Getty and ACLS Announce 2023 Postdoctoral Fellows in the History of Art

Getty and the American Council of Learned Societies (ACLS) are pleased to announce the 2023 recipients of the Getty/ACLS Postdoctoral Fellowships in the History of Art. This program is made possible by a major grant from Getty.

Getty/ACLS Postdoctoral Fellowships support innovative scholarship by recent PhDs that will make substantial and original contributions to the understanding of art and its history. A distinguished committee of diverse senior scholars with wide-ranging expertise selected this year’s 10 fellows for their capacity to expand the field of art history and explore previously understudied regions of the world.

“Getty has always supported art historians who strive for a discipline that is more international and inclusive,” said Joan Weinstein, director of the Getty Foundation. “We believe early-career support is not only meaningful for the fellows but infuses the field with new perspectives and ideas that keep the discipline fresh and relevant.”

“ACLS is proud to partner with Getty to provide critical support for emerging scholars at a time when humanistic study has become the target of politicians and public figures with a dismally narrow view of higher education,” said ACLS President Joy Connolly. “We are pleased to recognize this extraordinary group of fellows, whose work sheds light on how humans make meaning through images and design, from the collective politics of residential architecture in Haiti to the impact of photography on revolution in modern Iran.”

Each twelve-month fellowship includes a $60,000 stipend and an additional $5,000 for travel and research. The awards are non-residential, allowing these emerging scholars to pursue their research anywhere in the world, while also granting access to the rich digital scholarly resources and networks of Getty and ACLS. At the close of their fellowship year, the cohort will convene at the Getty Center in Los Angeles for a week to present their research to each other and the wider Getty community.

The 2023 fellows employ diverse, interdisciplinary approaches to art historical research, with projects that intersect with religious studies, cultural heritage studies, material sciences history, and environmental justice. Their research spans vast temporal and geographic ranges, addressing the roles that painted vases played in the religious experiences of ancient Greeks; the importance of landscape painters in promoting British naval, mercantile, and missionary expansion in Polynesia at the end of the eighteenth century; the impact industrial chemical engineering had on modern architecture between 1870 and 1970; and the ways in which artmaking allows contemporary Nigerian women artists to resist popular conceptions of community and family.  

The 2023 Getty/ACLS Postdoctoral Fellows and their research topics are:

• Bimbola Akinbola, Assistant Professor, Northwestern University
  Transatlantic Disbelongings: Anti-Respectability, Queer Kinships, and Diasporic Homemaking in Nigerian Women’s Art
• Petya Andreeva, Assistant Professor, Parsons School of Design
  Visualizing the Early Soviet East: Posters, Politics and Pioneers in Central Asia (1917-1939)
• Irene Brisson, Assistant Professor, Louisiana State University
  Kreyòl Architectures: Design in Dialogue in Haitian House Building
• An Jiang, Independent Scholar
  Painted Ceramic Vases in Ancient Greek Sanctuaries: Rethinking the Human Experience
• Aparna Kumar, Assistant Professor, University College London
  The Museum and its Fragments: Dispossession and Writing the Border
• Julia Lum, Assistant Professor, Scripps College
  Landfalls: Art Between Britain and Polynesia
• Maria Lumbreras, Assistant Professor, University of California, Santa Barbara
  The Facture of Evidence: Replication and the Past in Early Modern Iberia
• Arathi Menon, Assistant Professor, Hamilton College
  Hipped & Gabled: the Sacred Art and Architecture of Malabar
• Mira Xenia Schwerda, Postdoctoral Fellow, University of Edinburgh
  Between Art and Propaganda: Photographing Revolution in Modern Iran
• Jessica Varner, Postdoctoral Fellow, University of Southern California
  Chemical Desires: When the Chemical Industry Met Modern Design (1870-1970)