PhD candidate Juliana Fagua Arias received an Honorable Mention for the Dora Wiebenson Prize from the Historians of Eighteenth-Century Art & Architecture (HECAA). Awarded annually, the Wiebenson Prize recognizes an outstanding graduate student paper presented at a scholarly conference or sponsored lecture during the previous calendar year. Juliana was honored for her paper, “Kingfisher Azurite, Cotinga Turquoise: Material Mobilities of Chinese and Mexican Featherwork in the Early Modern Era,” delivered at the Sixteenth Century Society Conference in Portland in November 2025. An earlier version of this talk was presented in the Visual Culture Colloquium series. Juliana’s paper examined a group of Chinese kingfisher-feather screens collected by King Charles III of Spain in 1789 for his Royal Cabinet of Natural History. Now held in storage at the Museo de Artes Decorativas in Madrid, these objects were studied and photographed by Juliana during a 2024 summer research trip supported by The Decorative Arts Trust Research Grant and Einaudi’s International Research Travel Grant.
Student spotlight: Leonardo Santamaria Montero
Cornell University Graduate School
