Mark A. Meadow Receives Berlin Prize Fellowship

Mark A. Meadow, an associate professor in the Department of History of Art and Architecture at UC Santa Barbara, has been awarded a 2014-15 Berlin Prize Fellowship by the American Academy in Berlin. He is the second UCSB art historian so honored. Sylvester Ogbechie, professor of history of art and architecture, was named a fellow in 2007.

Founded in 1994, the academy aims to foster greater understanding and dialogue between the U.S. and Germany through the academy’s presence in Berlin. The highly competitive Berlin Prize Fellowship is awarded annually to scholars, writers and artists who represent the highest standards of excellence in their fields.

The fellowship includes a monthly stipend, partial board and residence at the academy’s lakeside Hans Arnhold Center in Berlin-Wannsee. The fellowship also allows recipients the time and resources to focus on academic and artistic projects they might not otherwise pursue, engage with their German counterparts and experience Berlin’s cultural and political life.

“The award is a recognition of Professor Meadow’s international standing as a scholar, and is a testament to the outstanding research of our departmental faculty,” said Swati Chattopadhyay, professor and chair of the history of art and architecture department.

While in Berlin, Meadow will work on his new book, “Quiccheberg’s Containers: Inventing Practical Knowledge in Early Modern Collections.” This history of early-modern German encyclopedic collections (Kunstkammern) examines the rise of the modern nation and the emergence of global merchants. Meadow will also give a public lecture titled “Kunstkammern Practical Knowledge and the Birth of the Nation State.”

“This is a wonderful opportunity to devote myself for several months to writing my next book, continuing research on modern university collections and to meeting and consulting with leading European scholars in my fields of research,” Meadow said of the fellowship.

A specialist in Northern European art of the early-modern period, Meadow is particularly interested in the histories of rhetoric and collecting in the early-modern ritual and spectacle. His publications include “Pieter Bruegel the Elder’s Netherlandish Proverbs and the Practice of Rhetoric” (Waanders: Zwolle, 2002); translations of Symon Andriessoon’s 1550 “Duytsche Adagia ofte Spreecwoorden (Hilversum, 2003); and “The First Treatise on Museums: Samuel Quiccheberg’s Inscriptiones 1565” (Getty Research Institute Press, 2013), which he co-edited with Bruce Robertson, professor in the Department of History of Art and Architecture at UCSB and director of the campus’s Art, Design & Architecture Museum.