Mary Ellen Miller | |
|---|---|
| Born | December 30, 1952 |
| Nationality | American |
| Occupation(s) | Art historian, Academician |
| Employer | Yale University |
| Known for | Specializing in Mesoamerica and the Maya |
| Awards | Guggenheim Fellowship, Member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences |
| Academic background | |
| Alma mater | Princeton University (A.B.), Yale University (Ph.D.) |
Mary Ellen Miller (born December 30, 1952)[1] is an Americanart historian and academician specializing inMesoamerica and theMaya.
A native ofNew York State, Miller earned her A.B. degree fromPrinceton University and her Ph.D. fromYale in 1981 with a thesis titledThe Murals ofBonampak, Chiapas Mexico.[2] Miller joined the Yale faculty in 1981,[3] and in 1998 was appointed as theVincent Scully, Jr. Professor of theHistory of Art.
Miller served as the master ofSaybrook College from 1999 until the autumn of 2008, when she was both appointed asSterling Professor and named the replacement ofPeter Salovey as Dean ofYale College. She was the first woman to hold Yale College's highest office,[4] and served as dean from December 2008 to June 2014.[5] When Yale University President,Richard C. Levin, announced Miller's appointment as dean, he had nothing but praise for her: "Mary is the embodiment of what you look for in a Yale College dean," Levin said in an interview after the official appointment ceremony held in Luce Hall. "She is a magnificent scholar, a devoted teacher and a terrific master."[4] Miller cited a desire to return to academia as her reason for stepping down from the deanship position in 2014.[5]
She has also served as the chair of the history of art, Latin American studies, and archaeological studies departments at Yale, as well as director of undergraduate studies of the history of art. Until December 2018, she was the senior director for the Institute for the Preservation of Cultural Heritage Art of the Ancient New World at Yale.[6] In January 2019, she became the director of theGetty Research Institute in Los Angeles.[7]
Miller served as the guest curator for "The Courtly Art of the Ancient Maya", a highly acclaimed exhibition ofMaya art that took place in 2004 at theNational Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C., and the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco. For that exhibition, she wrote the catalogue of the same title—a finalist for theAlfred H. Barr Jr. Award of theCollege Art Association—withSimon Martin, senior epigrapher at the University Museum,University of Pennsylvania. A previous exhibition catalogue,The Blood of Kings, co-authored withLinda Schele, received the CAA's Barr Award in 1986.[8]
Miller has worked, together with Beatriz de la Fuente, Stephen Houston, Karl Taube and artists Heather Hurst and Leonard Ashby, for many years on her archaeological project to document and reconstruct the Maya wall paintings atBonampak, Mexico,[9] which resulted in two standard works, namelyThe Murals of Bonampak in 1986 and, together with Claudia Brittenham,The Spectacle of the Late Maya Court; Reflections on the Murals of Bonampak in 2013. Miller is also the author of several overviews written for a general public, specificallyMaya Art and Architecture,The Art of Mesoamerica and, along with the aforementionedKarl Taube,The Gods and Symbols of Ancient Mexico and the Maya: An Illustrated Dictionary of Mesoamerican Religion. Her many articles address questions of Aztec and Maya art, as well as the historiography of Precolumbian art. A few additional works include:
In 2017, Prof. Miller spoke in support of the authenticity of theGrolier Codex, the most recently discoveredMaya codex. According to Miller, some of the seeming errors in the manuscript can be explained because, in the context of its time, this manuscript was "only a modest, workaday object likely created by a provincial artist".[13]
Miller has won national recognition for her work on the Maya, including aGuggenheim Fellowship. She is also a member of theAmerican Academy of Arts and Sciences. In April and May 2010, she delivered the 59thA. W. Mellon lectures at the National Gallery of Art.[14] During the 2015–2016 term, Miller was the Paul Mellon Senior Fellow at the National Gallery of Art's Center for Advanced Study in the Visual Arts.[15] During her tenure as dean at Yale College, Dr. Miller was able to secure a $1.8 million award from the Mellon Foundation for an "integrated Humanities Program" for Yale doctoral students in May 2012.[16] Additionally, she delivered theSlade Lectures at Cambridge University during the academic year 2014–2015.[17]
