Migration has persisted as a powerful subject of art ever since modern humans began to move across the planet, bringing their objects and technologies with them. Whether in Mesoamerica, the ancient Mediterranean, or medieval Africa, war, invasion, colonialism, enslavement, resettlement, and trade have fundamentally altered cultural production, reception, and rituals. Considering the many ongoing migration crises throughout the world, this theme invites scholars to respond to the movement of people and artifacts in myriad ways.
For the third year, the Getty Scholars Program at the Villa will focus on the ancient cultures of the Levant and their relations with the classical world. Lying on the eastern seaboard of the Mediterranean, the Levant was a crucial crossroads between the classical world of Greece and Rome and the kingdoms of the Near East. Home to the ancient peoples of Phoenicia, Ugarit, Canaan, Philistia, Jordan, Israel, and Judah, this region participated in a vibrant Bronze-Age network of trade that flourished for many centuries until a combination of warfare, migration, and famine around 1200 BCE destroyed these palace societies.
Additionally, two opportunities for nine-month residencies have been created under the Getty's African American Art History Initiative (AAAHI), a program that aims to address an incomplete version of American art history by increasing the Research Institute's African American-related collections, research, exhibitions, projects, publications, events, and partnerships with local and national institutions. As part of the larger scholar year cohort, AAAHI fellows will have opportunities to present their research and receive feedback from an interdisciplinary group of peers.
Getty Scholars
Ana Lucia Araujo is professor of history at Howard University, Washington DC. Her research focuses on Atlantic world history, slavery, and material culture.
The Gift: How Objects of Prestige Shaped the Atlantic Slave Trade and Colonialism
(January–June)
Lamia Balafrej is associate professor of art history at University of California, Los Angeles. Her research focuses on Islamic art history, medieval studies, history of global slavery, minority and technology studies.
Slavery, Displacement, and the Making of Medieval Islamic Art
(April–June)
Shantel Blakely is assistant professor of architecture at Washington University, St. Louis, Missouri. Her research focuses on the history and cultural context of architecture since World War II, with an emphasis on biography.
Charles E. Fleming, Architect: Architecture and the Great Migration
(September–December)
Cecilia Dal Zovo is a freelance researcher and archaeologist affiliated with the Institute of Heritage Sciences, Spanish National Research Council. Her research focuses on mobility, long-distance routes, travel, landscape, ritual, pastoralism, and historical photography in Mongolia and Central Eurasia.
Retracing the northern Silk Road: explorations, travel routes, and long-distance mobility across Mongolia and Central Eurasia
(January–June)
Owen Doonan (Consortium Scholar) is professor of art history at California State University, Northridge. His research focuses on classical archaeology, landscape archaeology, post-colonial theory, and material culture of colonial systems.
The Milesian Colonial System in the contexts of the Black Sea Iron Age
(September–June)
Peyvand Firouzeh is lecturer in Islamic art in the department of art history at the University of Sydney, Australia. Her research focuses on Islamic art history, arts of the Indian Ocean world, and environmental art history.
Coco-de-Mer, Mysticism, and Material Histories of the Indian Ocean World
(September–June)
Laura G. Gutiérrez is associate professor in the department of Mexican American and Latina/o Studies at University of Texas, Austin. Her research focuses on contemporary art, Latinx visual and performance art, race, gender, and migration critical studies.
Binding Intimacies in Contemporary Queer Latinx Performance and Visual Art
(September–December)
Megan O’Neil is assistant professor of art history at Emory University, Atlanta, Georgia. Her research focuses on pre-Columbian and provenance studies.
Migrating Things: Shifts of Place and Perception in the 20th-Century Pre-Hispanic Art Market
(September–June)
Naomi Pitamber is assistant professor of art history at Eastern Michigan University, Ypsilanti, Michigan. Her research focuses on Byzantine and Crusader art, architecture, and material culture.
Replacing Byzantium: Laskarid Urban Environments and the Landscape of Loss (1204-1261)
(September–June)
Nasser Rabbat is Aga Khan professor of Islamic architecture at Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge. His research focuses on Islamic architecture, medieval urbanism, and Mamluk history.
