Helena Chen-Abair is a doctoral candidate in art history specializing in Chinese antiquarianism. Her dissertation, tentatively titled “From Paper to Bronze and Back Again: The Forging of Ancient Chinese Bronzes, 1840s-1940s,” explores the interdependent relationship between bronze forgery and the scholarship of Chinese antiquarianism. This project has been supported by the Mellon, the Esherick-Ye, the Association for Asian Studies (AAS), the Association for Art History (AAH), among others. Her research interests also include the production and reception of printed catalogues of antiquities and ink rubbings, the history and culture of art collecting, and technical art history. Helena earned her BA in history at the Soochow University, Taiwan, and her MA in art history at the University of Florida. She is a Smithsonian Predoctoral Fellow at the National Museum of Asian Art (2024-25) and a Junior Fellow of the Andrew W. Mellon Society of Fellows in Critical Bibliography.

chen.ch@ufl.edu

Laura R. Colkitt is a doctoral candidate studying modern and contemporary art. Laura received her BA from the University of Pennsylvania and graduated with an MA in art history from University of South Florida. She is the recipient of several fellowships and academic awards including the Rothman Doctoral Fellowship, Grinter Fellowship, and Jerry Cutler Graduate Student Travel Award. In her research, she explores hybridity of cultures in the global age with a specific focus on the transatlantic connection between Europe, North America, and South America. Her MA culminated with an examination of discrete globalization in “From Local to Global: Kama Wangdi Paints Bhutan's Changing Geopolitics” (2015). Her forthcoming dissertation, “In Between Relations: Liliana Porter’s Art,” aims to track a constellation of concerns that inform the contemporary art practice of Liliana Porter. She presented the second chapter, “Dissections of Decorated Depictions," at the 2020 College Art Association (CAA) conference. Recent publications include a book chapter titled “Randomness, Order, and Being” in Sandra Cinto: Acaso e Necessidade (2017) and numerous contributions to exhibition catalogues for the USF Contemporary Art Museum. Before coming to University of Florida, Laura helped curate private art collections. Her advisor is Dr. Kaira M. Cabañas.

Macarena Deij Prado is a PhD candidate working with Dr. Maya Stanfield-Mazzi. She specializes in the Arts of the Americas. She received her MA in Art History from the University of Florida (2016) and her BA in the same discipline from the University of Chile (2013). She has taught art history courses at the Instituto para el Arte y la Restauración Botticelli in Cuernavaca, Morelos, Mexico. For her dissertation project, she examines art through the lens of religious processions between 1570 and 1630 in Spanish America. Her curatorial practice has focused on contemporary Latin American Art. One of her most recent projects is Plural Domains: Selected Works from the Cisneros Fontanals Art Foundation Collection (2021-2022), for which she served as assistant curator. The exhibition was presented at the Samuel P. Harn Museum of Art at the University of Florida and then traveled to the Museo de Arte de Zapopan (MAZ), in Mexico.

mdeijprado@ufl.edu

Vivian Lantow is a PhD student studying pre-Columbian art under the guidance of Dr. Maya Stanfield-Mazzi. Her topics of interest include Andean archaeology, commodity exchanges, ritual offerings found with capac hucha burials, falsifications of Pre‐Columbian artifacts, and depictions of race and social stratification by both Spanish and Indigenous artists in early colonial Peru. Vivian received her MA and BA in art history at the University of Florida. Her MA research culminated with her thesis title “Mitigating Museum Mistakes: A Case Study of a Gold Vessel from the Chimú.” In this thesis, Vivian used an unprovenienced gold cup as a case study to explore widespread issues related to the exhibition of pre-Columbian gold in museums. Before coming to the University of Florida, Vivian completed her associate of science degree in Zoo Animal Technology at Santa Fe College. She later returned to school to earn her associate of arts in Fine Arts at Santa Fe College, with a focus on drawing. While at Santa Fe Vivian worked as a gallery assistant and was an assistant curator for the Santa Fe Celebrates Collectors exhibition at the Santa Fe Gallery. 

Ryan MacLennan is a PhD student studying under Dr. Elizabeth Ross. He received his BA in both English: Writing and Philosophy from Mount Union College (University of Mount Union) in 2010. He earned his MA in History from New Mexico State University in 2015. Before attending NMSU, Ryan spent time as a music critic. Ryan’s primary research focuses on print culture in the Northern Renaissance and the consumption of food and alcohol. He is also interested in Minimalism and site-specific art of the 1960s and 1970s.

