in Salerno.

The department’s 29th Annual Art History Graduate Symposium on September 26 was an expansive event with presentations by Ph.D. students Arunima Addy and Emily Hagen as well as M.A. students Triana Cancel, Alexander Coberly, Annalise Palmer, and Grace Tran. Annalise Palmer’s paper, “Remote Control in Deborah Hay’s Solo,” was selected for presentation at the Barnes Graduate Student Symposium on the History of Art in Philadelphia in spring 2024. Students have a number of conference papers lined up for the coming months, and we are looking forward to hearing about the results!

The Susan W. and Thomas A. Schwartz Endowed Fellowship for Dissertation Research in Art History

Emily Hagen was the recipient of the Susan W. and Thomas A. Schwartz Endowed Fellowship for Dissertation Research in Art History in 2022. Emily studied for seven months at the Bibliotheca Apostolica Vaticana in Rome. Her dissertation is the first examination of architecture for rediscovered relics in seventeenth-century Rome, taking as its focus Pietro da Cortona’s Santi Luca e Martina. Cortona’s project manifests the early Christian antiquarianism of the pontificate of Pope Urban VIII and within the Barberini cultural program. Emily’s dissertation further considers the performative meaning of the falsified discovery and the subsequent displays of piety and patronage. When Emily was not exploring Rome’s crypts, catacombs, and cafes, she was in the manuscript reading room of the Vatican Library consulting seventeenth-century correspondence and newsletters. These resources informed her analysis of the phenomenon of discovery of early Christian relics in the first half of the seventeenth century. Extensive on-site study of the art and architecture of Rome deepened Emily’s enduring fascination with the Eternal City.

Class Visit to Donatello: Sculpting the Renaissance

During Spring Break of 2023, graduate students in Prof. Daniel Zolli's seminar on Donatello visited the once-in-a-lifetime exhibition on the artist at the Victoria & Albert Museum. The exhibit, which came to London after stops in Florence and Berlin, was one of the most ambitious ever devoted to the artist. “The exhibition’s lead curator, Peta Motture, and I have had an ongoing dialogue about Donatello for many years, and she offered her full support of a visit to the exhibition quite early on. She convened the whole curatorial team for an informal seminar – both before and after our visit to the show – and connected us with the conservators, who gave us a tour of their facilities and the many complexities of conserving some of the works in the show,” said Zolli.

Holli Turner, one of the students in the seminar, found the experience transformational. She noted that, “the show displayed several spectacular pieces as well as a looping video of artists creating copies of Donatello’s works.” She added, “Donatello could freeze moments in time and display a variety of emotions through his figures by way of a complicated medium. I use the term “complicated” as the medium demands expertise in several areas including carpentry, goldsmithing, drawing, and sculpting. The class was fantastic and pairing it with the exhibition positively added to my understanding of the overall ingenuity of Donatello and his collaborative workshop.”

This unique opportunity was enabled by funding from Prof. Elizabeth Mansfield, and knowing the class would be able to see these works allowed Zolli to prepare his students in advance. “We read conservation reports and primary sources. This meant that the graduate students were thoroughly primed to engage thoughtfully with the exhibition’s conservators and curators; and able to engage with the works in really sophisticated ways. It was immensely gratifying – and humbling – to see them modeling their expertise.”