Andrew Finegold

Andrew Finegold is an art historian specializing in the visual and material culture of the ancient Americas. He is particularly interested in the phenomenology and metaphysics of art objects, and these considerations have informed his publications on a variety of topics, cultures, and time periods. His book Vital Voids (University of Texas Press, 2021) examines the real and symbolic values ascribed to holes, cavities, and voids across a variety of media in Mesoamerica. A portion of this research was published as an article titled "Vitality Materialized: On the Piercing and Adornment of the Body in Mesoamerica" in the journal Latin American and Latinx Visual Culture. His article “Objects without Texts: Mimbres Painted Bowls and the Problematics of Interpretation,” which was published in the journal Art History in 2019, proposes a phenomenological approach towards Mimbres imagery, which is considered as being inseparable from its ceramic ground. He is also co-editor, with Ellen Hoobler, of the volume Visual Culture of the Ancient Americas: Contemporary Perspectives (University of Oklahoma Press, 2017) to which he contributed an essay titled “Atlatls and the Metaphysics of Violence in Central Mexico.”

He is currently working on two book projects. The first, Temporalities of Mesoamerican Art, will argue that, contrary to the Modernist notion that sees artworks as singular and autonomous, Indigenous artworks were conceived and experienced within a worldview based on relationality and transformation, and therefore require an analytical shift away from the concept of Being to that of Becoming. The implications of this will be examined in relation to case studies that highlight the ways temporal experiences were built into Mesoamerican artworks, for example through the provoking of a folding together of distinct moments in time, or through the viewing of artworks as an experience that unfolds within time. A second book in progress, titled 'Coatlicue': An Aztec Icon's Journey through the Modern Imagination, chronicles the evolving reception of one of the best-known Mesoamerican artworks from its rediscovery in 1790 through the present, examining the evolving circumstances of its analysis, display, reproduction, and the various ways it has been alluded to or characterized by artists as well as in popular media. It concludes by arguing that, regardless of the intentions of these numerous and diverse modern interlocutors—who have invoked the image in relation to nationalist, humanist, feminist, and other concerns—their engagement with the sculpture's form has served to carry forward aspects of the Indigenous worldview that were present in the original work. This book builds on ideas from an article titled " 'Coatlicue': Redoubled and Juxtaposed," which was published in the journal Latin American and Latinx Visual Culture in 2026. It also draws on an ongoing web project, Ancient Americas, Appropriated, which includes a database cataloging over 2,000 examples of pop-culture and artistic references to the ancient Americas from around the world as well as essays on individual examples by a variety of contributors.

Courses Taught:

(note: The sample syllabi provided here may include links to readings and course materials that can only be accessed by individuals with UIC credentials.)

Undergraduate Courses

AH 110 World History of Art & the Built Environment, Part I [syllabus]

AH 172 Visual Culture of the Ancient Americas

AH 273 Visual Culture of the Ancient Andes

AH 274 Visual Culture of Mesoamerica [syllabus]

AH 301 Theory and Methods of Art History

HON 127 The Calendar Stone (and Other Aztec Monuments) [syllabus]

Mixed Undergraduate/Graduate Seminars

AH 404 Semiotics, Structuralism, Poststructuralism

AH 470 Art & Architecture of the Ancient Maya

AH 470 Classic Mimbres Ceramics and the Ancient Southwest

AH 470 Mesoamerican Codices

AH 470 Coatlicue

Graduate Seminars

AH 511 Towards New Histories of the Visual Arts, 1960 to the Present [syllabus]

AH 562 Pre-Columbian/(Post-)Modern [syllabus]

AH 570 The Afterlife of Ancient American Art

” ‘Coatlicue’: Redoubled and Juxtaposed.” Latin American and Latinx Visual Culture 8.3 (2026): 4–24. [PDF]

“Dreams of Gold: Mesoamerican Metalwork and the Question of Form.” Art History 48.2 (2025): 370–399. [Link to abstract]

Vital Voids: Cavities and Holes in Mesoamerican Material Culture, University of Texas Press, 2021. [Table of Contents]

“Vitality Materialized: On the Piercing and Adornment of the Body in Mesoamerica.” Latin American and Latinx Visual Culture 1.4 (2019): 55–75. [PDF]

“Objects without Texts: Mimbres Painted Bowls and the Problematics of Interpretation.” Art History 42.2 (2019): 216–241. [PDF]

“Atlatls and the Metaphysics of Violence in Central Mexico.” In Visual Culture of the Ancient Americas: Contemporary Perspectives, ed. Andrew Finegold and Ellen Hoobler, pp. 223–236. University of Oklahoma Press, 2017. [PDF]

Visual Culture of the Ancient Americas: Contemporary Perspectives (co-edited with Ellen Hoobler), University of Oklahoma Press, 2017. [Table of Contents] [Online Addenda]

PhD, Columbia University
MA, Columbia University
BA, University of Houston