Alessandra Russo

Alessandra Russo, Professor and Chair of the Department of Latin American and Iberian Cultures and Director of The Hispanic Institute, studies the theory, practice, and display of art in the early modern period, with particular attention to artistic dynamics within Iberian colonization. Her most recent book, A New Antiquity, examines how encounters with artifacts across the Americas, Africa, and Asia shaped the modern idea of art, while her current project explores the origins of museum curatorship through the work of a seventeenth-century Bolognese art custodian.

In Paris, Russo will collaborate with Alexandre Surallés at the Collège de France on a joint inquiry into how the early modern experience of the New World shaped the emergence of both art history and anthropology as disciplines. She also plans to continue developing A Visual Plurilingual Lexicon of Art Histories, a digital collective lexicon of art historical word-concepts.