Building the Islamic Metropolis: How the Mamluks Shaped Cairo
(January–June)
Tatiana Reinoza is assistant professor of art history at University of Notre Dame, Indiana. Her research focuses on contemporary art, Latinx art, and photography.
Retorno: Art & Kinship in the Making of a Central American Diaspora
(September–June)
Postdoctoral Fellows
Megan Boomer is Andrew W. Mellon Postdoctoral Fellow in the department of art history & archaeology at Columbia University, New York. Her research focuses on Medieval art and architecture and crusader art.
Reconstructing the Holy Land
(September–June)
Alexander Brey is assistant professor in the department of art at Wellesley College, Massachusetts. His research focuses on early Islamic art and architecture.
The Caliph’s Prey: Hunting, Migration, and Art in the Umayyad Empire
(September–June)
Abigail Lapin Dardashti is assistant professor of art history and visual studies at the University of California, Irvine. Her research examines modern and contemporary Latin American art, Latino/a/x art, African Diasporic art, racial formation, and international exchange.
Itinerant Modernism: Politics and the International Rise of Afro-Brazilian Art
(September–June)
Nicole Oest is instructor of art history at the City College of San Francisco, California. Her research focuses on history of photography and history of modern art and architecture.
Los Angeles and the Business of Photography
(September–June)
GRI-NEH Postdoctoral Fellows
Jordan Reznick is visiting faculty at Bennington College, Vermont. Their research focuses on the history of photography, settler colonialism, and Indigenous ecological science.
Landing the Camera: How Indigenous Ecologies Shaped Photographic Technologies in the West
(September–June)
Lindsay Wells is Ahmanson-Getty postdoctoral fellow at University of California, Los Angeles. Her research focuses on nineteenth-century British art.
Evergreen Empire: The Horticultural Politics of British Painting, 1848-1910
(September–June)
Predoctoral Fellows
Rebecca Giordano is a PhD candidate in the department of history of art and architecture at University of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. Her research focuses on African American art, Mexican muralism, and modern art of the Americas.
Muralism, Cultural Anthropology, and Racial Identity in US Black Art, 1936-1955
(September–June)
Guest Scholars
Felipe Baeza (artist in residence) is a visual artist who lives and works in Brooklyn, NY. Baeza's practice is equal parts confrontation of violent pasts and a tribute to people whose sense of personhood is constantly litigated and defined by those in power. His “fugitive bodies” created over densely layered paintings appear in different states of becoming and at times are even abstracted to the point of invisibility. Baeza's recent exhibitions include The Milk of Dreams, 59th Venice Biennale, Venice (2022); Prospect 5. New Orleans: Yesterday We Said Tomorrow, New Orleans (2021); Unruly Suspension, Maureen Paley, London (2021); and Desert X, Palm Springs (2020). Baeza received a BFA from The Cooper Union and an MFA from Yale University.
Unruly Visions
(September–June)
Baltazar Brito Guadarrama is director of the National Library of Anthropology and History in Mexico City, Mexico. His research focuses on codices and New Spanish history.
Analysis of the Huexotzingo Codices
(September–December)
Thomas Kirchner is director at the German Center for Art History, Paris. His research focuses on art history, history, and philosophy.
Migration and the Art Museum in the 20th and 21st century
(November–June)
Connecting Art Histories Scholars
Natalia Majluf is an independent scholar based in Lima, Peru. Her research focuses on Latin American art.
Revolutionary Circuits: Towards a Conceptual History of Latin American Material Culture, 1808-1830
(April–June)
Mirko Sardelić is a research associate in the department of historical research at the Croatian Academy of Sciences and Arts, Zagreb and an Honorary Research Fellow at the ARC Centre for the History of Emotions at University of Western Australia. His research focuses on the history of emotions and cross-cultural exchange.
Renaissance Ships in the Mediterranean: Mobile Cross-Cultural Systems
(January–June)
Museum Scholars
Mecka Baumeister is conservator in the department of objects conservation at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Her research focuses on conservation treatments and methods of technical study.
