The Courtauld Centre for the Art of the Americas

The Courtauld Centre for the Art of the Americas hosts, supports, and fosters advanced scholarship that thinks critically and creatively about American art in its broadest sense. Since its formation in 2016 we have  undertaken a rich roster of successful activities, including hosting an annual Postdoctoral Fellow, as well as visiting speakers, artists, writers, and scholars from around the world. Our goal is to leverage the Centre’s convening power as an international platform for new ideas and approaches, through a dynamic range of workshops, symposia, exhibition visits, and conversations that address the urgent questions facing our field today. We aim to strengthen and develop collaborations across the academy, art world, and beyond, foregrounding historically marginalised voices, histories, and practices, and ensuring the widest possible range of international participants.

Our vision for the Centre for the Art of the Americas is to answer calls to recognise the colonial and nationalist imperatives that have shaped the field and to bring to bear decolonial and transnational approaches. At a time when academic freedom in the United States is increasingly under threat, and American history is an ideological battleground, the Centre’s location outside of the United States plays a critical role in its ability to convene scholars and students for challenging and intellectually ambitious discourse. The Centre thus serves as a major international platform for conversations on the past, present, and future of American art history.

The community of students, scholars, and researchers affiliated with the Centre includes MA students, PhD students and postdoctoral fellows, as well as, Associate Lecturers, curators, and faculty drawn from across the departments of the History of Art, Curating, and Conservation at The Courtauld.