Mark Phillips: Paul Mellon Senior Visiting Fellow at CASVA
Mark Phillips: Paul Mellon Senior Visiting Fellow at CASVA
Professor in the Department of History and The Institute for Comparative Studies in Literature, Art and Culture, Mark Salber Phillips will spend two months this winter as Paul Mellon Senior Visiting Fellow at the Center for Advanced Studies in the Visual Arts (CASVA) at the National Gallery in Washington.
An exceptionally accomplished historian, this is not Phillips first time as a visiting scholar at a prestigious institution. Harvard, Yale, the Institute for Advanced Study at Princeton and King’s College Cambridge are amongst the many schools that have played host to him in the past. Yet Phillips says this Fellowship at CASVA holds extra significance.
This opportunity presents him with a new challenge. His research will take place in a demanding field that is novel to Phillips– Art History. Though this is not the first time his studies have shifted to a new arena, the opportunity to work at CASVA seems particularly challenging.
“I have great respect for art historical scholarship,” Phillips says, “and I need to learn as much as I can from their research. Still, my own work on historical representation suggests some new questions.”
During his distinguished career Phillips’s work has focused on historical thought, first in the Italian Renaissance and more recently on 18th century Britain. His latest book, On Historical Distance, forthcoming from Yale University Press, is a theoretical and historical study of a fundamental idea in historical representation.
Drawing upon his analysis of distance, Phillips’s new work examines history painting, understood by 18th and 19th century critics as the highest artistic genre. His work aims to broaden our understanding of this important genre, in part through comparisons with historical writing.
Phillips says that he regards the fellowship as a very welcome affirmation of his art historical interests. CASVA is a leading art historical center, with all the resources of the National Gallery in Washington at hand.
According to Phillips, all this would not be possible if he had been the recipient of a 2012 FASS Research Achievement Award.
“Thanks to the FASS Research Award, I was able to free up the time necessary to pursue this endeavour.”
Benjamin West: The Death of General Wolfe
An iconic painting which exemplifies Phillips research on the contradictory definitions of the art genre ‘history’. Also, one of Phillips favourite pieces of art.
Center for Advanced Studies in the Visual Arts