Department ofArt History

Scholarly activity and publication are the lifeblood of Penn State Art History. Students, faculty, and staff are involved is a broad array of workshops and symposia, trans-disciplinary research efforts, and frequently author significant publications and presentations. We invite you to explore.

Visit the Research + Publications page

Featured Research

Fabrication: Virtual and Material Approaches to Global Textiles

CVMS will focus attention to fibers and fabrics–materials with which most art historians are unfamiliar despite their substantial impact on the arts. The art historical significance of textiles cannot be overstated. Culturally significant ornament and imagery have been woven and sewn since antiquity. Textiles of linen and silk have provided the support for global painting practices for centuries. Patterning of the most delicate and sophisticated variety has appeared in lace and embroidery as much as in sculpture and architecture. Some of the most urgent economic and humanitarian issues of the modern era–the global transit of materials along trajectories of colonial power, the enslavement or exploitation of workers, the gendering and racialization of labor, the swelling of consumer culture–have been most impactful in the context of textile production. https://arts.psu.edu/research/virtual-material-studies/

Art History awarded Mellon Foundation grant to develop and host Sawyer Seminar

The College of Arts and Architecture’s Department of Art History in collaboration with the College of Liberal Arts has been awarded $225,000 by The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation to support a Sawyer Seminar entitled “Transmission, Containment, Transformation: A Comparative Approach to Architecture and Contagion in Early Modern Cities.”