While taking Elena Calvillo’s class on women artists, student Emma Miller became fascinated by the history of convent art in Mexico. Her paper on the topic was published in Yale University’s spring 2022 Asterisk* Journal of Art and Art History.

“I’m a Spanish speaker, so that particular area resonated with me,” she said.

A year later, Calvillo, an art and art history professor, planned a research trip to Mexico City to explore European prints from colonial-era collections for a book that she is writing. Knowing that Miller would pursue the topic of convent art for her senior thesis, she invited her along.

With funding from the Tribble Faculty Fellowship, the pair traveled to the capital city in fall 2023. They visited various historic and culturally relevant sites that strengthened their primary source research, such as the Museo Soumaya and the National Library of Anthropology and History.

For Miller, the highlight of the trip was visiting the Museo Nacional del Virreinato in the town of Tepotzotlán, about an hour north of the city. “I convinced a guard to take us into a closed wing of the museum where a wealth of 18th century convent art was stored,” she said. “The works we studied became an integral part of my senior thesis research.”

The pair discovered three types of art works that Miller planned to discuss in her thesis: profession portraits made when a nun entered a convent, a painted badge worn on some nun’s habits called an escudo de monja, and portraits made after a nun’s death.

At first, nuns in New Spain were exclusively white, whose families came to the Spanish colony beginning in the 16th century. The first known Indigenous women to join a convent, Corpus Christi, did so in 1724, said Miller.

Calvillo enjoyed visiting the Anahuacalli Museum, conceived by Diego Rivera to house his collection of pre-colonial art. Made of volcanic stone, the museum’s architecture is a modern interpretation of a Mesoamerican pyramid. 

“The architecture was surprising and the artifacts that Rivera collected were stunning,” Calvillo said. “My course on the history and theory of collecting addresses the colonial legacy of art collecting, but I had never considered teaching Rivera’s collection in it until my visit to Mexico City.” She plans to incorporate it into the class in spring 2025.

As she worked on her senior thesis, Miller received additional mentoring by Art History Professor Najung Kim, the instructor of the capstone seminar. A chapter from Miller’s thesis earned her the 2024 Student Symposium Paper Award from the School of Arts & Sciences this spring.

As a new Spider alum, she intends to gain experience working in an art museum before enrolling in an art history graduate program. Working one-on-one with Calvillo in Mexico helped her gain invaluable post-graduate skills, she said.

"I learned so many lessons on conducting research just by watching Dr. Calvillo because she’s done this so many times,” she said.

Calvillo is grateful for the Tribble family’s generosity in making the experience possible. “This was my first time traveling with a student to a place that was part of my research, and we had a great time,” she said. “I would love to have the opportunity again in the future.”