HNA is pleased to announce the 2026 Awardees of Awards for Scholarly Research, Publication, and Travel
Stephanie Reitzig (PhD student, History Dept., Columbia University) will conduct object-focused research in the Netherlands for her dissertation “The Worthy Virtuosa: Women and Natural History Collecting.” The focus is Chapter 3, “Crafting the Cabinet,” in which Stephanie will “investigate how women manipulated, imitated, and depicted naturalia (e.g. flowers, insects, shells, and coral) by studying paintings, drawings, beadwork, engraved glasses, dollhouse furniture, and other objects, alongside printed and manuscript sources.” She seeks to understand “how gendered artistic practices facilitated and mediated women’s engagement with cultures of natural history and how, through their artwork, women shaped the cultural and epistemic significance of collected specimens.”
Adam Sammut (Visiting Fellow, Department of History of Art, University of York, U.K.) will travel to Istanbul to complete research for his book Rubens and Islam. His attentions are on his chapter “Trading Places: Rubens’s ‘Turkish portrait’ of the Antwerp merchant Nicolas de Respagne,” in which he examines Respagne’s self-fashioning as a complex transcultural process. Among Adam’s guiding questions for research are: “Just how fluid was cultural identity in this period? In what context did the merchant actually wear this outfit? If De Respaigne remained active in the silk trade after returning to Antwerp, was the portrait, in effect, a showroom dummy for his elite clients?”
Carla van de Puttelaar (Independent Scholar and Artist) will complete her monograph about the Life and Work of Cornelia de Rijk (1653-1726), painter of birds and insects. Carla will travel to Stockholm to see drawings by de Rijk and obtain final image permissions for the publication. The book presents a comprehensive picture of the artistic and scientific milieu in which De Rijk moved, showing how her artistic work was rooted in and stimulated by this environment, as well as by colleagues such as Maria Sibylla Merian (1647-1717), Rachel Ruysch (1664-1750), and Alida Withoos (1661/62-1730).
Wendy Frère (Scientific collaborator, Fondation Périer-D’Ieteren, Brussels) will examine objects and archives in England related to the sculptors Arnold Quellinus and John Nost, for a better understanding of the Quellinus workshop organization and commissions in the artistic milieu of London. Through archival research and direct study of Nost’s work Frère will clarify the chronology of Nost’s collaboration with Quellinus, retrace his career in England, and assess how he adapted Quellinus’s models and practices. The result will be a published article on the subject and is part of larger book-length study on the Quellinus family artistic networks and across Europe.
We congratulate the awardees and thank all of you who submitted applications, for what was a stellar group of projects again this year! The state of the field is indeed strong and very very exciting.