Background
Alexis Wang is a specialist in the art and architecture of medieval Europe and the Mediterranean, with particular interests in the mediality of mural decoration, cross-cultural exchange, medieval notions of nature and the intersections between art, science and devotion. Her current book project, Intermedial Effects, Sanctified Surfaces, 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 the Samuel H. Kress Foundation, the Gladys Krieble Delmas Foundation, the Center for the Art and Architectural History of Port Cities in Naples, among others. In 2019-2020 she was the Donald and Maria Cox/Samuel H. Kress Foundation Rome Prize Fellow in Medieval Studies at the American Academy in Rome, and in 2021-2022 she was the Jane and Morgan Whitney Fellow in the Department of Medieval Art and the Cloisters at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. She received her PhD from Columbia University in New York.
On leave during the 2024-2025 academic year.
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
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