May 13, 2025
Yale News recently interviewed Allison Caplan (Assistant Professor of History of Art) and Marisa Bass (Professor of History of Art) on their co-organized February 28 workshop “Feathers: A Transcultural Art History,” which addressed the art history of the feather across time and place, bringing studies on the role of feathers within particular artistic traditions into conversation with one another. In this conversation, they talk about the cultural value of feathers, why not all feathers are created equal, and the mysterious provenance of a feathered native North American headdress in a museum in Rome.