AsPr Robert Wellington

Robert Wellington is Associate Professor of Art History and ARC DECRA Fellow (2018-22) in the Centre for Art History and Art Theory. He is an art historian with a special interest in the role of material culture in history making and cross-cultural exchange. His monograph, Antiquarianism and the visual histories of Louis XIV: Artifacts for a future past, was published by Ashgate in 2015, and is held in public and university libraries across the world. Robert is also engaged with digital methods for art historical research, and is lead CI on the ARC Discovery Project: Performing Transdisciplinarity, a digital transdisciplinary study of an eighteenth century songbook. Robert was elected a Fellow of the Society of Antiquaries of London in 2021.

SELECTED PUBLIC LECTURES: 

• “What’s it worth? European Art at the Persian Court,” The Courtauld Institute of Art, London, November 2018.
• “Tanned by the Sun King: Donald Trump and Louis XIV,” The Metropolitan Museum of Art, April 2018.
• “Bernini and the King’s Forehead,” National Gallery of Australia, March 2017.
• "Sun King to Moon King: Emulating the Grand Siècle in the 18th and 19th Centuries,"  The Françoise and Georges Selz Lectures on 18th- and 19th-Century French Decorative Arts and Culture, Bard Graduate Centre, NYC, January 2016.

SELECTED CONFERENCES, SYMPOSIA, AND WORKSHOPS CONVENED:

• Objects from elsewhere: Transcultural constructions of identity (co-convenor Alex Burchmore), College Art Association Annual Conference, Chicago, February 2020.
• Global Histories of Art: crossing the modern/early modern divide (co-convener Mary Roberts) Clark Art Institute, June 2018.
• Worlding Early Modern France, Renaissance Society of America Annual Meeting, New Orleans, March 2018.
  
• Full Circle: The Medal in Art History (co-conveners Melanie Vandenbrouck, Aimee Ng), The Frick Collection, September 2017.
  
• Enchanted Isles, Fatal Shores: Living Versailles, (co-convener Mark Ledbury) NGA, March 2017. http://nga.gov.au/Symposia/Versailles/
• Digital Approaches in the Study of Early Modern Culture, ANU; and Recasting the Question: Digital Approaches in Art history and Museums, USYD, November 2015 (co-convener Stephen Whiteman).

PhD, University of Sydney

• Louis XIV
• Ancien règime France
• French art, 1500-1900
• Digital art history
• Theories of history
• The history of collecting
• Antiquarianism
• Material culture
• Print culture
• Images of war
• Mapping
• Cross-cultural exchange in the early-modern period
• Transcultural aesthetics