Host Department: Decorative Arts and Sculpture Conservation
Ebony Trade and Use: Investigations into an Early 17th Century Cabinet on Stand from the Metropolitan Museum
(January–March)
George Bisacca is conservator emeritus in the department of painting conservation the Metropolitan Museum of Art. His research focuses on the conservation of panel paintings and the advancement of the treatment of works across the world.
Host Department: Painting Conservation
The History of the Conservation of Panel Painting Supports in Europe from the Mid-18th Century to the Present
(September–December)
Georgios Boudalis is head of book and paper conservation in the department of conservation at the Museum of Byzantine Culture. His research focuses on the conservation of Byzantine manuscripts and their historical binding structures.
Host Department: Paper Conservation
Book as Body, Tear as Trauma
(September–December)
Margaret Morgan Grasselli is visiting senior scholar in the department of drawings at Harvard Art Museums, Harvard University. Her research focuses on master drawings, particularly the French school.
Host Department: Drawings
The Art of Looking Closely: An Introductory Guide to the Study of Drawings
(January–March)
Sefy Hendler is senior lecturer of art history at Tel Aviv University, Israel. His research concentrates on 16th-century Italian Art with a focus on Florentine painting and sculpture.
Host Department: Painting
“I’ll grow ever wiser with my failure”: a new understanding of Renaissance artistic failures
(July–September)
Audrey Hudson is Richard & Elizabeth Currie Chief of the department of education & programming at the Art Gallery of Ontario, Canada. Her research focuses on art education, K-12 critical pedagogies, programming, music, and the virtual experience.
Host Department: Museum Education
Virtual Programming for K-12 Students at the Art Gallery of Ontario: A Case Study of Impact During a Pandemic
(July–August)
Verena Lepper is curator in the Egyptian Museum and Papyrus Collection, Berlin State Museums, Germany. Her research focuses on ancient Egypt and written texts on papyri.
Host Department: Antiquities
Migration and Diversity in Ancient Egypt
(September–December)
Lori Pauli is curator in the department of photographs collection at the National Gallery of Canada. Her research focuses on the history of photography.
Host Department: Photographs
Oscar Gustaf Rejlander: Catalogue Raisonné
(January–March)
Andreas Scholl is director of the collection of classical antiquities for the Berlin State Museums.
Host Department: Office of the Museum Director
Ancient Greek Relief Sculpture and Its Reception in European Art
(June-August)
Getty Scholars for the AAAHI
Meg Onli is an independent scholar based in Los Angeles, California. Her research focuses on the black experience, language, and construction of power and space.
Revisiting the identity politics of the 1990s through the archives
(September–June)
Bernida Webb-Binder is assistant professor of art history and curatorial studies in the department of art and visual culture at Spelman College, Atlanta, Georgia. Her research focuses on African American art, Pacific Islands art, and Black Pacific Art.
Generative Blackness in African American and Pacific Art
(September–June)
Getty Villa Scholars
Julien Chanteau is an archaeologist at the Louvre Museum, Paris. His research focuses on the archaeology and history of the ancient Mediterranean and Near East.
The First Results of the Newly Discovered Middle Bronze Age Necropolis in Byblos
(January-March)
Giuseppe Garbati is researcher in the Institute of Heritage Science (ISPC) at the Italian National Research Council (CNR), Italy. His research focuses on Phoenician and Punic archeology, history of the ancient Mediterranean, ancient religion, and cultural identity.
Gods and Culture: Forms of Social Expression through the Cults and Divine Morphologies in Phoenician Context
(April–June)
Eleftheria Pappa is an independent scholar affiliated with the Institute for Advanced Study, Princeton, New Jersey. Her research focuses on archaeology of the Iron Age Mediterranean and the Near East.
Exporting Cultural Landscapes from the Near East to the Atlantic: The Role of the Phoenician Sanctuaries Overseas and the Greek-Phoenician Syncretism of Cults
(September–December)