Miguel Gaete

I'm a Chilean social Art historian with a PhD in History of Art from The University of York and a PhD in Philosophy from the Autonomous University of Madrid. My research specialisations are Romanticism and the period of explorations, with a particular interest in the synthesis between sciences, race, and colonialism in the visual depiction of South America. My academic interests also include decolonial theory and the aesthetic theory of the sublime and its impact on contemporary visual arts, urbanism and architecture.
My first monograph Cultural Exchanges and Colonial Legacies in Latin America: German Romanticism in Chile, 1800–1899 was published in December 2023 and received the prestigious Klaus Heyne Award. I have recently been awarded fellowships from Leverhulme ECF, Klassik Stiftung Weimar, Herzog August Bibliothek, and Gerda Henkel Stiftung, among others.
My second monograph, The Leader of the Time: Carl Alexander Simon, Romanticism, and Colonial Madness, is scheduled for publication in 2025 as part of Springer’s book series Neue Romantikforschung.

Romanticism, 19th-century visual culture, depictions of slavery, nature, sciences and race, Latin America, Orientalism, colonialism

2023

Klaus Heyne Award 2023 for Research in Romanticism Studies. Goethe-Universität Frankfurt. 

British Association for Victorian Studies (BAVS). Research Grant. Project: James McNeill Whistler and the British Colony of Valparaiso.

Fellowship Award for research at the Herzog August Bibliothek, Wolfenbüttel, Germany. Project: Behind the Ethnology Illustrator: A Critical Analysis of Johann Moritz Rugendas’ Malerische Reise in Brasilien.

2022

Gerda Henkel Stiftung. Two-year fully funded postdoctoral scholarship, Research project: Karl Alexander Simon: Romanticism, Arts, and Colonisation in Southern Chile (1848-1852).

Paul Mellon Centre for Studies in British Art, Research Support Grant. Project: British Artists in Valparaiso: A Survey of Artworks, Bibliographic Material and Research Resources in London, Surrey, Hull, and Glasgow.

Association for Art History, Research Support Grant. Project: James McNeill Whistler in Valparaiso. Research trip to the Whistler Archive, University of Glasgow.

Visiting Researcher, School of Modern Languages, Newcastle University.

2021 Klassik Stiftung Weimar Fellowship, Germany. Project: Karl Alexander Simon: An Iconographic and Technical Study of his Paintings in Weimar. 

Visiting Fellow at the research group Modell Romantik. University of Jena, Germany.

German History Society, Research Grant. Project: J.M.W Turner and Carl Blechen’s Pictorial Influence on J.M. Rugendas: Archival Research at the Tate Britain and the Metropolitan Museum of Art of New York.

Association for Art History, Research Grant. Project: Globus Zeitschrift: Racialist Perspectives and the View of South American People in Otto Grashof’s Illustrations. A research trip to the Deutsche Nationalbibliothek.

Romanticism, 19th-century visual culture, depictions of slavery, nature, sciences and race, Latin America, Orientalism, colonialism