UCLA Art History

10/20/2026

The UCLA Department of Art History will host Dr. Jeremy Melius (University of York) for an Art Council Lecture Series event on Monday, November 9th at 5 PM in Dodd 247.

Entitled "Fugitive Tiepolo!" this talk ask the question, what are the relations between poetry, painting, and art-historical practice? And how might the connections between them be re-framed?

This lecture considers the work of Saint Lucian poet (and painter) Derek Walcott, concentrating on the pictorial imagination of his book-length poem Tiepolo’s Hound (2000). Tracing the strange intimacies Walcott explores between the visual world of Giambattista Tiepolo and his own – two prospects onto the ends of empire – it considers his engagement in relation to the eccentric scholarly literature this eighteenth-century painter continues to accrue.

In doing so, the lecture seeks to bring into focus the consequence of Walcott’s elliptical approach to the image for art history, arguing for a form of art writing that might come to turn on its own obliquity.

This lecture is open to the public and all are welcome to attend!

10/19/2026

The 2026 Regents’ Lecturer events in Art History with the artist Walead Beshty will begin on Monday, November 2 at 5 PM in Royce 306.

Artist and theorist Walead Beshty will lead a series of three open seminars organized around his forthcoming book, Worlds of Appearance: An Introduction to Aesthetics in Practice (University of Chicago Press, 2026), exploring the foundations of aesthetics, its use in reflexive disciplines in the field of art, and its emergent forms.

The seminars are open to all and each session will consist of a lecture followed by open and exploratory discussion.

Session 1: The Circulation of Appearances: A General Aesthetic Model:

Polis and the Commune – The Aesthetic Commons – Inclusion, Exclusion, and the Sensible – Perception and Modeling (Abstraction) – Communication (Transmission vs. Communion) – Tools and Extraction – Object and Thing – Apparatuses and Incorporation – Fit and Ritual – Convention – Power and Aesthetic Management – Empathy – Instrumental (Vernacular) Aesthetics/Aesthetics Under the Duress of Urgency.

Stay tuned here for updates on Session 2 and 3!

For complete details, visit the department's events page: https://arthistory.ucla.edu/event/2026-regents-lecturer-events-walead-beshty/

10/16/2026

Professor Seunghye Lee will participate as a discussant in the two-day international conference “The Rise of the “Ten Kings of Hell” on the Silk Road,” taking place at the Cleveland Museum of Art on November 20–21, 2026.

The symposium is being held in conjunction with the museum’s special exhibition, “The Ten Kings of Hell: Afterlife in Medieval Korea,” which explores the artistic legacy of the Goryeo dynasty (918–1392) and how medieval Koreans envisioned the afterlife through art and material culture.

For more info on the symposium: https://www.clevelandart.org/events/rise-ten-kings-hell-silk-road

And the related exhibition: https://www.clevelandart.org/exhibitions/ten-kings-hell-afterlife-medieval-korea

10/16/2026

Dr. Solsiré Cusicanqui, in her role as Postdoctoral Scholar at the CMRS Center for Early Global Studies and the Fowler Museum at UCLA, has curated Paths of Memory, Paths of Healing: Shipibo-Konibo Kené Art, an exhibition which will open at the Fowler Museum on November 6.

Paths of Memory, Paths of Healing invites visitors to journey through Shipibo-Konibo artist Olinda Silvano's new mural at the Fowler Museum alongside ceramic and textile works from the museum’s collection, all featuring kené patterns that express connection, memory, and healing.

The Fowler Museum in partnership with the UCLA CMRS Center for Early Global Studies, the Latin American Institute at UCLA, the “Race in the Global Past through Native Lenses” Grant, and the Consulate General of Peru in Los Angeles has organized an exciting series of in-person events in the lead-up to the exhibition opening.

For all of the Fowler Museum’s current programs, check out: https://fowler.ucla.edu/programs/

10/15/2026

The 2026 UCLA Art History Graduate Symposium will be held on Friday, November 13 at the Hammer Museum from 9:30 am to 4:30 pm.

This year's theme is Bodies Under Duress: Violence, Pressure, and the Visual.

