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UW-Madison Department of Art History

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UW-Madison Department of Art History

Art History is a dynamic department that teaches and pursues cutting-edge research.

08/12/2026

Laken Sylvander, Ph.D. Student, was awarded a Center for Culture, History and the Environment Research Group Grant as lead applicant. For the 26-27 academic year, she will steward the "Craft, cartography, and climate: Mapping multispecies migration of the Great Lakes" interdisciplinary research group consisting of graduate students and faculty across the Nelson Institute, geography, folklore, American Indian studies, English, and more.

This research approaches cartography as material culture, exploring how migration—human and more-than-human—is mapped in the context of climate change and environmental shifts through folk craft traditions. Focusing on craft practices in the Great Lakes region that entangle place, movement and materiality—such as Hmong migration story cloths, quilting, and Awikhigan birchbark maps—the research group will investigate how and why humans, non-humans and their materials migrate and shape place, and how these stories are told, mapped and archived through diverse materials. This project will blend geography, art history, creative and craft-based storytelling, design history, relevant area studies and environmental science to document contemporary climate‑driven movement across species.

08/06/2026

This summer, Maria Hellenbrand, a dual MA student in Art History and Library Science, is interning at the Walters Art Museum Library and Archives in Baltimore, Maryland. Her project includes processing an archival collection of the Medievalist, Philippe Verdier's personal and curatorial papers.

07/27/2026

Ph.D. candidate Levi Sherman’s article, “Ontography in the Great Outdoors: A New Materialist Reading of Hamish Fulton and Richard Long,” has been published in Visual Culture in Britain.

Abstract: Critics have struggled to describe the artists’ books and text-based art works of walking artists Hamish Fulton and Richard Long. By analyzing their use of lists, combinatory logic, and other non-narrative elements, I show that Fulton and Long anticipate the posthuman turn taken by theorists of New Materialism. The artists break with representational strategies of the landscape tradition, which centre and empower the viewer, and form assemblages of – and with – nonhuman objects that retain their own agency.

07/15/2026

Elaine Sullivan, Assistant Professor of African Art History, attended the preview week of this year’s Venice Biennale, where she ran into Marguerite Lenius (PhD ‘14) and Janine Sytsma (PhD ‘21).

Janine, now Associate Professor of Art History at the University of Arkansas, organized “1922 Revisited,” a live arts program responding to the fragmented archive of the 1922 exhibition of African sculpture at that year’s Venice Biennale. Marguerite, now assistant professor of art history at Middlebury College, was on hand to help with production and step in as a last-minute performer!

06/26/2026

Mirella Maria, Ph.D. Candidate, has been selected for the 2026 CCL/Mellon Foundation Seminar in Curatorial Practice!

This July, Mirella will join eleven other doctoral students from across the country for a two-week program in New York City, featuring one-on-one mentorship, coursework at Columbia Business School, and visits to major museums and art institutions.

Mirella's dissertation, "Digital Curatorial Quilombismo: A Comparative Study of Digital Curatorial Strategies in Afrodiasporic Art Spaces in Brazil, Colombia, and Puerto Rico," examines how Afro-Brazilian, Colombian, and Puerto Rican museums develop digital curatorial strategies that honor material culture while navigating algorithmic systems that marginalize Black cultural content.

06/23/2026

UW-Madison Economics undergrad Britta Dueholm (’26) was interviewed on her experience visiting the Katherine and Herbert Jacobs House I, the first Usonian home designed by Frank Lloyd Wright, during a class visit with Professor Anna Andrzejewski. From experiencing the home’s thoughtful design firsthand to seeing architectural history come to life beyond the classroom, Britta shares what stood out most during the visit. Please view the video linked in bio.

Image courtesy of the Frank Lloyd Wright Foundation.

06/19/2026

Özlem Eren, Ph.D. candidate, published a new article that is out in the Canadian-American Slavic Studies, Volume 60 (2026): Issue 1-2 (May 2026), titled "Romanesque Façades as a Signal of Connection: Halych-Volhynia, Hungary and Poland in the 12th-Century European Network." Özlem examines Romanesque church façades in Halych-Volhynia (what is now Ukraine), Hungary, and Poland, demonstrating how architecture itself became part of a larger Christian and cultural network in the 12th century.

06/16/2026

M. Hamilton, Ph.D. student, and collaborator Ellie Kincai, Ph.D. student in English, interviewed Cleo Wölfle Hazard for the Nelson Institute's Edge Effects podcast. The interview is part of Hamilton and Kincaid's ongoing Borghesi-Mellon workshop, Trans NatureCultures.

In this interview, Hazard speaks about his most recent book, Underflows: Q***r and Trans Ecologies and River Justice, and his ecological and artistic work. The conversation moves from justice for rivers to solidarity with trans, Indigenous, and immigrant communities; the three discuss working with metaphor and materiality to build more just worlds. Visit link in bio to stream.

06/11/2026

Professor Preeti Chopra has published a chapter "The Grass is Green in the Streets of Pondicherry: Images of Dual Power, Cultural Entanglement and Blind Spots in an Indian City."

The chapter explores guidebooks, architecture, and what Chopra calls "creeping colonialism" in the colonial context and cultural encounters in Pondicherry under French colonial rule. Her work appears in "Envisioning the Indian City: Spaces of Encounter in Goa, Calcutta, Pondicherry, and Chandigarh" (Jadavpur University Press, 2025), edited by Supriya Chaudhuri, Nandini Das, Iain Jackson, and Ian H. Magedera.

06/08/2026

Ph.D. candidate Ehsan Behbahani-Nia has been awarded the Archaeological Institute of America's prestigious 2026 John R. Coleman Traveling Fellowship. This fellowship will support Ehsan's research as he investigates the movement of Greek stonemasons and workshops across the Mediterranean during the late Archaic and early Classical periods. Congrats, Ehsan! 🎉

Address

232 Conrad A Elvehjem Building, 800 University Avenue
Madison, WI
53706

Opening Hours

Monday	8am - 4:15pm
Tuesday	8am - 4:15pm
Wednesday	8am - 4:15pm
Thursday	8am - 4:15pm
Friday	8am - 4:15pm

Telephone

+16082632340

Website

http://arthistory.wisc.edu/

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