A&A NEWS

Sheetla by Anamika Singh Screened at Annual Conference on South Asia

Still from Sheetla (2025) by Anamika Singh

A&A graduate student Anamika Singh’s film Sheetla (2025) was featured at the 54th Annual Conference on South Asia hosted by the University of Wisconsin-Madison from October 28–31, 2026. Following the screening, Singh participated in the filmmakers panel.  

Synopsis of Sheetla (2025) by Anamika Singh

Sheetla (2025) retraces the contentious histories that have shaped the historic city of Faizabad through the life of its witness, the late Sheetla Singh. A prominent editor and journalist, Singh led the defiant Hindi-language daily Jan Morcha for nearly 50 years. Through the testimonies of journalists and close comrades, this work explores how the life of Sheetla Singh was inextricable from the violence, movements, and histories that have shaped the region and the Subcontinent. Through interviews, archival images, and charged images of Faizabad and Ayodhya, Sheetla tells the story of a city whose inhabitants are thrust into a volatile future through a contested past and its ever-present debris.

Shing-Kwan Chan Presents to Students in ART 250

Graduate student Shing-Kwan Chan presented a lecture titled "Painting Nature between India and China, ca. 1750-1850" in Professor Fatima Quraishi's ART 250 "The Art and Architecture of South Asia" this week. Following a general overview about European trading companies in China and South Asia and their commissioning of artworks in both regions, Chan focused on a painting by the artist Ju Lian (1828-1904) depicting a slender loris, a primate native to south India, that the artist encountered in a garden in China. "By introducing us to an example of cultural exchange unmediated by European officials, Shing-Kwan reminded us of the multiple mercantile networks operating in Asia in the early modern period," said Quraishi. "It was a fascinating and well-prepared lecture."

Shing-Kwan Chan presents works in ART 250 (Photos/ Fatima Quraishi)

Georgina Domingo Alsina Traces Her Senior Thesis Topic to the Met, Yale, and the U.K.

By Georgina Domingo Alsina ’27, Major in the History of Art 

My Senior Thesis is on an 18th–19th century British engraver called Caroline Watson (1760-1814). She used stipple technique, a dotting type of drypoint engraving, to create reproductive prints of portraits often based on Thomas Gainsborough or Joshua Reynolds paintings. In 1785, she was granted the title Engraver to the Queen, which allowed her to publish more of her work under her own name, extremely rare for a woman in 18th-century England. 

My thesis is focused on identifying her own artistic agency within her creations and career despite her work as a reproductive printmaker. As a result, I’ve had to personally observe her prints and compare them to her contemporaries in order to find a visual pattern and where she diverges. To do so, I have visited the Ashmolean Museum, the British Museum, and the British Library while on my study abroad in the U.K. In Firestone Special Collections, there are a handful of her prints that I have also closely investigated to reverse engineer her print process. But there were still gaps, so thanks to A&A, I was able to go to the Met observation room to look at Francesco Bartolozzi prints right next to Watson’s. Bartolozzi is the most major stipple engraver of the 18th century, spending nearly forty years in England where he intersected with Watson for much of her career. 

As of now, I’ve looked at rare manuscripts that were catalogues, biographies, galleries, and manuals. Each has been essential to understanding the context in which Caroline Watson was practicing. Working directly with these objects while exploring an understudied artist is exactly what drew me to art history, so I’m truly grateful that Princeton has granted me the opportunity to follow my interests in such depth.

Georgina Domingo Alsina's full reflection

Top: Georgina Domingo Alsina examines works at the Metropolitan Museum of Art; above: working at the Yales Center for British Art (Photos courtesy of Georgina Domingo Alsina)

Caspar Pearson Presents Research on Florentine Chapel

Caspar Pearson, Director of Studies and Reader in Art History 1300–1700 at the Warburg Institute, delivered a lecture organized by the Program in Italian Studies. Co-sponsored by the Committee on Renaissance and Early Modern Studies, the lecture took place on November 5. In "Right Here, Right Now: Figuring Interpretation at the Sassetti Chapel, Florence," Pearson presented aspects of his research on this chapel, decorated by the Ghirlandaio workshop between 1483 and 1485.

The lively event brought together a large audience from both Princeton and the Institute for Advanced Studies.

Casper Pearson (Photo/ Carolyn Yerkes)

Interdisciplinary Event Series Examines Allan Sekula’s Art as Forms of Critical Inquiry

Princeton recently hosted three days of events around Gail Day and Steve Edwards’s new book, Amphibious Realities: The Documentary Poetics of Allan Sekula, exploring documentary photography, global infrastructure, and critical inquiry. Organized by Florian Endres, Benjamin Baer, and Thomas Levin alongside Sally Stein and the Allan Sekula Studio, the events drew faculty and students from a wide range of disciplines.

“The conversations showed just how relevant questions of a critical documentary remain today,” noted Endres.

A&A's Professor Monica Bravo praised Day and Edwards for their approach, adding that "they dared the audience to think Sekula’s work otherwise."

The event was hosted by the Department of Comparative Literature and cosponsored by the Department of Art & Archaeology, Humanities Initiative, Humanities Council, Committee for Film Studies, Department of English, Program in Media and Modernity, European Cultural Studies, and the Princeton University Art Museum.

More on Allan Sekula events

From left, Florian Endres, Professor Gail Day, and Professor Steve Edwards (Photo/ Sally Stein) 

ANNOUNCEMENTS

Minor in the History of Art Open House

Join us at our Open House to learn more about a Minor in the History of Art, and make the ART museum your classroom!

