UNIVERSITY PARK, Pa. — Amara Solari, professor of art history and anthropology, and Chang Tan, associate professor of art history and Asian studies, have been awarded senior fellowships for the 2024-25 academic year with the Center for Advanced Study in the Visual Arts, the National Gallery’s world-renowned research institute.
Solari and Tan join 35 other appointees from across the United States. Since its inception in 1979 with the opening of the National Gallery’s East Building in Washington D.C., the center has promoted the study of the production, use and cultural meaning of art, artifacts, architecture, urbanism, photography and film from all places and periods through the formation of a community of scholars.
Solari was appointed the Samuel H. Kress Senior Fellow to continue her ambitious, cross-disciplinary research project that explores how artistic production served as a mode of resistance for Puebloan communities during the Catholic evangelical campaigns of the 17th century.
Her work will culminate with a book titled “Missions Impossible: The Art of Franciscan Failure and Puebloan Perseverance in Nuevo México,” which seeks to understand the complex roles artistic production played in the theological exchanges underpinning interactions between indigenous people and settler-colonists.
“I am honored to be included in this year’s stellar cadre of fellows, including my colleague, Chang Tan. This selected group demonstrates the National Gallery’s commitment to redefining the discipline of art history in the 21st century, evident in the fellows’ wide range of geographic and methodological approaches,” Solari said. “My hope is to return to Penn State armed with cutting-edge research approaches, better positioned to share these in the classroom with our students.”
Tan was appointed the William C. Seitz Senior Fellow to continue work on her research project and second monograph titled “Network Moderns: Vernalcular Photography and Image-making in Global Chinas.”
The project explores how vernacular image-making, co-created by practitioners of photography, painting, design and theater — as well as by the viewers and users of those images — crafted a range of modernisms from the margins.
Spanning from British Hong Kong in the 19th century and San Francisco Chinatown in the 1930s to Japan-occupied Taiwan (1898-1945) and border towns in China today, the modernisms originated from those image-making processes are recognizably “Chinese” in their usage of cultural symbols, but Tan’s work suggests that they are actually products of diverse modernities — colonial, diasporic, indigenous, socialist or posthuman.
“My project contributes to art history’s ongoing mission of decentering and pluralizing modernism(s) by focusing on hitherto overlooked regions, demographics and genres, and by emphasizing the collaborative and the vernacular,” Tan said. “This fellowship allows me to expand the scope of my research both geographically and conceptually. I look forward to connecting with many distinguished scholars and taking advantage of the rich library and archival sources in Washington, D.C.”
Robin Thomas, head of the Department of Art History, said the Center for Advanced Studies in the Visual Arts is among the most important research centers for art history, internationally.
“To earn a senior fellowship is a rare honor and a significant validation of one’s research project. It is even rarer to have two faculty members from one department receive fellowships the same year, something that has not happened since 2011,” Thomas said. “The department is incredibly proud of professors Solari and Tan for this recognition, and equally eager to see how their fascinating projects develop.”
Center professors, fellows and interns in residence have offices in the National Gallery’s East Building. Throughout the academic year, they have opportunities to share their research and are encouraged to attend lectures, programs, tours and gallery talks organized by the center. More information about the center’s fellowships can be found here.