Getty Announces 2026–2027 Scholars

The Getty Research Institute, the Getty Conservation Institute, the Getty Foundation, and the Getty Museum are pleased to announce the 2026–2027 cohort of Getty Scholars, continuing a long-standing tradition of supporting innovative, interdisciplinary research in the arts and humanities.

Since 1985, the Getty Scholars Program has provided a dynamic platform for international scholars to pursue advanced research on art and its histories, broadly defined. By fostering collaboration across disciplines and professional practices, the program cultivates new perspectives and expands audiences for scholarly work. Scholars in residence benefit from unparalleled access to Getty’s world-class collections and join a global community dedicated to intellectual exchange. Residencies take place at either the Getty Center or the Getty Villa.

For the 2026–2027 academic year, the Getty Research Institute’s scholars will explore provenance and related areas, including the history of collecting, the study of the art market, and broader questions surrounding the ownership and movement of cultural objects. Scholars for the Getty Scholars Program at the Villa will address the theme of Religious Experience in Antiquity, focusing on the diversity of faiths and rituals and considering the consequences of contact between the Mediterranean and neighboring civilizations of transalpine Europe, the Near East, North Africa, and Central Asia. The Getty Conservation Institute’s grantees will pursue projects related to the cultural heritage conservation field.

Meanwhile, certain categories such as, Connecting Art Histories Scholars (Getty Foundation), and Museum Scholars, were nominated by invitation and do not adhere to an annual theme. Connecting Art Histories Scholars are engaged in critical inquiry about art history and related fields in regions where it is an emerging discipline and whose expertise is rooted in local traditions and cultural stewardship. Museum Guest Scholars are nominated by curatorial, conservation, and education departments within the J. Paul Getty Museum and work on their own projects that are related to the work and interests of Getty’s curators, conservators, and museum educators to advance their fields.

“By bringing together scholars from around the world, this program fosters critical inquiry and collaboration that will help define the future of the field,” said Alexa Sekyra, head of the Scholars Program at the Getty Research Institute.

Getty Scholars – Research Area: Provenance

Claire Dupin de Beyssat is a postdoctoral researcher at the Musée d'Orsay. Her research focuses on the history of art salons and exhibitions and, more broadly, on the institutional framework of the fine arts during the long 19th century, adopting a transdisciplinary approach that bridges art history, sociology, and the digital humanities.
Prices and Prizes. Assessing Value in the French Art Market and Salon System, 1850–1920
(September–June)

Yaëlle Biro is a scientific coordinator at Institut national d'histoire de l'art (INHA), Paris. A specialist of historical arts of Africa, Biro's research focuses on the history of African collections in Europe, Africa, and America; collecting practices and institutional developments during the colonial era including the Second World War; materiality and the circulation of art and materials; and provenance and the art market as fields of art historical inquiry.
Provenance Research at the Crossroads: African Arts during World War II
(January–March)

John Hopkins is associate professor at New York University. His research advances a theory of multiplied, relational object-biographical approaches to archaeological stewardship, framing the discipline as an epistemologically and ethically generative practice.
Beyond Object Biographies: Ethical and Intellectual Stewardship for a New Era of University Collections
(January–June)

Erica Jones is senior curator of African Arts and manager of Curatorial Affairs at the Fowler Museum at the University of California, Los Angeles. Her research and curatorial work focuses on colonial-era collecting practices across the African continent, restitution and ethical collections care, and anti-colonial approaches to museum exhibitions.
Belongings: Legacies and Futures for Historical African Arts
(January–March)

Theresa Kutasz Christensen is assistant curator of provenance in European art at the Art Gallery of Ontario. 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.
Name Dropping: Locating Women Missing from Object Provenances and the History of the Art Market
(January–March)

Ja Won Lee is associate professor at California State University, East Bay. Her research examines the visual and material culture of Korea through collecting practices, exploring how cross-cultural exchange, gender, and antiquarianism shaped artistic production and identities beyond national borders.
Crossroads of Collecting: Korean Art Beyond Borders, 1876–1945
(September–June)

