Joshua Fitzgerald

Dr. Joshua Fitzgerald is an art historian whose research examines how artistic and material practices respond to social and cultural crisis in Meso-America, with particular attention to Indigenous–Christian transformations in 16th- and 17th-century New Spain. His interdisciplinary work draws on archaeology, art history, anthropology, and intellectual history to study how visual and architectural forms evolve under conditions of conquest, epidemic, and spiritual change.

At the Jeffrey Rubinoff Sculpture Park, Dr. Fitzgerald contributes to the Forum’s interdisciplinary inquiry into art as a source of knowledge, engaging Rubinoff’s ideas on the historical depth of artistic form, the endurance of cultural memory, and the shaping of human consciousness. His work brings a comparative, global perspective on how societies use art to interpret upheaval, continuity, and embodied experience.

Research Interests

• Meso-American material culture, with emphasis on Aztec/Mexica traditions
• Art and cultural recovery during epidemic crises, including cocoliztli
• Indigenous–Christian hybridity in colonial art and architecture
• Sculpture, architecture, and painted manuscripts as expressions of communal identity
• Gender, embodiment, and ritual practice
• Post-conquest transformations of cosmology and spatial form

Current Book Project
Art in the Time of Cocoliztli: The Indigenous-Christian (Re)Shaping of Recovery in Illness-Ridden New Spain, 1520–1670

This forthcoming monograph explores how communities in New Spain responded to recurring epidemic devastation through sculpture, carving, mural painting, and church-building practices. It examines artistic strategies of resilience, mourning, renewal, and cultural negotiation under colonial rule.

Selected Projects
Material Culture and Crisis in Colonial Meso-America
A multidisciplinary investigation into how Indigenous artisans reimagined healing, belief, and social order during the cocoliztli epidemics, integrating archival research, architectural survey, and visual analysis.

Influence of Meso-American Sculpture on Modernism
A study of the reception of Meso-American forms in 20th-century Western art, including the influence of pre-Columbian stonework on figures such as Henry Moore.

Embodiment, Gender, and Ritual Architecture
Research into how women and femininity shaped sacred space, devotional sculpture, and everyday artistic practice amid cultural transformation.

Publications
Representative publications include:

• “Cocoliztli and the Aesthetics of Recovery in New Spain”
• “Reframing the Conquest: Indigenous–Christian Negotiations in Colonial Architecture”
• “Hybridity and Stone: Material Identity in Post-Classic Meso-America”
• Contributions to edited volumes on Indigenous material culture, colonial art, and theories of embodiment
• Conference papers for the College Art Association, Society for American Archaeology, and Cambridge Latin American Research in Art and Visual Culture