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Meet Art History Major Nicolay Duque-Robayo

Nicolay Duque-Robayo is a senior art history and philosophy double major, focusing on Modern and Contemporary art in Europe and America.

Art Hist student

Under the direction of Dr. Steven Mansbach, they are currently writing their honors thesis on the advent of photography between the wars in the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe. Here is what they write about their internship experience this summer:

This past summer I participated in the Summer Research Institute conducted by the Ronald E. McNair Post-Baccalaureate Achievement Program. The institute’s mission is to help its scholars develop the research and writing skills they need for graduate school. Under the guidance of Dr. Joshua Shannon and Cecilia Wichmann, my research was directed towards the work of the German photographer Andreas Gursky. Through his photography, Gursky illustrates how a late capitalist society constructs fictional environments that are indistinguishable from reality. His work Singapore II (1997), a photograph in the permanent collection of the National Gallery of Art, illustrates the inside of a building complex in what is presumed to be Singapore. However, through a close analysis of the image, it becomes apparent that the artist has seamlessly, digitally manipulated the image to extend the building to the point of structural incongruity. Gursky prompts the audience of his works to examine the world around them, just as they are asked to examine his work.

Being one of the two humanities participants at the McNair Research Institute, the skills and knowledge that I’ve acquired as an Art History major allowed me to contribute greatly to the academic challenges that my cohort faced. By critically engaging with the texts presented to us, as well as considering the socio-political factors that undergirded these works, I contributed a different perspective that my peers had not been exposed to.