Elizabeth Marlowe is professor of art history and museum studies at Colgate University. Her research examines how, where, and why classical antiquities circulate in the modern world.
The Bronze Rulers of Bubon: Art, Loot and Ethics from Antiquity to the Present
(September–December)

Meredith Martin is professor of art history at New York University. Her research centers on 18th-century French art and architecture, specifically in relation to histories of empire, colonialism, and enslavement.
Colonial Provenance Networks: Haiti and the Paris Art World*
(January–March)

Melody Rod-ari is associate professor of art history at Loyola Marymount University. Her research examines modern and contemporary Buddhist visual culture in Thailand and the history of collection, display, and repatriation of Southeast Asian art in American and European museums.
Modern Borders, Ancient Objects: Complexities of Cultural Heritage Provenance and Repatriation in the 21st Century
(September–December)

Lynn Rother is professor of provenance studies and director of the Provenance Lab at Leuphana University of Lüneburg. Her research focuses on 20th-century provenance, histories of collecting, critical art market studies, and computational approaches to modeling and analyzing provenance and museum data.
From East to West: The Social Life of Socialist Artwork
(September–June)

Jacqueline Stewart is the Edward Carson Waller Distinguished Service Professor in the Department of Cinema and Media Studies at the University of Chicago. Her research, teaching, and archival work look at the ways film history and Black history intersect, with a focus on silent, independent, and amateur film cultures, and including her founding of the South Side Home Movie Project.
South Side Home Movies: Mementos of Chicago’s Black Middle Class
(September–March)

Heghnar Zeitlian Watenpaugh is professor of art history at the University of California, Davis. She researches the diverse visual cultures of the Middle East and the South Caucasus, investigating how violent pasts are presented or suppressed in cultural heritage, museum collection and display, and architectural preservation.
Toros Roslin, 2015-1256: Un-Silencing Provenance
(September–June)

Alexandra Watson Jones is Provenance Research Curator at the Victoria and Albert Museum. Her research centers on the ownership histories of objects in the UK’s museum collections, with a particular focus on colonial and Nazi-era provenance.
Legislation, Litigation and Professionalisation: Examining the Impact of the Washington Principles on US and UK approaches to Nazi- and Colonial-era Provenance
(September–March)

Hannah Williams is a reader in the history of art at Queen Mary University of London. Her research centers on social histories of the Paris art world (1650–1850), exploring networks, institutions, geographies, material culture, and colonial entanglements in the city's artistic landscape.
Colonial Provenance Networks: Haiti and the Paris Art World*
(January–March)

*joint project

Postdoctoral Fellows – Research Area: Provenance

Fabriccio Miguel Novelli Duro is an independent scholar in São Paulo, Brazil. His research centers on 19th-century Rio de Janeiro's art circulation, focusing on exhibitions, collecting practices, and the market.
From the Academy to the Museum: On the Provenance of Foreign Artworks at the Museu Nacional de Belas Artes in Rio de Janeiro
(September—June)

Stefanie Schneider is a research fellow at Marburg University. Her research explores the intersection between traditional hermeneutic approaches and contemporary quantitative methods within the field of art history.
Multimodal Provenance: Digital Workflows for Text-Image Reconciliation with the Getty Provenance Index
(September—June)

Predoctoral Fellows – Research Area: Provenance

Charmaine Branch is a PhD candidate at Princeton University. Her research examines Black intellectual histories of collecting and archiving in the United States, with a focus on community-oriented pedagogy and Black feminist thought.
Black Feminist Practices of Care: Artist-Archivists Cultivating Community, 1922–2022
(September—June)

Han Chen is a PhD candidate at Pennsylvania State University. Her research interests include the global circulation of Chinese objects, digital mapping of social networks, the history of collecting, and global modernism.
Tracing Provenance, Shaping Knowledge: Networking the Global Markets of Chinese Art, 1900–1949
(September—June)

