What is the future of the history and art of the distant past? For decades, art and architectural historians have discussed declining interest in the study of topics prior to the modern era and the growing emphasis among emerging scholars and in current undergraduate curricula on modern and contemporary art.

Lecture on urban-rural architectural revitalization in Hong Kong.

Are you enrolled or planning to enroll in an architecture course this semester?

In our ongoing effort to nurture more inclusive communities in and through the study of the history of art and the history of architecture, the Department of the History of Art & Architecture at Brown University is actively seeking PhD applicants from widely different backgrounds.

Read this book review referencing Professor Itohan Osayimwese's chapter, “Afro-Caribbean Migration and Detention at Ellis Island,” published in "Architecture against Democracy: Aesthetics, Nationalism, and Power," 140-62, edited by Reinhold Martin and Claire Zimmerman for University of Minnesota Press, 2024.

A tropical menagerie set in a lush landscape surrounds almost imperceptible human characters and architectural structures in the eight tableaux of the "Old Indies", a Baroque tapestry from the French Royal Factory of the Gobelins.

Sponsored by the Department of the History of Art and Architecture and the Brown Arts Institute, we welcome you to participate in the second installment of IGNITE events in the History of Art and Architecture Department, a two-day symposium celebrating Leo Villareal's luminous art installation at The Lindemann Performing Arts Center, "Infinite Composition".

Inspired by Chinese handscrolls and NASA film of the moon’s surface, senior Logan Tullai used an 1800s technique to lead a community art project on campus on 60-foot-long swaths of silk.

Professor Anthony Bogues will be awarded a Doctor of Literature (DLit) (honoris causa) by the University of London at this year's graduation ceremony.

A National Endowment for the Humanities grant will enable Brown Professor Dietrich Neumann to develop a traveling exhibition on the long underrecognized African American painter.

Please join our department as we celebrate the careers and accomplishments of Professors Sheila Bonde and Evelyn Lincoln this Friday, May 24th from 3:30 pm - 6:00 pm at the Providence Art Club.

On Friday, May 17th, senior architecture concentrators will open an exhibition of their work at 271 Thayer Street. Refreshments will be provided; all are welcome!

Honors students in the Department of the History of Art & Architecture will present their theses/capstones. Reception to follow; all are welcome!

In 1521, the sacred city of Tenochtitlán was sacked by a coalition of Central Mexican anti-Aztec warriors and their European allies.

HIAA PhD student Yannick Etoundi will present his paper, “Abolishing Slavery, Building French Colonialism: Guadeloupe and Martinique, 1848–1900” at the 2024 Cogut Center for the Humanities Collaborative Public Workshop.

PhD Student Dominic Bate will join the Yale Center for British Art Summer 2024 as a Visiting Scholar

PhD Student Dominic Bate to Teach Brown Pre-college Course titled, "The Grand Tour: Art and Travel in Eighteenth-Century Italy and Beyond"

Graduate student Regina Noto was recently presented with The Schallek Award by the Medieval Academy of America and The Richard III Society American Branch.

This seminar and public gathering explored the concept of “The Glass Mosque” by way of the hand, storytelling and the book arts, composition and sound, and art and architectural history. This event brought the public together with students in the course to think alongside artist Shahzia Sikander and Professor Holly Shaffer.

Graduate student Fosca Maddaloni to Present at the 2024 Frick Symposium on the History of Art. Her talk is titled “Emblematic Pairs: Sixteenth-Century Affective Encounters of Porcelain and Metalwork”.

A fundamental dimension of divine essence in ancient Mediterranean beliefs is the radiance of divine beings. How was it experienced in ritual practice? And how did space, natural or artificial, condition modes of interaction with the divine?

Graduate student Mohadeseh Salari Sardari was recently published in the Iranian Studies Journal (Cambridge University Press). Her article is titled "Andre Godard and Maxime Siroux: Disentangling the Narrative of French Colonialism and Modern Architecture in Iran".

In March 1, Krista Thompson will present, "The Art of Black Study: Tom Lloyd and the Art Workers' Coalition," the first lecture in the Spring installment of our lecture series "Light in Theory & Practice."

