Letha Ch’ien, associate professor of art history at Sonoma State, has been awarded a National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) full research fellowship that will enable her to spend a year writing her book about the role of transmitting cultural ideology in Venetian art.
Using Venice as the case study, Chi'en explores how empires appropriate material and imagery from other cultures and then presents those foreign elements as being – and always having been – part of the empire through art.
The painting above (Bellini’s St. Mark Preaching) illustrates this concept. St. Mark’s Basilica in Venice houses the body of St. Mark, which Venetian merchants stole from Egypt 800 years after his death. The church was built from pieces of architecture and sculpture taken from Constantinople during the Fourth Crusade. In this painting, St. Mark, the basilica, and African animals – such as a giraffe – and visual elements of Islam are all represented as part of Venice and its history.
“Art is such an easy way to transmit this ideology because you consume it without knowing that an ‘argument’ is being made - in this case about what is Venetian,” Ch’ien said.
Ch'ien has done research for her book – partially supported by Sonoma State through a Research Scholarship and Creative Activities Program (RSCAP) award – in Venice archives that often were cold and drafty, and sometimes flooded. She said handling the documents (shown above) reminded her “how incomplete and how fragile the historical record is.”
She said of receiving the fellowship, “It feels very validating to have the confidence of the U.S. government in my work.”