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1/31/2026

Art History Research Notes

Art History
Student and Faculty Travels, Exhibitions, Presentations, and Publications

Winter 2026

there is a man and a woman standing in front of a painting
an image of a poster for the black museum ' s black museum
Associate Professor Mora Beauchamp-Byrd was a panelist in the conference Why Black Museums: Other Geographies, New Fields at the University of Texas at Austin in November 2025. The multiyear conference series was conceived to honor and examine Black museums’ contributions to the museum field. This session, the third in the series, centered on the practices and legacies of Black museum work and its ideas about place and migration. Artists, archivists, and curators discussed their work and the relationships between geographies, museums, and material culture. 
several people standing in front of a projector screen with a projector screen in the background

Five students from the art history BA, MA, and PhD programs in Dr. Tenley Bick’s Postwar Italian Art seminar participated in a mini-symposium in November: Sahara Lyon-Mundy, Megan Neely,  JC Bright,  Leah Ullman, and Leasah Beaubrun Jean-Francois presented their original research. The mini-symposium concluded with a robust q&a discussion between panelists and with the attendees. 

there is a painting of a young boy with a bat in his hand

Doctoral candidate Danelle Bernten presented her paper “Invisible Employment: The Child Prophet and Child Laborer in the Paintings of Sir Joshua Reynolds during the Eighteenth Century” at the Southern Conference for British Studies in St. Pete Beach, FL in November.  

there is a man and a woman sitting at a table with a book
In November, Associate Professor Tenley Bick participated in a lively discussion with visiting scholar Ara Merjian on the subject of her book Michelangelo Pistoletto: Figuration and Cultural Politics (Yale University Press, 2025). In the fall Dr. Bick also published the essay “Armatures of a Different Value, of Boundless Feeling: The Art of Buzz Spector,” in the catalog for a gallery exhibition in Chicago: Buzz Spector: Recto | Verso, at Zolla/Lieberman, Nov. 7–Dec. 20, 2025. 
there is a man and a woman standing in front of a building in the snow
Two Art History PhD students presented papers at the Multidisciplinary Graduate Student Conference in Premodern Studies at the Newberry Library in Chicago in January. Doctoral candidate Quentin Clark presented “Depicting a Theology of Light: The Dolphin in Early Byzantine Christian Culture,” and doctoral student Raigen Sumrall presented “Animating Geometry: Lorenz Stoer’s Corpora Regulata et Irregulata and Lines that Link with Ink.”
 
In May, Quentin will present “Projecting Liturgical Power: Dolphins as Symbols in Sixth-Century Christian Byzantium” at the 61st International Congress on Medieval Studies in Kalamazoo, MI.
 
this is a picture of a picture of a medieval monster with the words medieval monsters
In October, faculty member Erika Loic, doctoral student Lydia McCollum, and alumna Lacy Gillette (PhD ’22) attended the Medieval + Monsters Conference, hosted at both Dominican University and the Newberry Library in Chicago. They presented the following papers:
• Erika Loic: “Monstrous Conquests in Medieval Iberia: The Aquelarre Tabletop Roleplaying Game and Its Bestiarium Hispaniae“
• Lydia McCollum: “Maiden, Mother, Murderer: Medea as Monster in Pierpoint Morgan M. 126”
• Lacy Gillette: “Flight, Fancy, and Fear: The Mechanics of Medieval Monsters”
 
several people are posing for a picture in a large building
Four FSU graduate students attended the 51st Annual Byzantine Studies Conference, which was held Oct 29-Nov 1, 2025, at Wayne State and Oakland Universities in Detroit MI. Sonia Dixon presented on her dissertation topic with the paper “Preserving the Old to Represent the New: Constantius II’s Display of Authority on Coinage.”  Quentin Clark presented his first paper on his thesis topic, “Triumphing Light over Dark: Dolphin Imagery on a Sixth-Century Liturgical Polycandelon.”  Professor Lynn Jones presented a section of her forthcoming book in the paper “Imperial Imagery in the Province: the Case of the ‘White Bearded’ Unknown Saint in Cappadocia.” The Conference was attended by 213 Byzantine students and scholars; 53 were chosen to present papers.  
there is a woman standing at a podium in front of a crowd of people
BA student Julia DeBardeleben presented her paper “Man-eating Manticores in Manuscripts: The Spread of Antisemitic Iconography in Relation to Jewish Expulsions” at the inaugural Floridian Collegiate Art History Symposium at the Ringling Museum of Art in November. The paper is part of her Honors in the Major thesis under the direction of Dr. Erika Loic; Julia has also been invited to present it at the 61st International Congress on Medieval Studies in Kalamazoo, MI. 
 