PhD Alum Emily Monty Fellow at Harvard’s Villa I Tatti

Assistant Professor Lindsay Caplan wrote a review of Sarah Rosalena’s exhibition at the Columbus Museum of Art at the Pizzuti, "In All Directions" for "The Brooklyn Rail."

Graduate Student Feier Ying Published in Various Journals

The department is hosting an Architecture Studio Orientation, required for all students enrolled in a studio course this Spring. Join us for free pizza and meet your Spring cohort!

Congratulations to Professor Holly Shaffer, Robert Gale Noyes Assistant Professor of Humanities, whose book "Grafted Arts: Art Making and Taking in the Struggle for Western India, 1760–1910" (Paul Mellon Centre for Studies in British Art / Yale University Press, 2022), won a Historians of British Art Award for Exemplary Scholarship on the Period between 1800–1960.

Nude painting flourished among Arab artists in the 20th century during a period of cultural renaissance. Now these rarely seen works are on view at the Wallach Art Gallery.

Sara Aridi interviews Adrienne Minassian Professor of Islamic Art & Architecture, Margaret Graves, and discusses her research alongside other art historians focused on the Arab world.

Professor Jeffrey Moser led a research trip to the Cleveland Art Museum and Allen Memorial Art Museum at Oberlin College

The Departments of the History of Art & Architecture and Visual Art are pleased to welcome Amira Osman to give the Fall 2023 Spear Endowed Architecture Lecture on November 29th, at 6 pm, in List Art Building, 120.

Jamaican Curator Dr. Anthony Bogues Leads MoCAAD’s Revolution with ‘This Life’ Exhibition

Politics and Architecture: Professor Dietrich Neumann opened an intervention and exhibition at Mies van der Rohe's Barcelona Pavilion (1929/1986) in Barcelona, Spain on Saturday, November 11.

Join the HIAA DUG for a tour of "The Performative Self-Portrait," a photography exhibition currently on view at the RISD Museum.

The Brown Architecture DUG invites you to a workshop to learn about sustainability in architecture led by Nicole Samios ‘24 and Christian Wu '24.

An essay for Outland written by Assistant Professor Lindsay Caplan. Caplan writes, "The significance of contemporary generative art hinges on how it brings disparate kinds of similarity and difference into unreconciled—and productive—tension."

A review of the exhibition at the MFA Boston, "Michaelina Wautier and The Five Senses: Innovation in 17th-Century Flemish Painting," which was curated in part by HIAA Professor Jeffrey Muller and graduate students in the department practicum. Written by Caroline Van Cauwenberge, Curatorial Associate, The Leiden Collection, New York.

A review of Sonal Khullar's recently published anthology, "Old Stacks New Leaves." The publication contextualizes the historical and contemporary book traditions in South Asia and features a chapter from Robert Gale Noyes Assistant Professor of Humanities, Holly Shaffer.

Ph.D. student Yannick Etoundi was recently selected for the Cogut Collaborative Humanities Doctoral Certificate, as well as the Cogut Doctoral Certificate Fellowship.

Ph.D. Candidate, Dominic Bate, was awarded a Summer Travel Fellowship from the Lewis Walpole Library in Farmington, CT.

"The Imagined New | Working through alternative archives is envisioned as a 3-volume, open-access publication in which African and African diasporic art practices are framed as an alternative set of archives, in which intersecting histories, presents and possible futures are (re)conceived, embodied and performed as radical claims to Black life.

Local students from high schools such as Central Falls, Hope High, Classical, and E Cubed, visited the Department of the History of Art & Architecture to see what it's like to be a student in the department. Students were able to tour List Art Building, peek into classes, and examine and discuss the artwork found throughout the building.

At the CCA, Higgerson will be conducting research for her developing dissertation, tentatively entitled "Alpine Imaginaries: Organicism, Vernacularism, and Authenticity in the Modern Alps." The project aims to theorize a history of vernacular Alpine architecture's relationship with modernism through its varied and recurrent intersections with the movement.