Gauvin Alexander Bailey
Professor and Bader Chair in Southern Baroque Art
Department of Art History and Art Conservation
- Correspondent étranger, Académie des Inscriptions et Belles-Lettres, Institut de France
- Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada
- Winner of a 2016 Queen’s University Prize for Excellence in Research
- Winner of a 2010 Guggenheim Fellowship
Research Interests
Late Renaissance, Baroque and Rococo architecture and art in Europe; architecture and colonialism in Latin America, the Caribbean, Asia, and Africa.
Biography
Gauvin Alexander Bailey has just completed a book entitled Architecture and Slavery in the French Indian Ocean: Madagascar and the Mascarenes, 1643-1848. He has published ten books including The Architecture of Empire: France in the Indian Ocean and Southeast Asia, 1664-1954 (2022), Architecture & Urbanism in the French Atlantic Empire: State, Church and Identity, 1604-1830 (2018), The Palace of Sans-Souci in Milot, Haiti (2017), The Spiritual Rococo (2014), The Andean Hybrid Baroque (2010), Art of Colonial Latin America (2005), and Between Renaissance and Baroque (2003). He has also co-authored or co-edited seven other books and written more than 90 articles and book chapters. He has curated and served as consultant on many museum exhibitions, including at the Victoria & Albert Museum, the Smithsonian Institution, the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, and the Philadelphia Museum. Bailey has held fellowships with the John Simon Guggenheim Foundation and the Harvard University Center for Italian Renaissance Studies at Villa I Tatti and has received funding from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada, the National Endowment for the Humanities (USA), the Arts and Humanities Research Council (UK), and the British Academy. He previously taught at King’s College at the University of Aberdeen, Boston College, and Clark University, and has held guest professorships at the Zentralinstitut für Kunstgeschichte in Munich (the 2017 Panofsky Professor), Georgetown University, Boston University, and the Universidad de los Andes in Bogotá. He maintains an active international lecture schedule and has made over 100 presentations at academic institutions and museums on six continents. Bailey created and regularly updates a research website, the Colonial Architecture Project, which includes a searchable photographic database of colonial architecture around the world. He writes regular book and exhibition reviews for The Burlington Magazine.
Courses Taught
- ARTH253 Baroque Art
- ARTH370 Architecture of the Baroque Period
- ARTH451 Caravaggio & Artemisia
- ARTH272 Latin American Art
- ARTH372 Art of Colonial Latin America
- ARTH472 Art & Global Encounter
- ARTH854 Studies in Baroque and Rococo
Selected Books
Recent Books
The Architecture of Empire: France in the Indian Ocean and Southeast Asia, 1664-1962. McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2022.
Architecture and Urbanism in the French Atlantic Empire: State, Church, and Society, 1604-1830. McGill-Queen's University Press, 2018.
The Palace of Sans-Souci in Milot, Haiti (ca. 1806-13): the Untold Story of the Potsdam of the Rainforest. Zentralinstitut für Kunstgeschichte and Deutscher Kunstverlag, 2017.
The Spiritual Rococo: Décor and Divinity from the Salons of Paris to the Missions of Patagonia. Ashgate, 2014.
Baroque & Rococo. Phaidon Press, 2012. Published in Chinese as: 巴洛克与洛可可. Beijing: Fine Arts & Photography Publishing House, 2020.
The Andean Hybrid Baroque: Convergent Cultures in the Churches of Colonial Peru. University of Notre Dame Press, 2010. Published in Spanish as El barroco andino híbrido: culturas convergentes en las iglesias del Sur Andino. Arequipa, Ediciones El Lector, 2018.
Art of Colonial Latin America. Phaidon Press, 2005. Published in Chinese as: 殖民地时期的拉丁美洲艺术. Changsha: Hunan Fine Arts Publishing House, 2020.
Between Renaissance and Baroque: Jesuit Art in Rome, 1565-1610, University of Toronto Press, 2003.
Art on the Jesuit Missions in Asia and Latin America, 1542-1773. University of Toronto Press, 1999.
The Jesuits & the Grand Mogul: Renaissance Art at the Imperial Court of India (1580-1630), Smithsonian Institution, 1998.
