Michael Yonan

Michael Yonan is Professor of Art History and holds the Alan Templeton Endowed Chair in the History of European Art, 1600–1830 at the University of California, Davis. He serves as Graduate Advisor and is a Faculty Associate in the Graduate Program in German. His research centers on eighteenth and nineteenth-century European art, with a focus on decorative arts, material culture, and art historiography.

• Ph.D., University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
• M.A., University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
• B.A., University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

Yonan’s research explores the material dimensions of art, particularly in Central and Northern Europe. His work investigates rococo design, porcelain, ornamentation, and portraiture, often through interdisciplinary frameworks that connect art history with material culture studies. He has published extensively on Empress Maria Theresa, Franz Xaver Messerschmidt, and cross-cultural artistic exchange in the early modern period.

His recent publications reveal a sustained engagement with materiality, global art networks, and the epistemology of art objects. Themes such as the agency of materials, imperial representation, and the boundaries between craft and fine art recur across his scholarship. He has also contributed to digital humanities through entries in Oxford Bibliographies and Oxford Handbooks Online.

• Fellowship from the Getty Research Institute
• Fellowship from the Mellon Foundation
• Fellowship from the Kress Foundation
• Fellowship from the Fulbright Program
• Fellowship from the Swedish Collegium for Advanced Study, Uppsala

Yonan has advised graduate students and led research initiatives on global art worlds. He has participated in international projects such as 'Powerful Presences: The Sculptural Portrait' and has held visiting professorships, including at Stockholm University. He edits the book series The Material Culture of Art and Design for Bloomsbury Academic Press. His teaching includes courses on the Rococo, the Age of Revolution, and seminars on ornament and global objects.

He is affiliated with the Department of Art and Art History in the College of Letters and Science at UC Davis, contributing to both undergraduate and graduate education in art history.