Samuel Luterbacher

Samuel comes to Occidental from Yale University, where he earned his Ph.D. in art history and received the Andrew Mellon Fellowship at the Center for Advanced Study in the Visual Arts in Washington, D.C. He earned his M.A. in art history from the Courtauld Institute of Art and a B.A. in art history and Japanese language and culture from the University of Geneva, Switzerland. His research focuses on the arts of the early modern Portuguese and Spanish empires, particularly Iberian expansion in Asia and its connections to colonial Latin America.

What drew you to teach at Occidental?

I had the opportunity to teach here for three years as a Visiting Assistant Professor, and I loved it. It allowed me to approach premodern art in new and radically different ways, which was incredibly refreshing. For example, I was able to completely reconceive an introductory course on ancient and medieval art from a broader Mediterranean perspective, exploring cross cultural artistic influences and engaging with trade, materiality, and function while drawing connections between the Ancient Mediterranean, Asia, and Africa.

Oxy’s setting fosters meaningful engagement with student perspectives while encouraging us to rethink fundamental approaches to teaching art history. I also feel fortunate to have a wonderful group of colleagues in the Art & Art History department, whose openness and critical thinking further enrich this environment.

Oxy’s Los Angeles setting remains deeply intertwined with my research and teaching interests. My work focuses on the arts of the early modern (16th–18th century) Portuguese and Spanish empires, including the Iberian colonization of the Pacific and trade with Japan. The city is home to several collections relevant to this research, and I prioritize taking students to museums like the Getty or LACMA every semester to engage with ancient art in situ.

With a full semester behind you, what are your impressions of Oxy students?

The students were one of the main reasons I wanted to continue my path here. Their curiosity and engagement make teaching especially rewarding. I also appreciate working with students from diverse academic backgrounds, some of whom may be taking an art history course for the first time. This has continually pushed me to expand my approach to teaching, encouraging students to think not only about the history behind artifacts but also about the politics of their display, accessibility, and provenance in modern-day museums.

When did you first become interested in early modern art?

Early modern art is both strange and familiar, and that paradox makes it fascinating. Growing up in Central Europe, I was taught the Renaissance and Baroque from a monolithic perspective, primarily focused on Italy and the Netherlands. These movements were framed around the emergence of a humanist concept of “art” and the “artist”— notions that still hold power today. I have always been curious about rethinking these traditional parameters and considering the diverse cultural influences that shaped art both within and beyond Europe. Such notions cannot be disentangled from the European expansionist project. For example, examining the Spanish and Portuguese empires reveals how specific aesthetic systems were deliberately imposed on others through colonization.

Because I trained in the disciplines of material culture and the decorative arts, I am also interested in moving beyond the conventional framework of painting and sculpture to engage with objects familiar to our everyday day, such as ceramics and textiles. This perspective allows for a deeper exploration of materials, techniques, and labor practices, particularly to the handmade—a crucial factor in a pre-industrial world where matter and objects had a different kind of agency than they do today.

Do you have a favorite class that you are teaching, and why?

I am enjoying both of my classes this semester because they allow me to teach in different ways. Ways of Looking and Making enables me to break traditional divisions between fine art and craft by inviting Studio faculty and contemporary makers from the LA arts community into the course. This gives students firsthand experience with different craft practices—next month, for example, a multidisciplinary artist will lead a weaving workshop.

I am also enjoying teaching my Global Baroque seminar. In this course, we explore the Baroque as a flexible aesthetic category from a transhistorical and transcultural perspective, considering its lasting impact on cultural production today. Rather than treating it as a strictly European style, we examine it as a global phenomenon—one that spread through colonial Latin America due to imperial imperatives but also became a means of appropriation and resistance for colonial artists.

Anything else you would like to add?

Historical art has long been embedded in imperial and nationalist projects, but today we are witnessing a resurgence of highly reductive visions of so-called “Western” art for revisionist political purposes. This is why studying the art of the past remains crucial—it allows us to preserve nuance, complexity, and diversity in cultural discourse. I believe that art created in the past can still offer radical forms of alterity that challenge our perspectives and help reshape our present and future.