Jennifer McAninch received her BA in Art History from Arizona State University and her MA in Art Education from University of Florida, graduating both programs Summa Cum Laude. While studying abroad in Italy, she completed a museum internship at the Basilica of Santa Croce. She also participated in a study of Florentine architecture extending over a period from the Late Medieval through the Baroque. The following year, Jennifer was a member of the archeological crew for the excavation at Piazza Garibaldi in Fiesole, Italy. She is currently in her second year, pursuing a PhD in Art History with a focus on residential art and architecture from the intermediate years of the Roman Empire. Her current research project involves analyzing the design program of a second century maritime villa on the Gulf of Baratti in Populonia, Italy. Jennifer was recently admitted to the Kunsthistorisches Institute in Florence as a visiting scholar and presenter for the upcoming program "The City as Archive." She also served as a 2018 delegate to the national convention of the Archaeological Institute of America. Some of her peripheral areas of interest are Gender Studies in Art, Late Italian Renaissance, Ancient Mesoamerica, as well as Mid Century Modern Art and Architecture.

Valerie C. Palazzolo is a doctoral student studying the gendering of space in the later Middle Ages and Northern Renaissance with Dr. Elizabeth Ross. Her secondary interest focuses on the arts of Africa and the African Diaspora. She received her MA in Art History from the University of South Florida (2011) where her research focused on Andreas Vesalius’ animated skeletons as sites for self-knowledge and self-fashioning. This research has been presented at graduate and professional symposia and conferences including: The Sixteenth Century Society and Conference (2015), Indiana University, Bloomington (2011), Nicolaus Copernicus University in Turuñ, Poland (2010), and the University of Texas at Austin (2008). She has held the position of Assistant Professor of Art History and Humanities at Hillsborough Community College in Tampa, Florida - where she lives full time – since 2014 (tenured 2019). This position has allowed her to expand into art historical pedagogy and she has presented on diversity and global perspectives in the Western canon at both the annual meeting of the College Art Association (2017) and the Community College Humanities Association Southern Division Conference (2014). She has additionally taught for USF’s Study Abroad program in Paris, France and currently serves on the Program Committee of the Italian Art Society. 

Allison Westerfield is a doctoral student studying modern and contemporary art under the advice of Dr. Rachel Silveri. She received her BA in Arts Administration from the University of West Florida. She then attended Savannah College of Art and Design earning her MA in Art History. Her current research focuses on the intersection of tarot and occultism in the work of women surrealist artists, such as Leonora Carrington, Leonor Fini, and Remedios Varo. Outside of academia, she works as an independent curator. Recent exhibitions include mini golf of sensual sports photographs by McKinna Anderson at Florida Mining Gallery, Waiting Room at Laundromat Art Space in Miami and Ctrl [Alt] Self at Westobou Gallery in Augusta, GA.

Savannah Tew is a first-year M. A. student studying Art History with Dr. Silveri at the University of Florida. She received her B. A. in Art History and Arts Management from the College of Charleston in 2023. Her research concerns American art of the twentieth century with a focus on women and other under-represented artists. She is also interested in the development of visual culture throughout the twentieth century more broadly, and how access to new mediums and techniques allowed for alternative gazes and wider audiences as images became more available to the public. Currently, she is working with Dr. Silveri’s modernist cohort on the upcoming exhibition Surrealism at the Harn: A Centennial Celebration, at the Harn Museum of Art. For her thesis, she hopes to explore the topic of queer art in the American south. 

Vanessa Gillette Wyland is a doctoral student studying the arts of colonial New Spain under the advice of Dr. Derek Burdette. Vanessa earned her MA in Art History (2022) and her BA in English - Writing Studies (2020) from the University of South Florida, graduating Summa Cum Laude. With a background in global early modern studies, she is drawn to cross-cultural translations of material culture and to the tensions, contacts, and identities born from colonialism. In her specialty area, Vanessa is looking at the material culture of the New Spanish convent and visual articulations of Creole identity. Vanessa has presented her research at the University of Virginia’s Art History Symposium (2021), Cornell University’s Medieval Studies Student Colloquium (2022), and the University of Florida’s Art History Symposium (2021, 2022). Her essay, “The Limits of Consumption: Sawasa Ware In and Out of the Dutch East Indies,” is forthcoming publication in the Rutgers Art Review.