Department of Art History

Professor Cummins focuses on Pre-Columbian and Latin American Colonial Art. Recent research interests include the analysis of early Ecuadorian ceramic figurines and the study of late Pre-Columbian systems of knowledge and representation, especially Inca, and their impact on the formation of 16th and 17th century colonial artistic and social forms. He was awarded his Ph.D. from UCLA in 1988. 

Alessandra Russo, Columbia University, has been trained in art history and historical anthropology at the Universitá di Bologna, at the Universiteit Leiden, and at the École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales, in Paris, where she received her Ph.D. (2006). Her dissertation was awarded the EHESS best dissertation prize. Before joining the Department of Latin American and Iberian Cultures, at Columbia, in 2007, she had been visiting researcher at the Instituto de Investigaciones Estéticas (UNAM, Mexico).

Martin Powers will discuss the ways images relate to authority in Chinese Art. 

James Rondeau, newly appointed director of the Art Institute of Chicago, gave his Smart Lecture in April on the work of Hélio Oiticica. Formerly the Dittmer Chair and Curator of Modern and Contemporary Art at the Art Institute, he is closely tied to the upcoming exhibition of Oiticica’s work. His long and esteemed career at the Art Institute and recent appointment to the Directorship demonstrate his valuable contributions to the field of Art History and the arts community at large.

Karen Overby received her PhD from New York University, Institute of Fine Arts in Medieval art and architecture. She focuses on the “long histories” of objects and their relationship with temporality. She also co-founded, in 2010, the Material Collective, a collaborative of medieval art historians dedicated to interdisciplinarity, experimental scholarship, and activism within academia. Her book, Sacral Geographies: Saints, Shrines, and Territory in Medieval Ireland, came out in 2012, and since she has published multiple edited volumes.