Sarah Lakhal Kermani is a PhD candidate at Sorbonne University. Her research explores the circulation of objects and the ways colonial discourses shaped representations of Indigenous populations in museum contexts.
Algerian Artefacts in French Museums (1830–1962): Collecting, Circulation and Exhibition
(September—June)

Getty Villa Scholars – Theme: Religious Experience in Antiquity

Amar Annus is associate professor of Middle Eastern religious history in the School of Theology and Religious Studies at University of Tartu, Estonia. His research investigates how ancient ritual practices shaped religious experience through processes of decentering, liminality, and identity reconstruction, integrating cognitive and textual approaches to understand transformative rites.
Self-Transformation in Ritual Practices of the Middle Eastern and Classical Antiquity
(September–December)

Cinzia Bettineschi is associate professor at Pegaso University, Naples. Her research focuses on ancient technologies and craft practices in the Mediterranean during the 2nd and 1st millennia BCE—especially in pre-Roman Italy and Egypt—combining archaeometric approaches with broader questions of production, knowledge transmission, and cultural interaction, while also engaging with digital archaeology and public outreach.
Artisanal Rituality and Pyrotechnologies in the First Millennium BCE
(April–June)

Sarah Costello is professor of art history at the University of Houston, Clear Lake. Her research areas include Mesopotamian and Cypriot prehistory and visual culture, and museum and heritage studies.
Ecstatic Experience in Ancient Religion
(January–March)

Erin Darby is associate professor of religious studies at the University of Tennessee. Darby's research focuses on the archaeology of ritual, the material culture of religious experience, and interreligious engagement in the ancient Levant, particularly during the Bronze and Iron Ages.
Religion at the Boundaries: Making and Marketing Identity in the Southern Negev
(January–March)

Ton Derks is associate professor at Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam. Using material culture and epigraphic data as evidence, his research centers on religious interactions between Indigenous communities and Roman colonial power in the frontier and provinces of the Roman empire.
Imperial frontiers, human mobility and the translation of gods in the Roman Empire: Postcolonial perspectives on religious change
(January–March)

Stefan R. Hauser is professor and chair at the University of Konstanz, Germany. While the topics of his books range from Assyrian funerary practices to the production of luxury goods in late antiquity and the history of scholarship (Orientalism), his particular focus is on the post-Alexandrian, pre-Islamic period in the Middle East.
Official Religion and Private Cult in Seleucid Mesopotamia
(April–June)

Sarah Hollaender is a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Graz, Austria. Her main research interests include iconography, gender and sexuality, and religion and mythology.
The Materiality of Household Religion in the ‘Aramaic Quarter’ of Elphantine
(September–December)

Rita Lucarelli is associate professor of Egyptology at the University of California, Berkeley. Her research focuses on ancient Egyptian religion, magic, and funerary literature, especially the Book of the Dead, using philology, archaeology, and digital humanities to study beliefs about death and the afterlife, while also exploring the modern cultural reception of ancient Egypt, particularly in Black visual arts, music, and Afrofuturism.
Agents of Punishment and Protection: Assessing the Demonic in First Millennium BCE Egypt
(January–June)

Duncan MacRae is associate professor of Ancient Greek and Roman studies and Jewish studies at the University of California, Berkeley. His research is centered on the cultural history of the ancient Roman world, especially the religious histories of traditional polytheism, Judaism, and early Christianity.
Religion in the Roman World: a new history
(April–June)

Beate Pongratz-Leisten is professor at the Institute for the Study of the Ancient World, New York University. She is a cultural historian whose work on religion, literature, art history, and history is informed by theoretical approaches in religious studies, literary theory, semiotics, cognitive narratology, art history, visual studies, and anthropology.
Experiencing, Conceptualizing, and Interacting with the Divine in the Ancient Near East
(September–December)

Marijana Ricl is professor emerita in the Faculty of Philosophy at the University of Belgrade. Her research centers on ancient history, Greek epigraphy of Asia Minor and Macedonia, and Socratic studies.
Sacred Remedies: Confession, Atonement, and Forgiveness in Anatolian Religions (1500 BCE–300 CE)
(January–March)