Mon., Nov. 9, 4:30–5:30 pm

Department of Art & Archaeology

Princeton University Art Museum, Room 369

The Director of Undergraduate Studies Professor Carolina Mangone, Undergraduate Program Administrator Kelly Lake and current A&A minors look forward to welcoming you!

Enjoy some sushi & sandwiches!

History of Art Minor Open House

Barr Ferree Fund For Publishing

APPLICATION DEADLINES:

Fall 2026: Sun., Nov. 15, 2026

Spring 2027: Thu., Apr. 15, 2027

The Barr Ferree Committee invites applications for press subvention and image reproduction fee reimbursement for the following: “meeting the publication expense of books of merit on architecture and related topics in the fine arts,” including but not limited to, sculpture, painting, engraving, music, drawing, landscape design, city planning, and industrial arts. The fund is to “be used toward manufacturing and publication expenses only.” The deed prohibits funding for “books on poetry, the drama, athletics, sports, dancing”; it does not cover the cost of administrative, editorial, or other “overhead” expenses.

Projects must be the product of primary research by current Princeton faculty members, librarians, curators or other academic professionals, or based on doctoral research by former Princeton PhDs (ordinarily only up to fifteen years after the PhD defense date). There must be an existing contract with a press at the time of application.

How To Apply: Separate applications should be submitted for each type of funding: 

Press subventions for enhancements to publications: Requests should be submitted using the press subvention application form (usually submitted by the press).

Music production subventions: Requests should be submitted using the music subvention application form (can be submitted by a music label or composer if self-released). 

Reproduction fees charged by image collections: Requests should be submitted using the reproduction fee application form(usually submitted by the author).

Any questions about the eligibility of specific projects or the application and award process should be directed to Jennifer Loessy, bferree@princeton.edu, 609-258-3772.

Additional guidance and FAQs can be found on the Barr Ferree website: https://barrferree.princeton.edu/

Call for Center for Digital Humanities Transcribe Lab Fellows

The Center for Digital Humanities is pleased to announce the launch of Transcribe Lab, a collaborative space for converting digital images of handwritten, manuscript, historical or cultural heritage documents into machine-readable texts.

Princeton faculty from any discipline are invited to propose projects in any language(s) or script(s), regardless of the size of the corpus or collection. Graduate students may apply as a co-leads with a faculty member. The deadline is Sunday, November 15, 11:59 pm ET.

CDH Transcribe Lab Fellowship:

Deadline is November 15, 2026

IN THE CLASSROOM

ART 100

"An Introduction to the History of Art: Meanings in the Visual Arts"

Team-taught by Professor John Sigmier with most of the A&A Faculty!

Professor Bridget Alsdorf, Professor Rachael Z. DeLue, and Professor Cheng-hua Wang presented the nineteenth century across European, American, and Chinese art history respectively in a trio of ART 100 lectures.

Professor Alsdorf presented Édouard Manet’s Le Déjeuner sur l'herbe as a confrontational visual manifesto for modernity. While Manet harkened back to Titian and Raphael for his composition, his technique flattened forms and skewed spatial relationships to intentionally confuse the viewer. Alsdorf explained that the nude woman staring directly at the audience acts as Manet's provocateur, exposing the absurdity of viewing the changing modern world through a rigid, classical lens.

Professor Wang addressed Chinese landscape painting—a weighty task since, as she explained, the genre centers the discourse in Chinese art history. Literally translating to "mountains and water," shanshui painting evolved into a deeply venerated tradition that allowed viewers to reflect upon and commune with nature. The 10th century marked a definitive turning point for the medium, transforming the depiction of nature into a permanent artistic and philosophical tradition with a lasting cultural legacy.

Professor DeLue approached nineteenth-century American landscape painting as a potent ideological canvas that filtered nature through the artist's mind,—framing landscape as a form of seeking and making meaning. As such, expressions varied dramatically. DeLue gave as examples Thomas Cole's dramatized wildscape as an allegory for the great moral struggle of the human condition; Asher Brown Durand's Thoreauvian rendering of nature as a refuge for inspiration and agency; and finally, Albert Bierstadt’s wide-armed depiction of an awe-inspiring Yosemite that projected the political ideology of Manifest Destiny.

In this week’s precept, A&A graduate student Michael Quituisaca brought DeLue's lecture into vivid relief, guiding students through the Princeton University Art Museum's Wilmerding Pavilion to examine landscapes by artists they had just encountered on screen. Experienced up close, the works amplified DeLue's points—perhaps most poignantly as the class stood before another of Bierstadt's grandiose proclamations.

(Photos/ Kirstin Ohrt)

ALUMNI NEWS

Robert Peck '74: Naturalist, Photographer, World Traveler

Robert Peck ’74 published Travels on the Edge: A Naturalist’s Notes from the Back of Beyond (American Philosophical Society Press, 2026), a collection of essays recounting his remarkable experiences traveling the world as the official photographer, historian, and chronicler of scientific expeditions from the Academy of Natural Sciences of Philadelphia, America’s oldest natural history institution, now part of Drexel University. Peck has discovered three new frogs in the Andes, collected several new species of fish in the Orinoco River, and helped study little-known insects in rarely visited parts of Africa and the Caribbean. He has made seven extensive expeditions to Mongolia to study its wildlife and document the fast-changing lives of its nomadic herdsmen. He witnessed the fall of the Berlin Wall, traveled with camel caravans across the Gobi Desert, faced down headhunters in Ecuador, and was put under house arrest in China. While carrying readers to some of the most remote and inaccessible parts of the world, Peck’s book celebrates the challenges and joys of scientific research in regions few people have had a chance to explore. In his new book (his eighth) he shares some of the highlights—and frightening low points—of his extraordinary career.