Claudia Lozoff Brittenham

Appointment: 2008 to 2009, 2010 to 2012
Program: History of Art

Claudia Brittenham received her Ph.D. in History of Art from Yale University in 2008. Her dissertation, The Cacaxtla Painting Tradition: Art and Identity in Epiclassic Mexico, examined the role of mural painting in the construction of civic identity during the 7th-10th centuries in Central Mexico. Her next project, Unseen Art: Problems of visibility and the power of memory in ancient Mesoamerica, investigates a series of interrelated questions: Why carve the bottoms of monumental sculptures? Why bury art in tombs or caches? Why place paintings and sculpture in dark spaces where they cannot be seen? By considering cases diametrically opposed to the modern paradigm of museum display, this project reconstructs a model of how and why art functioned in Mesoamerican contexts, focusing attention on making, dedication, performance, and memory as processes central to the vitality of ancient art.

Recipient of outside funding.