Art History

Alum Jiaying Gu (M.A., ‘16) received the Hong Kong Bei Shan Tang Foundation Doctoral Thesis Grant to further her dissertation examining two genres of Chinese painting, yaji tu 雅集圖 (elegant gathering paintings) and huanji tu 宦蹟圖 (pictorial autobiographies of officials), and the role they played within Ming political bureaucracy. Gu is currently a Ph.D candidate at the University of Edinburgh.

Professor Michael Yonan recently traveled to Vienna, Austria to view the exhibition “Franz Xaver Messerschmidt: More than Character Heads” at the Österreichische Galerie Belvedere.

Professor Michael Yonan recently traveled to Vienna, Austria to view the exhibition “Franz Xaver Messerschmidt: More than Character Heads” at the Österreichische Galerie Belvedere.

Professor Katharine Burnett, founding director of the Global Tea Institute at UC Davis, will present a talk on  ”The Marvelously Extraordinary, Inventively Original Late Ming Teapot” at the annual Global Tea Institute Colloquium. Everybody knows what a teapot looks like. Or do they? Actually, when did a teapot start to look like a teapot? And why did they suddenly look so peculiar in China’s late 16th century, and then later, elsewhere in the world?

Professor Katharine Burnett was invited to speak on “Branding GTI at the University of California, Davis, Branding Japanese Green Tea to the US Market” at the World O-CHA Tea Festival. The festival was held October 24, 2025” by the Shizuoka Prefectural Government, Japan.

Following her talk, she was interviewed by iconic designer Kashiwa Satō, Creative Director and CEO of SAMURAI, designer for such brands as Uniqlo. Their conversation touched on ways to brand Shizuoka green tea for the international market.  

Professor Michael Yonan and Dr. Amy Freund (Kleinheinz Endowment for the Arts and Education Endowed Chair in art history at Southern Methodist University) gave a talk on Oct. 23 at the Figge Art Museum in Davenport, IA. “Visualizing the Feline in Art” asked “what is it with cats and artists?” Yonan and Freund examined the ubiquitousness of cats in depictions of artists’ studios and in artworks that serve as manifestos of their makers’ techniques of visual representation.

MIT’s renowned History, Theory, and Criticism of Art and Architecture (HTC) program is celebrating its 50th anniversary with a landmark event that brought together scholars, alumni, and thinkers from around the world including Professors Talinn Grigor and John Lopez.

At the second annual Calouste Gulbenkian Conference in Art History, Professors Talinn Grigor and Houri Berberian (UC Irvine) will present the keynote address “Of photography’s silence: Nevarte Essayan Gulbenkian and Armenian women’s global networks as sitters, collectors, patrons, and advocates of rights.”

Professors Talinn Grigor and Houri Berberian, Professor of History and Meghrouni Family Presidential Chair in Armenian Studies and the Director of the Center for Armenian Studies at UC Irvine, have launched a national book tour for their new publication The Armenian Woman, Minoritarian Agency, and The Making of Iranian Modernity (1860-1979) (Stanford Universit

Professor Katharine Burnett presented a paper at the international conference “Echoes of Great Brightness: The Ming Dynasty and Beyond.” Her paper “Chen Jiru, Shi Dabin, and the Marvelously Extraordinary, Inventively Original Teapot,” was part of the panel “Superfluous Things: The Production, Consumption, and Representation of Objects in Early Modern China.”