Background
Alexis Wang is a specialist in the art and architecture of medieval Europe and the Mediterranean, with an emphasis on Italy and the global networks to which it was connected. She is especially interested in the mediality of mural decoration, cross-cultural exchange, medieval theories of the image, ecological approaches to medieval art, and the intersections between art, science and devotion. Much of her research coalesces around issues of materiality, representation, and the sacred. Wang’s current book project, The Embedded Object: Intermedial Surfaces in Medieval Mural Decoration, examines medieval understandings of media and mixture, and brings to light the practice of embedding devotional objects within monumental mural images in medieval Italy and Byzantium.
Her research has been supported by, among others, the Samuel H. Kress Foundation, the Gladys Krieble Delmas Foundation, the Center for the Art and Architectural History of Port Cities in Naples; the Bibliotheca Hertziana – Max Planck Institute for Art History; The Metropolitan Museum of Art; the Institute of Sacred Music at Yale University, and a Rome Prize at the American Academy in Rome. She received her PhD from Columbia University in New York.
Select Publications
- "The Intermedial Image in Twelfth-Century Naples," Gesta (forthcoming)
Education
- PhD, Columbia University
- BA, New York University
Research Interests
- Medieval art and architecture
- Medieval Mediterranean
- Cultural and artistic exchange
- Materials, media and materiality
- Ecological art history
Teaching Interests
- Medieval art and architecture
- The global Middle Ages
- Icons and relics
- Art and religion
Awards
- Rome Prize fellow, American Academy in Rome
- Jane and Morgan Whitney Fellow, the Metropolitan Museum of Art and the Cloisters
- Long-Term Fellow, Institute of Sacred Music, Yale University