Jens Baumgarten is Professor for Art History at the Federal University of São Paulo (UNIFESP).
He studied Art History and History in Hamburg and Florence. After post-doctorate fellowships in Dresden, Germany, Mexico City, and Campinas, Brazil, he established one of the first autonomous departments of Art History in Brazil. In 2010 he was visiting scholar at the Getty Research Institute, in 2013 at the Institut National de l’Histoire de l’Art, and at the Kunsthistorisches Institut in Florence (2016/2017). 2009-2016 he was collaborator of the project “Text, Bild, Performanz: Wandel und Ambivalenz kultureller Ordnungen in kolonialen Kontaktzonen (Provincia de Charcas und Philippinen, 17.- 18. Jahrhundert)”, Historisches Seminar, Universität Hamburg, funded by the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG). Other research collaborations were executed with the University of Toronto, and the University of Zurich. Since 2019 he participates in a project “Epistemelogias transculturales” at the University of Chile. From 2011-2016 he was the coordinator of the Project “New Art Histories: Relating Ideas, Objects, and Institutions in the Latin American World” and “Global Baroque” in collaboration with the University Zürich, funded by the Getty Foundation, and since 2022 he is coordinator of the project “Art and Power – decolonizing Art History” in collaboration with the Museu de Arte Contemporâneo, Universidade de São Paulo (MAC-USP), Universidade do Estado do Rio de Janeiro (Uerj) and the Bibliotheca Hertziana in Rome, also funded by the Getty Foundation. He is a member of the Brazilian Committee of Art History (CBHA). He specializes in early modern art history of Latin America and Europe, Neobaroque as well as in historiography of art, visual culture, theoretical and methodological contexts, and most recently on questions of ecology and art. Author of “Image, confession, and power” (in German, 2004), several articles, and is preparing a book on “Visual systems in Colonial Brazil” and another about comparisons between Brazilian and Filipino art history.