this is a picture of a drawing of a snake on a book

Doctoral candidate Madison Gilmore-Duffey presented “Lineage Through Opposition: The Delphic Tripods of the Hippodrome and Connections with Rome” in a January conference in San Francisco sponsored by the Archaeological Institute of America and the Society for Classical Studies. She also presented the paper at our department Research Forum on January 30. The Forum also featured doctoral candidate Emma Huston, presenting “Screaming in Stone: Queenship and Spatial Subversion at Monreale” a paper she will take to the International Congress on Medieval Studies conference in Kalamazoo, MI in May; and doctoral student Olivia Turner, presenting “From Seville’s Plague to Madrid’s Court: Luisa Roldán’s Marian Sculptures of Maternal Resilience,” a paper she will share at the Renaissance Society of America Conference in San Francisco in February. 

the cover of deleuze ' s modern barque, with a drawing of a man standing on top of a hill

Professor Lorenzo Pericolo has published a new book, Deleuze’s Modern Baroque: The Fold, Leibniz, the Formless, and the Objectile (Brepols, 2025). Pericolo discusses theoretical questions crucial to artistic debates in the period 1950–1980: art as philosophy; artistic thinking as opposed or germane to philosophical (and scientific) thinking; painting and sculpture as metaphysical operations; the ground as both the origin and negation of art; color as the degree zero of painting; authorless art; and art as infinity. Interwoven with examples of works by Christian Bonnefoi, François Rouan, Robert Ryman, Martin Barré, and Robert Rauschenberg, these discussions shed light on the complexity of Deleuze’s investigations. The final section of the book centers on the reception of American minimalism in 1980s France and on the folding in architecture trend in the United States at the beginning of the 1990s. 

Doctoral student Olivia Turner chaired and presented on a panel titled “Recasting the Workshop: Women, Labor, and Legacy in Sculpture” at the International Sculpture Center Conference in Dallas, TX, in the fall. The panel examined the evolving dynamics of the sculpture workshop by comparing Luisa Roldán’s early modern practice with those of two contemporary women sculptors. Following a roundtable discussion, Olivia led a gallery tour of the Meadows Museum. In November, Olivia also participated in an interview with the International Museotherapy Initiative titled “When the Gallery Held the Space.”

there are two men standing in front of a building with a picture on it
Doctoral candidate Estefanía Vallejo Santiago is presenting “Race, Place, and Identity: Colonial Narratives in Puerto Rican Street Art” at the 114th Annual College Art Association Conference in Chicago, February 18–21. In her essay, Estefanía investigates the street murals of artists Alexis Diaz and Damaris Cruz, analyzing their portrayal of creole figures. Centering on decolonial theory, relational aesthetics, and site-specificity, she describes how Puerto Rican street art is integral to place-identity discourses.
the cover of a neuroart history of the painters of modern life
Art History Professor Emerita Lauren Weingarden has published a new book, A Neuroarthistory of The Painters of Modern Life: Embodying Baudelairean Modernity (Routledge, 2025). Using a transdisciplinary method combining art history, literary studies, and neuroaesthetics, Weingarden examines the modern urban experience of nineteenth-century Paris through language and images of fragmentation and transformation. The volume includes new empirical research conducted in collaboration with neuropsychologists, which tracks present-day viewers’ physical and psychological responses to nineteenth-century painting and photography, thus providing data to model an experiential aesthetic for Baudelairean modernity.
this is an image of a woman standing in front of a brick wall

Doctoral candidate Emily White was in residence for eight weeks at the Herzog August Bibliothek in Wolfenbüttel, Germany for Fall 2025. She completed dissertation research on the art of early modern Germany, advised by Dr. Stephanie Leitch. Emily’s dissertation, “Visual Surgery: Printing in Early Modern Europe,” investigates the history of medical graphics and the dissemination of vernacular knowledge through prints of surgery. Her stay at the library was funded by a Rolf und Ursula Schneider-Stiftung Doctoral Fellowship and the Mason Dissertation Research Award. “The Herzog August Bibliothek provided a fantastic opportunity to work on my dissertation and access their world class collection. I will always be grateful for the colleagues I met and help I received while in residence. I  will particularly miss the Lebkuchen and Weihnachtsmärkte!”