Noah Michaud

Noah Michaud studies primarily the visual and material exchanges between northern Italy, especially the Republic of Venice, and sub-Saharan Africa in the early modern era. His additional research interests include: representations of Africa(ns) and the slave trades in early modern Europe, sub-Saharan African perceptions of Mediterranean Europe(ans), the historiography of African art, architecture, and nature; collecting, colonialism, and repatriation; and Venetian print culture. His professional aspirations include scholar, public intellectual, and art lawyer with expertise in African antiquities restitution, cultural heritage preservation, and international partnerships.

 

Noah received his B.A. summa cum laude from Duke University in 2021, majoring with distinction in Art History with a Concentration in Museum Theory and Practice.  He also helped curate two exhibitions there in 2019 and 2022. This past spring, he received his M.A. in art history from the University of Florida, where he specialized in African and global early modern art and co-instructed a course on art crime. In the summer of 2022, Noah interned at the Smithsonian’s National Museum of African Art in the curatorial department. Currently, Noah is working on a series of projects stemming from his master’s thesis: an art history of the Navigazioni of Alvise Ca’ da Mosto, the travelogue of a Venetian explorer who, on behalf of the Portuguese, traveled to and traded in the Senegambia in the mid-fifteenth century.