Department of Art History, Indiana University Bloomington

09/14/2026

Please join us for our first Burke Lecture Guest of the 2026-2027 season. Dr. Huey Copeland will present "All the Things Art History Could Be by Now if Blackness Were its Mother: Reflections on Discipline and Value" on Tuesday October 6th at Martin Commons in the Eskenazi Museum of Art. Dr. Copeland joins us from The University of Pittsburgh where he is the Andrew W. Mellon Chair and Professor of Modern Art and Black Study.

In this lecture drawn from his new book project, Huey Copeland considers how disciplinary structures differently value and tend towards the racialized historicity of the aesthetic, above all to those blackened beings whose everywhere present yet suppressed exertions continue to provide the preconditions for the emergence of the visual, the modern world, and the work of artists on the engendering of both.

Sponsored by the Robert E. & Avis Tarrant Burke Lecture
Fund in the Department of Art History
Events are free and open to the public.

08/25/2026

We are excited to welcome Elena Gittleman to the department as an art history lecturer! Professor Gittleman earned her Ph.D. from Bryn Mawr College. Her research interests cover Byzantine art and archaeology, late antique art and archaeology, Jewish art history, architecture of the ancient and medieval Mediterranean among other fields. Be sure to keep an eye out for her course offerings! Check out her faculty page on our website for more information.

Welcome Elena!

07/02/2026

It is with great excitement to share that Julie Van Voorhis has been promoted to Full Professor! Please join us in congratulating her on this great achievement and recognition!

06/22/2026

WTIU Public Television reported on the collaborative research project Professor Melody Deusner art history student's conducted with IU Center for Rural Engagement on Ira Correll's Abraham Lincoln statue in Oden, Indiana. Their work will help the town apply for a historical marker for this century old statue.

Great work to all involved!

Full story: https://www.ipm.org/news/2026-06-17/an-abraham-lincoln-...

03/10/2026

Join us for our next Burke Lecture Guest, Dr. Sampada Aranke presenting "The Hammons Effect" on Friday March 27th at 4pm in Martin Commons at the Eskenazi Museum of Art. Dr. Aranke is an Associate Professor of History of Art and Comparative Studies at The Ohio State University.

This talk will consider the ways that famed Black American conceptual artist David Hammons cites, leverages, and operationalizes white, western canons to probe the generative limits
of art historical discourse and canonization. The artist’s intentional engagement with the practices and legacies of artists whose oeuvres have formed an avant-garde western canon like Duchamp, Klein, Matta-Clark, is not about mere adoration, but in fact a strategic assessment, if not deformation, of art historical discourses. Operating like a trojan horse, Hammons has seamlessly created opportunities for alignment and association, making it so that named collectors of Duchamp and museums that collect Matta-Clark have incomplete collections if they do not own a work by Hammons. This project will work alongside two key Hammons works, The Holy Bible: Old Testament (2002) and Days End (2021) to consider how the artist reeks disciplinary canons in order to make radically renewed associations.

Sponsored by the Robert E. & Avis Tarrant Burke Lecture
Fund in the Department of Art History
Events are free and open to the public.

Images: David Hammons, Day’s End, 2014. Graphite on Paper, sheet: 8.5 x 11in. (21.6 x 27.9 cm). Whitney
Museum of American Art, New York; gift of the artist 2021.11
Bottom: David Hammons, Day’s End, 2014–21. Stainless steel I=and precast concrete, overall: 52 x 65 x
325 feet. © David Hammons. Photo: Timothy Schenck

02/18/2026

Join us for Art History Association's 2026 Graduate Symposium- "UGLY: Unruly Aesthetics in the Humanities"
Thursday February 26th from 9am-5pm in Martin Commons at Eskenazi Museum of Art. Swipe for the full schedule.
We are joined by keynote speaker Dr. Gretchen Henderson from Rhodes College, who will present "Ugly Waters: (de) Composing Arts & Aesthetics with Blue Humanities".

Events are free and open to the public.

02/12/2026

Mark your calendars for our upcoming Art History lectures! These events are free and open to the public. Read more and RSVP for each by clicking the link in our bio.

02/10/2026

The Department of Art History applauds Chaeri Lee, who recently completed her Ph.D. in Art History!

Dr. Lee described her dissertation:
The title of my dissertation is “Ās̲ār: Visualizing Vestiges of Time in Late Nineteenth-Century Iran,” and it examines nineteenth-century Iranian visual and material engagements with the ancient past through the term ās̲ār, which at its core, signifies “traces” and “effects”. Since the early Islamic period, Muslim authors described the physical remnants of pre-Islamic civilizations as ās̲ār—a rhetorical practice rooted in the Qur’an, which portrays pre-Islamic ruins as edifying traces of divine power. In my dissertation, I argue that the metaphysical and philosophical connotations of the Islamic concept of ās̲ār resonated deeply in the nineteenth-century Iranian re-discovery of ancient Persian vestiges.

Click the link in our bio to read more! Congratulations Chaeri!

Image: Detail from Mirza Muhammad Nasir Husayn "Fursat" Shirazi (1854 - 1920), Ās̲ār-i ‘Ajam (Vestiges of Ancient Persia), 1896.

01/20/2026

Join us for this community event on Saturday January 24th! Hear student presentations on uncovered documentation and a proposed historical marker for American sculptor Ira. Correll's statue of Abraham Lincoln in Odon.
Learn more and register at go.iu.edu/8ws8.

Join us January 24 at the Odon Winkelpleck Public Library to explore new findings on sculptor Ira A. Correll and his Abraham Lincoln statue in Odon, including student research and newly donated materials.

Learn more and register at go.iu.edu/8ws8.

IU College of Arts and Sciences Daviess County Historical Society Museum

12/15/2025

Graduate student Olivia Kalish recently gave a tour of the exhibition she co-curated, "Radius: Helen Frankenthaler Prints in Context", to the Art History Department and curators at the Eskenazi Museum of Art. The exhibition celebrates the gift of fifteen prints from the Helen Frankenthaler Foundation along side other prints in the museum's collection. The show runs through Sunday, February 15, 2026.

Congratulations Olivia!