Penn State Department of Art History

Two projects from the Center for Virtual/Material Studies were recently featured on the Imagining America website: the flax field at the Arboretum and pigment-making from purple corn.

“Art-making has relied on the skills of farmers and ranchers for millennia, so understanding much of art’s history requires an understanding of agriculture. We are eager to share what we’ve learned and hope to gain new inspiration for future research," said CVMS Director Sarah Rich.

Material Collaborations at Penn State University - Imagining America In this month's member spotlight, we showcase two multi-disciplinary projects at Pennsylvania State University that explore material collaborations with the natural world through land-based projects that center artistic practice. Both projects are connected to the Center for Virtual/Material Studies...

Congratulations to alumna Theresa Kutasz Christensen, who was named a 2026-27 Getty Scholar. Her research centers on the location of historical women in museums and the art market with a focus on developing tools to locate underrepresented and anonymized individuals in object provenances. She will be in residence January-March 2027.

After adjunct teaching at Penn State, she was recently named assistant curator of provenance at the Art Gallery of Ontario in Toronto, Canada.

Congratulations, Professor Mansfield!

Mansfield named Guggenheim Fellow and Institute for Advanced Study Scholar | Penn State University Elizabeth C. Mansfield, distinguished professor of art history in the Penn State College of Arts and Architecture, has been named a Guggenheim Fellow and a scholar at the Institute for Advanced Study for the 2026-27 academic year, during which time she will work on a book project about the visual cu...

When the School of Music presented "Non più nascoste" (Hidden No More), a fully staged Baroque pastiche opera that explored the hidden musical world of the city’s historic orphanages through the story of a young musician studying with Antonio Vivaldi, patrons got a taste of Baroque Venice through an exhibition in the lobby co-curated by Art History doctoral candidates Emily Hagen (left) and Holli Turner. They worked with School of Music Distinguished Professor Ma**ca Tacconi (far right in second photo), who spearheaded the opera project with Assistant Professor Dawn Pierce (far left in second photo). The interdisciplinary undertaking also included faculty and students from the School of Theatre.

Congratulations to master's student Nathan D. Manna, recipient of Penn State's Distinguished Master's Thesis Award.

Nathan fuses medievalism and q***r theory to introduce the concept of “q***r relics,” which describes how contemporary artists transform bodily traces, intimate objects and charged mementos into sacral objects that preserve memory, desire and devotion. He currently is working on an installation that crystalizes the ideas of his thesis into a tangible form that can be viewed and experienced — a novel contribution to the field of art history. Nathan's thesis will appear in a special issue of the journal "Different Visions" in 2027.

Read more: https://tinyurl.com/4u65xrx2

The Penn State Department of Art History was well-represented at the College Art Association annual conference last month. Presenters included faculty members Nancy Locke, Maggie Borowitz, and Maria Beatriz H. Carrion and graduate students Han Chen and Kyle Marini. In addition, Professor Carrion and Professor Cassie Mansfield each chaired sessions.

Some behind-the-scenes shots of the Center for Virtual/Material Studies during a video shoot for an upcoming project ... stay tuned!

Professor Lindsay Cook delivered presentations about the history of Notre-Dame’s timber-framed roof and spire at a hands-on workshop on February 3 and a public lecture on February 4 at the Bard Graduate Center in New York, scheduled to coincide with the opening of the BGC’s current exhibition, "Viollet-le-Duc Drawing Worlds," on view through May 24, 2026.

History and English classes recently visited the Center for Virtual/Material Studies for Ink Gall workshops led by master's student Nathan Manna

Professor Lindsay Cook published the article, “Rebuilding Notre-Dame: Lessons in Documentation for Heritage Conservation,” in the latest issue of the leading historic preservation journal, APT Bulletin. The article is available via JSTOR with a faculty/staff/student PSU login: https://www.jstor.org/stable/48853660.