Hugo Shakeshaft is an independent scholar in Washington, D.C. He works on the cultural history of ancient Greece, with a particular focus on aesthetics, religion, visual culture, and the interconnections between Greece and the Near East.
The Ontology of Images: Making Gods in Greece and the Near East
(September–December)

Getty Conservation Institute Guest Scholars

In-Souk Cho is an independent scholar in Seoul, South Korea. Her proposed research aims to develop an illustrated conservation guide that integrates historical analysis with practical repair techniques, focusing on wooden architectural heritage in Korea from the 19th to early 20th centuries.
Repairing Architectural Heritage: Traditional Wooden Structures in Korea (19th–Early 20th Century) – Illustrated Guidance for Conservation and Repair
(January–March)

Enrico Garbin is senior researcher at the National Research Council of Italy (CNR), Institute of Condensed Matter Chemistry and Technologies for Energy (ICMATE). His research centers on the structural conservation and restoration of built heritage, historic construction materials, and sustainable materials for historical and contemporary buildings.
Design Methods, Repair and Strengthening Techniques for Historical Masonry Buildings: A Textbook Addressing Structural Restoration Techniques for Masonry Built Heritage
(April–June)

Hannah Lewi is professor in architecture at the University of Melbourne, Australia. Her research interests include Australian architectural history, 20th-century design and conservation, heritage theory, and the use of media in interpreting historic places.
Keeping House: New Ways of Understanding, Conserving and Documenting Historic and Heritage Houses
(October–December)

Loa Ludvigsen is an independent scholar in Vanløse, Denmark. Her research explores artists’ materials and techniques through analytical photography, with a focus on the structure of paintings.
Technical Imaging of Hammershøi’s Material Practice
(January–March)

Daniela Marcondes is an independent scholar in São Paulo, Brazil. Her research is in data-driven climate management strategies for museums in subtropical climates, using a São Paulo case study to balance collection preservation, visitor comfort, and energy efficiency.
Strategies for climate management in exhibition spaces: case study in a museum in São Paulo
(September–December)

Juan Carlos Rodriguez-Reyes is director at the Research Center for Heritage Conservation at the Universidad de Ingenieria y Tecnologia - UTEC, Lima, Peru. His research centers on understanding and preventing the deterioration of cultural materials—particularly stone and metals—in the Andean region through scientific analysis and conservation practice.
A Scientific Roadmap for Sustainably Conserving South America's Stone Heritage
(September–December)

Nuria Sanz is senior researcher in the Institute for Scientific Archaeology Department for Early Prehistory and Quaternary Ecology at Tubingen University, Germany. Her research aims to underscore and strengthen the role of international cooperation in the preservation of Pleistocene heritage by bringing academia closer to multilateral practice in the field of biocultural heritage of human evolution, to guarantee the preservation of the early traces of the cultural diversity of humankind.
The Heritage of Pleistocene Archaeology. The role of the World Heritage Convention in establishing international standards for research and conservation of Pleistocene sites.
(April–June)

Noushin Shahidzadeh is professor in the Institute of Physics, Van der Waals Zeeman Institute, at University of Amsterdam. Her research area is multiscale studies of material dynamics driven by liquid flow and the transport of ions and additives in porous media, linking fundamental processes to applications such as the preservation of cultural heritage.
Multimineral Salt Crystallization in Cultural Heritage: From Fundamental Mechanisms to Conservation Practice
(January–March)

Chen Yang is associate professor in the Department of Landscape Architecture, College of Architecture and Urban Planning, Tongji University, China. His research focuses on the intelligent conservation and contemporary reinterpretation of cultural landscape heritage through advanced technologies, developing new paradigms for safeguarding, managing, and sustaining heritage in the digital era.
Developing an Inventory Framework for Intelligent Management of World Heritage Cultural Landscapes in China
(April–June)

