Art History Associate Professor Paul Niell has been appointed a Samuel H. Kress Senior Fellow at the National Gallery of Art’s Center for Advanced Study in the Visual Arts (CASVA) for the 2024-2025 academic year. He will devote this time to conducting research for his book, Thatched Dwellings, Urban Lives: The Bohío and the City in the Late Spanish Colonial Caribbean. This groundbreaking study challenges conventional understandings of urban infrastructure by focusing on the often-overlooked bohío, a dwelling type with Indigenous roots that evolved during the colonial period with the addition of African and European ideas. Traditionally constructed with plant materials, the bohío was once a ubiquitous feature of Caribbean cities. This book explores the conflicts that arose between bohío dwellers and urban reformers in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, offering new insights into the identities, agency, and material lives of the urban poor in the Hispanophone Caribbean.
CASVA, founded in 1979 and located in the National Gallery of Art in Washington, DC, is a research institute that fosters study of the production, use, and cultural meaning of art, artifacts, architecture, urbanism, photography, and film worldwide. CASVA programs – fellowships, meetings, research, and publications – are privately funded through endowments and grants to the National Gallery.
