Athenaeum Review

A journal of essays, reviews, and interviews by leading scholars in the arts and humanities.

The Athenaeum Review is a journal published twice a year by the Edith O’Donnell Institute of Art History and the School of Arts and Humanities at the University of Texas at Dallas.

The mission of Athenaeum Review is to make interesting and important ideas in the humanities freely available to the general educated public and to promote thoughtful, in-depth criticism of the arts in the Dallas-Fort Worth area.

Issues include essays by top scholars, book and exhibition reviews, interviews with scholars and artists, and folios of artwork that together cover a wide range of topics in the humanities.

The Athenaeum Review website features additional content, such as a series of extended illustrated interviews with artists including Lorraine Tady, Angela Kallus, Bryan Florentin, Liz Trosper, and Luke Harnden. The Athenaeum Review podcast features conversations with scholars and artists including recent O’Donnell Institute fellows and guests Abigail Solomon-Godeau, Yve-Alain Bois, Suzanne Preston Blier, Michael Lobel, and Annabel Daou.

Issue 6

The sixth issue of Athenaeum Review is out now at athenaeumreview.org.

The front and back covers illustrate two works from Maedeh Asgharpour’s series 1001 Nights. Other contents include:

David Carrier’s “Four Images of a Neapolitan Rebellion,” on historical representations of Masaniello, the 17th-century Italian fisherman who led the city of Naples in revolt against its rulers.

"Digital Art NFTs: The Marriage Of Art & Money” and “NFTs: The Afterlife Of The Aura” by Julia Friedman and David Hawkes, exploring how the new technology of non-fungible tokens is affecting both aesthetics and the art market.

Brian Allen, “Love, Envy, and Revenge,” reviews the exhibition of Titian’s “poesie” pictures and related works by Rubens, Poussin, Velazquez and others that appeared in London and Madrid and is now in Boston until January 22.

Also, Athenaeum Review: Present at the Creation,” an essay by editor Benjamin Lima on the vision of Richard R. Brettell in imagining the journal and bringing it into existence, was published on pages 71-72 of the exhibition catalog for Brettell: An Artists’ Homage to the Dynamic Influence of Rick Brettell, curated by Greg Metz at the SP/N Gallery, UT Dallas, Sept. 10 to Oct. 9, 2021.




Issue 5

The winter 2021 issue of Athenaeum Review is out now at athenaeumreview.org.

Among the contents of the new issue are articles on Mark Tobey and Isamu Noguchi by Weiyi Wu, Leonard da Vinci by Mark Rosen, El Greco by Brian Allen, Nishiki Sugawara-Beda by Robert E. Gordon, and lab notebooks by Elizabeth Molacek and Aaron Fond.

Also in the new issue: artwork by taylor barnes, Riley Holloway, Jammie Holmes, Letitia Huckaby, Sedrick Huckaby, Evita Tezeno, and Desireé Vaniecia, the museums of Iceland, Isicathamiya song in Durban, Cordelia’s silence in King Lear, Ozsváth and Turner’s Goethe, voyaging with Darwin, the art of terraforming, English artifacts, democratic disappointment, classicism by decree, living with hate, Max Weber’s vocation, and poetry by Jane Saginaw, Tom Palaima and Nomi Stone.

The winter 2021 issue of Athenaeum Review is dedicated, with the generous support of Karen and Howard Weiner, to the memory of Richard R. Brettell.



Athenaeum Review is published twice yearly by the Edith O’Donnell Institute of Art History and the School of Arts and Humanities. Featuring essays, reviews and podcasts by leading scholars in the arts and humanities, all issues of the journal may be freely read online, or ordered in print from the UT Dallas Marketplace. For more information, contact [email protected].

The Athenaeum Review is available by subscription or by order of a single issue.


Benjamin Lima, Editor, The Athenaeum Review