The Courtauld Institute congratulates Professor Emerita Joanna Cannon who has been awarded a CBE (Commander of the Order of the British Empire) in the King’s Birthday Honours 2026 for services to art curation and research.
Joanna taught at the Courtauld Institute from 1977 onwards, retiring in 2019. She was appointed Professor in the History of Art in 2014. Joanna also studied as an undergraduate and postgraduate at the Courtauld Institute, receiving her PhD in 1980.
Joanna was co-curator of the award-winning exhibition Siena: The Rise of Painting, 1300 ‒1350 (Metropolitan Museum, New York, 2024; National Gallery, London, 2025), which opened up the world of Sienese art to a wider public. She was also the lead editor of the accompanying publication.
Joanna has published widely on aspects of later-medieval Italian art, especially art and the orders of friars in central Italy, including:
- Religious Poverty, Visual Riches: Art in the Dominican Churches of Central Italy in the Thirteenth and Fourteenth Centuries, published by Yale University Press in 2013, was shortlisted for the Apollo Book of the Year award.
- Co-editor, with Jo Kirby and Susie Nash, of Trade in Artists’ Materials: Markets and Commerce in Europe to 1700 (London: Archetype, 2010).
- Co-editor with Beth Williamson of Art, Politics, and Civic Religion in Central Italy, 1261-1352 (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2000).
- Co-author, with André Vauchez, of Margherita of Cortona and the Lorenzetti: Sienese Art and the Cult of a Holy Woman in Medieval Tuscany, (University Park, PA: Penn State Press, 1999).
Joanna said: “The whole thing was – of course – a complete surprise to me, but I am very gratified on behalf of the Art History community, especially colleagues and students at the Courtauld, and latterly at the National Gallery and, more widely, on behalf of the study of the Humanities.”
Professor Mark Hallett said: “We are thrilled that Joanna has been honoured with a CBE in the King’s Birthday Honours List. This is thoroughly well-deserved, and a testament to the brilliance and rigour of Joanna’s scholarship.”
