Caitlin Meehye Beach Awarded the 35^th Annual Eldredge Prize for Her Book ​“Sculpture at the Ends of Slavery”

The Smithsonian American Art Museum has awarded the 35th annual Charles C. Eldredge Prize for Distinguished Scholarship in American Art to Caitlin Meehye Beach for her book Sculpture at the Ends of Slavery (University of California Press, 2022). The book explores intersections between the economic wealth generated by enslavement and the materials, production and circulation of 18th- and 19th-century sculpture. Beach highlights the artists’ role in reproducing anti-Blackness even as they professed anti-slavery politics.

Beach was recognized by an independent panel for her perspective that “advances how American art history approaches racial violence, offering students a model for eliminating racial spectacle.” The jurors also commended Beach’s decade of research and transnational approach to American art history that "broaden[s] the discourse and our understanding of art history of the United States."

Jurors for the $3,000 prize were Karen Mary Davalos, professor of Chicano and Latino studies at the University of Minnesota, Twin Cities; Valerie Cassel Oliver, the Sydney and Francis Lewis Family Curator of Modern and Contemporary Art at the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts; and Laura Kina, Vincent de Paul Professor at the Art School at DePaul University.

Beach is an assistant professor of art history and affiliated faculty in African and African American studies at Fordham University, and for the academic year 2023–24, she is co-director of Fordham’s newly established program in Asian American studies. Her research and teaching focus on transatlantic art histories of the 18th and 19th centuries, with special attention to art’s relationship to racial capitalism and racial formation. Beach’s writing has appeared in British Art Studies, Nineteenth-Century Art Worldwide and Nka: Journal of Contemporary African Art, as well as various edited volumes and exhibition catalogs. She received a doctorate and master’s degree from Columbia University and a bachelor’s degree from Bowdoin College.

Beach will present the annual Eldredge Prize Lecture at the museum March 21, 2024. Details will be available online.