Across art and visual culture, bodies have served as both the objects upon which power is exercised and the means through which its effects become visible, imaginable, and contested.

Bodies Under Duress invites scholars to consider how visual and material practices register the forces exerted upon bodies, while also asking not only what happens to bodies under violence, but how violence is made possible, legitimized, enacted, and remembered or forgotten.

Meredith Gamer, Associate Professor of Art History and Archaeology at Columbia University, is the keynote speaker.

Specializing in eighteenth- and nineteenth-century British art, her research explores the intersections of visual culture, violence, punishment, and power.

Her recent book, City of the Gallows: Art and Ex*****on in Eighteenth-Century London (2026), examines the relationship between art and public ex*****on.

This symposium is open to the public and all are welcome to attend. Scan the QR code on the flyer to RSVP.

10/14/2026

On Tuesday, October 13, students from Professor Beth Rosenblum's Latin American Art of the 20th Century course toured "Instante/revelación" at the Getty Center with curator Julieta Pestarino.

10/12/2026

Professor Seunghye Lee will be presenting a talk entitled “Margins of Great Compassion: Reading Goryeo’s Thousand-Armed Avalokiteśvara" at Symposium: Korea: 2,000 years of creativity, held on October 23, 24, 2026 at SOAS University of London.

This event is held in conjunction with the British Museum exhibition Korea: 2,000 years of creativity. This two-day international symposium, co-organised by the British Museuam and the School of Arts and Centre for Korean Studies at SOAS, University of London, brings together leading scholars of Korean art history.

Following the exhibition’s chronological narrative, each presentation examines one or two key objects on display and explores their wider historical, cultural and social context.

For a schedule of events and full details: https://www.soas.ac.uk/about/event/symposium-korea-2000-years-creativity

10/05/2026

Please join us on Friday, October 23rd for a talk by artist and editor of e-flux journal, Anton Vidokle.

This UCLA Visiting Artist Lecture Series is presented by the UCLA Department of Art and co-sponsored by the UCLA Department of Art History.

The lecture will be at the UCLA Margo Leavin Graduate Art Studios in Culver City and is open to the public.

All are welcome!

Details are found here:

The UCLA Department of Art welcomes Anton Vidokle for a public lecture in its Visiting Artists Lecture Series, co-sponsored by the Department of Art History.

09/24/2026

On Thursday, October 22nd at 3 PM. The Department of Art History will host an Art Council Lecture Series talk featuring Abbey Stockstill (University of Virginia).

Her talk entitled "None Like It in Islam": Material Aesthetics Between Andalusi Production and Maghrib Patronage will look at the art of medieval North Africa is to enter a scene in which familiar motifs, transformed by material and arrangement, compose a new visual world.

An artistic explosion occurred in the twelfth-century Mediterranean, as emergent dynasties from the western extremes of the region brought together new avenues of material exchange, craftsmanship, and ideologies. Despite this wave of production, modern scholarship has struggled to articulate the impact of this period, falling back on outmoded tropes of artistic “influence” and equating ornamental expense with quality. This talk explores how this dynamic has obscured the real innovation of the period, and argues for a more subtle, intermedial aesthetic vision.

All are welcome!

09/17/2026

Professor Zirwat Chowdhury will be presenting a talk entitled Lessing’s Hogarth, Hogarth’s Paulson, at Hogarth Symposium 2026 on Wednesday, October 14 in New Haven, CT.

This symposium is organized by the Lewis Walpole Library in collaboration with the Yale Center for British Art, Yale Library, and the Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library, this symposium celebrates the generous gift by Professor Paulson (1930-2024) of his papers together with a legacy endowment to establish a fellowship at the Lewis Walpole Library in memory of his son, Andrew Meredith Paulson.

Speakers will present creative new research in Hogarth studies across multi-disciplinary perspectives. Panel themes will include “Paulson’s Hogarth,” “Drawing,” “Nation and Empire,” and “Social and Political Critique.”

For more information and to see the program schedule of this 3-day event, please check out:

Organized by the Lewis Walpole Library in collaboration with the Yale Center for British Art, Yale Library, and the Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library, this symposium celebrates the generous gift by Professor Paulson (1930-2024) of his papers together with a legacy endowment to establish a fe...