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Dual honors for BC art historian
Boston College art historian Oliver Wunsch is a recipient of prestigious awards from the American Society for Eighteenth-Century Studies (ASECS) and the Harvard University Hutchins Center for African & African American Research in recognition of excellence in 18th-century scholarship.
An associate professor in the Art, Art History, and Film Department, Wunsch received the ASECS James Clifford Prize for research on aesthetic engagement with Blackness for his article, “The Aesthetic Redemption of the Black Body in Eighteenth-Century France,” which was published in the journal Art History in February 2025.
The ASECS citation said Wunsch “adeptly demonstrates ‘how the differing goals of artists and philosophers yielded divergent forms of engagement with Blackness,’” arguing that “the aesthetic aims of painters, focused on producing ‘visual pleasure,’ introduce a disjuncture between a social discourse that would at times marginalize or demean Black subjects and the formal qualities involved in capturing Blackness,” a phenomenon Wunsch calls “the ‘aesthetic redemption’ of the Black body.”
ASECS called Wunsch’s article “valuable (essential?) reading for anyone interested in visual art, aesthetic theory, natural philosophy, historiography, and exhibition curation.”
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Associate Professor Oliver Wunsch: “The Clifford Prize is especially heartening because it recognizes work that generates interest among scholars across disciplines, which is one of my big aspirations as a writer" His second book has grown out of the prize-winning article.
Established in 1969, ASECS is the foremost learned society in the United States for the study of all aspects of the “long 18th century”—defined as the period roughly between 1688 and 1815—and bestows awards, grants, prizes, and fellowships to support scholars at every career stage.
“The Clifford Prize is especially heartening because it recognizes work that generates interest among scholars across disciplines, which is one of my big aspirations as a writer,” Wunsch said. “I’ve long relied on the ASECS to connect with scholars outside of art history, so it’s gratifying to see my work validated by the organization.”
For work on his second book, which has grown out of the prize-winning article, Wunsch also was awarded a 2026-2027 academic year fellowship from the Hutchins Center. With the working title Aesthetic Redemption: Art, Race, and Secular Salvation in Eighteenth-Century France, the book examines how Enlightenment aesthetics redefined theological concepts of grace and redemption through depictions of Black subjects.
“The book originates in a paradox: 18th-century French critics frequently admired depictions of Black subjects in art while disparaging Black people in life,” he said. “This contradiction, I argue, stems from art’s increasing incorporation of a secular rhetoric of redemption, which defined art through its power to ameliorate allegedly deficient subjects.”
Hutchins fellows present their work in a weekly colloquia series chaired by center Director Henry Louis Gates, Jr., receive office space, support from a research assistant, and have access to the Du Bois Institute research resources. Established in 1975 as the W.E.B. Du Bois Institute for Afro-American Research, the center annually appoints scholars who conduct individual research in fields related to African and African American Studies.
“The Hutchins Center fellowship means a lot to me, not just because of the dedicated time that it will provide for working on the book, but also because of the intellectual community and tradition of scholarship that it cultivates,” Wunsch said. “Because the Hutchins Center houses the Image of the Black in Western Art archive and library, it has been a particularly important meeting place for scholars researching the visual representation of Black subjects. I can’t think of a better setting in which to write the book.”
Wunsch, whose research and teaching focus on European and American art in the 18th and 19th centuries, directs undergraduate studies in art history in the Art, Art History, and Film Department. He has a background as a painter and printmaker, and much of his research deals with the history of artistic techniques.