Thursday, September 25, 2025
Faculty in the CVAD Art History program continue to shape their fields through new
scholarship, publications and international presentations. Recent work ranges from
Kelly Donahue-Wallace’s study of collaborative image-making in 18th-century Mexico
to forthcoming and newly published research by Carey Gibbons on global belief systems,
illustration and ethical digital art history practices. Faculty members Paula Lupkin,
Lisa N. Owen, Heidi Strobel and Jennifer Way also advanced their areas of expertise
through conference talks, essays and books that explore subjects including Bruce Goff’s
design legacy, global medieval art, the practice of Mary Linwood and the intersections
of craft, care and cultural interpretation. Together, these achievements highlight
the department’s broad intellectual reach and its sustained impact on art historical
research.
Kelly Donahue-Wallace, Ph.D., professor, Art History
Kelly Donahue-Wallace has published her research essay, "La luz que merecen. El círculo de pintores y grabadores
en México 1720-1780," [The Light They Deserve: The Circle of Painters and Engravers
in Mexico 1720-1780] in "La circulación de imágenes entre los pintores y grabadores
mexicanos del siglo XVIII" [The circulation of images among Mexican painters and engravers
of the 18th century] (Madrid: Silex Ediciones). With essays by leading scholars of
Mexican colonial art, including Paula Mues Orts, Jaime Cuadriello, and Luisa Elena Alcalá, the book addresses the complex network of artists and images within and beyond Mexico.
Donahue-Wallace's chapter demonstrates that printmakers participated with painters
in previously unrecognized collaborations in the mid-18th century.
Carey Gibbons, Ph.D., assistant professor
Carey Gibbons, assistant professor, will have an article in print in the Journal of the Scottish
Society for Art History. Her essay is titled “The Vulnerability of the Body and the
Latent Potential of Sleep: The Influence of James George Frazer and Christian Larson
on Jessie M. King." Gibbons examines King's engagement with global belief systems
and proposes new possibilities for interpreting the sleeping figures in her series
of illustrations titled Seven Happy Days. Additionally, Gibbons recently edited the
summer 2025 special issue of Nineteenth-Century Art Worldwide, which features a digital
art history project by Temi Odumosu and David Schwittek titled, “Annotating The New
Union Club: A Case Study on Ethical Praxis for Digital Art Histories."
A digital art history project edited by Carey Gibbons, “Annotating The New Union Club: A Case Study on Critical Praxis for Digital Art Histories,” was recently published in the journal "Nineteenth-Century Art Worldwide."
Authored by Temi Odumosu, an art historian and curator, and David Schwittek, associate professor of graphic design and digital media at Lehman College, Bronx,
New York, the project examines "The New Union Club" (1819), a racist caricature by George Cruikshank (d. 1878) and Frederick Marryat (d. 1848) that satirizes antislavery efforts. Using critical annotation as a curatorial
strategy, the project contextualizes this complex and troubling print while exploring
broader questions about the description, reproduction, and online circulation of problematic
artworks made freely available through open-access digital collections.
Paula Lupkin, Ph.D., associate professor
Paula Lupkin, associate professor, has been writing, presenting and editing galleys from Chicago
to Belgium. She is currently researching the interior design of the famed American
architect, artist, and craftsman Bruce Goff. In April, she presented “Reconstructing
a Memory Palace: The Many Lives of Joe Price’s Shin’enkan” at the Lived Interiors:
Narratives and Memories Symposium at the University of Hasselt, Belgium. Her scholarship
on Goff is also featured in an upcoming exhibit and catalogue, Bruce Goff: Material
Worlds, to be released by Yale University Press in early December.
Lisa N. Owen, Ph.D., associate professor
Lisa N. Owen, chair of the Art History Department and associate professor, recently presented
academic papers at two specialized conferences on global medieval art. One paper addressed
new theories that she developed on unfinished medieval sculpture in India, while the
second focused on rock-cut architecture as an environmental art practice. In September,
her essay on the multireligious site of Ellora, India, will be available on Grove
Art Online (part of Oxford Art Online/Oxford University Press).
Heidi Strobel, Ph.D., professor
Heidi Strobel, professor and associate dean of Academic and Student Affairs, has three publications
scheduled for release in Fall 2025 related to her research on artist Mary Linwood.
Her work will appear in the "Journal of Eighteenth-Century Life," in a co-authored
essay for "The Cambridge History of Women and Romanticism," and in an educational
module for the Royal School of Needlework’s forthcoming course, "History of Embroidery." The course launches in early 2026 and explores centuries of stitching, with Strobel
contributing material on Linwood’s practice.
Jennifer Way, Ph.D., professor
Jennifer Way, professor, presented and published on craft and care in humanitarian contexts across
a century, including “Racial Ambivalence: Photographic Messages about American Red
Cross Craft Therapy, 1920” (Health and the Health Humanities Consortium, Jefferson
Medical College, Philadelphia) and “Caring with or for? Reappraising the Dynamics
of Care Shaping Liza Lou’s Craft-Centered Communities” (College Art Association, New
York). Her essay “Where Taste Meets Intention: Fallingwater’s ‘Asian’ Collection,”
in Fallingwater: Living with and in Art (Rizzoli International Publications, 2025),
investigates objects not initially intended for secular domestic settings nor acquired
through intentional collecting at Frank Lloyd Wright’s UNESCO World Heritage–listed
house in Western Pennsylvania.
University of North Texas 