Connecting Art Histories Scholars

María del Rosario Nava Román is professor at Escuela Nacional de Pintura, Escultura y Grabado, “La Esmeralda.” Her research has focused on conceptions surrounding the color black, the body, and the status of the image in Mesoamerica, with particular attention to body painting and the representation of deities and figures of power in codices belonging to the Mixteca-Puebla tradition.
Diaspora of Objects: The Whistle with an African Face in the Conquest of Mexico
(September–March)

Pablo Fasce is professor and researcher at Escuela de Arte y Patrimonio, Universidad Nacional de San Martín, Argentina. His research explores artistic networks, cultural circulation, and the construction of aesthetic modernity in Latin America, with a particular focus on the Andean region in the early 20th century.
The Andes as the Axis of a Regional Modernity: Artistic Networks between Argentina, Bolivia, and Peru (1912–1929)
(January–March)

Museum Guest Scholars

David Ekserdjian is emeritus professor at the University of Leicester. His research centers on Italian Renaissance art in all its forms, but with a particular emphasis on paintings and drawings.
From Drawing to Painting in the Italian Renaissance
(April–June)

Laura Gonzales-Flores is research professor in the Instituto de Investigaciones Estéticas at the Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México. Her research explores photography as a cultural, poetic, and technical medium, examining its aesthetic reception, social circulation, and dialogue with other visual arts from the 19th to 21st centuries.
Re-Mapping Modernist Photography: Transnational Networks, Nodes, and Displacements
(January–March)

Susan Jenkins is curator at Westminster Abbey. Her research examines the commissioning, design, and installation of monuments at Westminster Abbey, with a focus on the sculptural process.
The Monuments at Westminster Abbey
(September–December)

Tomoya Murose is director of the Mejiro Institute of Urushi Research and Restoration. His work focuses on the study, reconstruction, and practice of maki-e, a lacquer technique with over 1,300 years of history in Japan, with particular interest in the reciprocal influences between Japanese maki-e culture and global craft traditions.
A comparative study of decorative techniques used in Japanese maki-e and 18th-century French furniture
(April–June)

Nikolaos Papadimitriou is director of the Paul and Alexandra Canellopoulos Museum, Athens. His research focuses on Greece and the Aegean in the Bronze Age, the archaeology of Athens and Attica, Mediterranean interconnections in the 2nd and 1st millennia BC, ancient technology and craftsmanship, experimental archaeology, and accessibility and inclusion in museums.
Ancient Greek Crafts: Organization and Techniques. A Handbook
(April–June)

Stephanie Parrish is director of Learning at the Portland Art Museum. Her research explores how art museums can better understand and make visible their often overlooked histories of public programs and community engagement, and how these practices shape institutional identity, interpretation, and public trust over time.
Past + Future = Present: Documenting Histories of Engagement in Art Museums
(January–March)

Scott Redford is professor in the School of Oriental and African Studies at the University of London. He works on the intersection of visual cultures of the peoples of medieval (11th–14th c.) Anatolia (today’s Turkey) and surrounding areas.
Symmetry, Abstraction, Figuration, and Inscription in the Art of Medieval Anatolia
(September–December)

Kate Smith is senior conservator of paintings and head of the Paintings Lab at the Harvard Art Museums, Harvard University. She will gather and compare material and technical evidence for a group of ancient portraits related by provenance and formal resemblance, furthering understanding of the group by layering in information about the pigments, wood types, and application methods.
Material research into the portrait workshops of Ancient Philadelphia
(January–March)

Diana Stein is honorary research fellow at Birkbeck, University of London. She specializes in Near Eastern archaeology and material culture, with a particular focus on ancient art, ritual practice, and symbolic systems.
Mittanian Mischwesen: Arbitrary or Meaningful? Hybrid Imagery and Religious Experience in the Glyptic of Nuzi
(September–December)

Alexandra (Sasha) Suda is an independent scholar in Gladwyne, Pennsylvania. Her research centers on the life and evolution of Bernard Berenson and the establishment of the modern art market in the USA.
Bernard Berenson and the Commodification of Connoisseurship
(July–August)