Wendy Bellion

Wendy Bellion is Professor of Art History and the Sewell C. Biggs Chair in American Art History at the University of Delaware, where she also serves as Associate Dean for the Humanities in the College of Arts & Sciences. She directs the Center for Material Culture Studies and is a leading scholar in American visual and material culture from the late colonial and early national periods.

Her research focuses on interdisciplinary approaches to American art within the British Atlantic world, particularly exploring topics such as illusionism, sensory perception, theatrical representation, and iconoclasm. She has published extensively on trompe l'oeil painting, optical devices, and the politics of visual discernment in early national America.

Her major publications include the award-winning Citizen Spectator: Art, Illusion, and Visual Perception in Early National America (2011) and Iconoclasm in New York: Revolution to Reenactment (2019). Her work reveals how visual and material culture shaped civic identity, political expression, and sensory experience in early American society.

She has received significant scholarly recognition, most notably the Charles C. Eldredge Prize from the Smithsonian American Art Museum for outstanding scholarship. Her current projects include a monograph on visual culture and the early national theater and a co-edited volume on global eighteenth-century material cultures.

Wendy Bellion earned her Ph.D. from Northwestern University. She mentors graduate students in art history and leads interdisciplinary research initiatives. Her leadership extends to academic administration and the advancement of humanities research at the university level.

She is affiliated with the Department of Art History, the College of Arts & Sciences, and the Center for Material Culture Studies at the University of Delaware.