Dr. Judy Bullington
Associate Professor, Art History
Chair of the Department of Art
PhD Indiana University-Bloomington
MA / MS / BA University of Kentucky
The German artist Paul Klee wrote that “art does not reproduce the visible; rather, it makes visible.” Art history and studio art are complementary disciplines. Artists make ideas ‘visible’ and art historians examine form and content as a way of understanding meaning. It’s like being a detective who looks for clues then pieces them together to make discoveries or solve a mystery.
Judy Bullington joined Belmont University as the Chair of the Department of Art in the summer of 2007. She holds a Ph.D. in American Art History from Indiana University—Bloomington where she studied with Dr. Sarah Burns, the Ruth N. Halls Distinguished Professor of the History of American Art. The topic of her dissertation, “Expanding Horizons—The Artist-As-Traveler in Gilded Age America,” established an early academic interest in cultural dialogues evident in various forms of the visual arts and literature. Dr. Bullington’s research interests center on American visual culture as a means of engaging discussions about cultural synthesis, identity politics, travel theory, as well as critical and comparative analysis. Topics addressed in her work can be broadly categorized as studies of cross-cultural influences in the work of historically marginalized groups including African-Americans, women in the arts and, most recently, diaspora Palestinian women artists. Dr. Bullington’s research is published in the Gazette des Beaux Arts, Nineteenth Century Studies Journal, Prospects—The Cambridge Journal of American Culture, Woman’s Art Journal, and the Smithsonian American Art Journal. In addition, she has extensive experience teaching in both public and private institutions in Kentucky, Indiana, Texas, and Oregon as an Assistant and then Associate Professor of Art History. Overseas teaching experience includes a Fulbright Foundation award to teach American Modernism at Tartu University in Estonia, and a semester abroad in Athens, Greece for the NICSA program. Dr. Bullington comes to Belmont University from the University of Sharjah in the United Arab Emirates where she has lived and taught for the past four and half years, serving most recently as the Acting Dean of the College of Fine Arts and Design at the University of Sharjah.