Art History

During Heghnar Watenpaugh’s recent academic residency in Paris, the Louvre, the city’s most famous art museum, was continually in headlines even here in the U.S.

The launch of Professor John López’s new book The Aquatic Metropolis: Urban Design and Environmental Change in Tenochtitlan-Mexico City (Pennsylvania University Press) starts on June 26 with a virtual book talk sponsored by The Association of Latin American Art.

Professor Katharine Burnett has published a new article on the artist Wu Bin in the journal Word and Image. In “Mediated meaning of a magnificent rock: using Wu Bin’s words to understand his painting Ten Views of a Lingbi Rock,” Burnett examines the late Ming Originalist artist Wu’s intentions through an analysis of the artist’s inscriptions, colophons and similarly commissioned painting On the Way to Shanyin.

On June 7, Professor Katharine Burnett explored Yixing teapots and the discourse of originality with the San Francisco Ceramics Circle. She presented “The Marvelously Inventive 17th-Century Chinese Teapot (and Some of Its European Descendants)” at the Gunn Theater in the Legion of Honor, San Francisco to the San Francisco Ceramics Circle, an affiliate organization of ceramics enthusiasts connected to the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco.

Professor Talinn Grigor has been awarded a fellowship by The Center for Iran and Persian Gulf Studies at Princeton University. She will be a Visiting Fellow from January to April, 2027. Professor Grigor will be working on her project Of Hyphenated Architects which examines the role of hyphenated and diasporic Armenian architects and artists in the global circulation and connectivity of the Modern Movement.

Professor Talinn Grigor will participate in the 2026 Cultural History of Asian Art Conference at the University of Hong Kong on June 24. Professor Grigor will discuss “Postcards, Hotels, and Hospitable Minorities: Armenian and Parsi Urbanity Networking a British Empire” for a panel exploring urbanity.

Each year, UC Davis undergraduates in all academic fields are invited to submit an abstract and participate in the Undergraduate Research, Scholarship and Creative Activities Conference. This year, art history was well represented with six majors presenting research papers in Oral Session 2 on Saturday, April 25.

Professors Talinn Grigor and co-author Houri Berberian are the 2026 recipients of the Western Association of Women Historians’ Barbara “Penny” Kanner Award for excellence in the use of primary sources. The award acknowledges the achievements of scholars whose books, book chapters, articles, or published electronic media illustrate the effective and impressive use of a specific set of primary documents such as diaries, letters and oral histories. Grigor and Berberian’s

Professor Katharine Burnett recently attended the Global Tea Conference at the University of Virginia where she participated in the Tea and Material/Visual Culture session to discuss “Teapots Shaped by Cultural Forces: 17th-Century Art Theory and Innovative Yixing Teapot Design.”

Professor John Lopez’s new book The Aquatic Metropolis: Urban Design and Environmental Change in Tenochtitlan-Mexico City (Penn State University Press) is a nuanced account of Mexico City’s urban development and Aztec and Spanish attempts to control its most iconic feature–water.

Professor Michael Yonan has contributed a chapter to a newly published book that examines the human-centered focus of art history and how modern art, visual culture, and modernity itself emerge from relationships between humans and animals. “Feline Creativity on the Eve of Modernity,” co-authored with Amy Freund, is published in Animal Modernities: Images, Objects, Histories, edited by Daniel Harkett and Katie Hornstein (Leuven: Leuven University Press, 2025). 

Professor Heghnar Watenpaugh will present a public lecture at the National Institute of Oriental Languages ​​and Civilizations (INALCO) on Mar. 27 in Paris. Her talk on Survivor Objects and Captive Sites: Art and Cultural Heritage in Genocide will be the inaugural presentation for the International Master’s Program in Armenian Studies (IMAS) for which Watenpaugh is the 2025 IMAS Visiting Chair of Excellence. 

Professor Michael Yonan participated in a conference celebrating the role of women in the development of the Museo del Prado collection. “Key Women in the Creation of the Collections of the Museo del Prado: Elisabeth Farnese” explored the roll of Queen Elisabeth Farnese, the patron of the arts who most decisively contributed to giving shape to the Museo del Prado’s collections. This conference was the third edition of the symposium series titled Key Women in the Creation of the Collections of the Museo del Prado and was held on March 9 and 10.

Alum Vivian Li (B.A., art history ‘25) presented research conducted while studying at UC Davis at the annual Association for Asian Studies conference Poster Session. The conference was held in Vancouver, B.C., Canada March 12-15, 2026. Li’s research examined ”Cultural Coding of Color: A Comparative Study of Eastern and Western Perspectives and Modern Applications.” Her project was developed in coordination with Professor Katharine Burnett.

A scandal at the Nanjing Museum involving a Ming masterpiece, millions in laundered money and missing art donations recently set off alarms in the art world. Correspondent Richard Spencer of The Times (London) talked to Professor Katharine Burnett about the inquiry and scandal in his article “The Chinese museum, the Ming masterpiece and the missing millions.” Burnett  recently published a book on the collector Pang Yuanji (Shaping Chinese Art History: Pang Yuanji and His Painting Collection, 2020).