Biography

Derek Burdette is an Assistant Professor of Art History in the School of Art + Art History the University of Florida, where he specializes in the arts of colonial Latin America, with a particular focus on the intersections of art, religion, and colonialism in New Spain. He is especially interested in the history of miraculous imagery in colonial Mexico City. His research has been supported by the Fulbright Program, the American Council of Learned Societies (ACLS), the Mellon Foundation, and the John Carter Brown Library. He has published articles and essays on the problematic nature of maintaining miraculous imagery, the connection between miraculous statues and printed devotional manuals, the role of artists as expert witnesses and arbiters of miraculous materiality, and the adaptive re-use of colonial architecture within Mexico City’s contemporary art world. His first book, Miraculous Celebrity: The Señor de Ixmiquilpan and Colonial Piety in Mexico City (1545-1845), is forthcoming in the Fall of 2025 with the University of Texas Press.