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The College of Arts & Sciences
Our department studies areas traditionally central to the discipline such as ancient, medieval and Renaissance art, and the integration of recent fields of theory and research to the study of global visual culture. Students further their understanding of the discipline of art history, its roots, its methodologies, as well as its historical and critical connections with other disciplines.
Cornell University students in a practicum seminar curated an exhibit “Indonesia Embodied: Performing the Space Between” at the Johnson Museum. Students produced the show, highlighting Southeast Asian works and research on performance and provenance.
Cornell’s College of Arts & Sciences honors the winners of its 2026 teaching and advising awards. Faculty members Nicole Giannella, Karola Mészáros and Landon Schnabel stand out this year, earning major awards for excellence; many instructors and teaching assistants received recognition, as well.
The Native American Art Studies Association gave artist and art historian Jolene Rickard, professor in Cornell's College of Arts and Sciences and in the American Indian and Indigenous Studies Program (AIISP) in the College of Agriculture and Life Sciences, a lifetime achievement award. A citizen of the Skarù·ręʔ / Tuscarora Nation (Hodinöhsö:ni Confederacy), Rickard is honored for work that has had a profound impact on contemporary Indigenous art and scholarship.
Professor Jolene Rickard receives 2025 Lifetime Achievement Award by the Native American Art Studies Association (NAASA)
Meita Estiningsih, PhD Candidate, presented at the 2026 Annual Frick Symposium on the History of Art
Jolene Rickard presented at the First America Conference at Yale University
Jenna Marvin, PhD Candidate, Awarded Deanne Gebell Gitner ’66 and Family Annual Prize for Teaching Assistants
Anissa Rahadiningtyas, PhD ‘21, presents at the Institute of Fine Arts, NYU
Cornell University is located on the traditional homelands of the Gayogo̱hó꞉nǫ' (the Cayuga Nation). The Gayogo̱hó꞉nǫ' are members of the Haudenosaunee Confederacy, an alliance of six sovereign Nations with a historic and contemporary presence on this land. The Confederacy precedes the establishment of Cornell University, New York state, and the United States of America. We acknowledge the painful history of Gayogo̱hó꞉nǫ' dispossession, and honor the ongoing connection of Gayogo̱hó꞉nǫ' people, past and present, to these lands and waters.
This land acknowledgment has been reviewed and approved by the traditional Gayogo̱hó꞉nǫ' leadership.
Image caption:
Francisco José de Goya, “Murío la verdad [Truth has died],” Plate 79 of The Disasters of War, 1863. Etching and drypoint, 14.6 x 17.8 cm. Herbert F Johnson Museum of Art, Museum Associates Purchase Fund.
