Gabriella L. Johnson Named American Friends of Capodimonte Postdoctoral Curatorial Fellow
/American Friends of Capodimonte is pleased to announce the appointment of Gabriella L. Johnson as the fourth AFC Postdoctoral Curatorial Fellow. Her ten-month fellowship begins September 1, 2025. She will be mentored by Gretchen Hirschauer, AFC board member and former curator of Italian and Spanish Paintings at the National Gallery of Art.
“On behalf of the AFC Board I would like to thank AFC Program Director, James Anno, and AFC Secretary, Gretchen Hirschauer for conducting yet another academically rigorous search process,” AFC President Cristina Del Sesto said. “We welcome Gabriella and we are certain that her fascination with Naples and the uncommon field of aquatic nature art will bring a new focus to coral, shells and marine fossils in the collection of Museo e Real Bosco di Capodimonte, whether painted or real.”
“We are very pleased to have Gabriella Johnson join us as the next AFC Post-Doctoral Fellow. She will be a great addition to our research staff and we look forward to drawing on her in-depth knowledge of Neapolitan art and sea culture.”
Gabriella Johnson, a native of Atlantic City, New Jersey, specializes in the seventeenth-century art and material culture of southern Italy. Her dissertation, Galatea’s Realm: The Art of Coral, Shells, and Marine Fossils in Early Modern Sicily, Naples, and the Maltese Islands, studies how humans related to and understood aquatic nature through artmaking over the course of the seventeenth century. Johnson will receive her Ph.D. in Art History from the University of Delaware in June 2025. Professor Emeritus David M. Stone is her Ph.D. advisor.
Johnson’s research has been generously supported by fellowships at the American Academy in Rome (Samuel H. Kress Foundation/Marian and Andrew Heiskell Rome Prize Fellow, 2023-24), the Center for the Art and Architectural History of Port Cities - “La Capraia” in Naples (Research Resident, 2022-23), and the Delaware Public Humanities Institute (2021). She was also awarded a Samuel H. Kress Research Fellowship in Renaissance Art History by the Renaissance Society of America (2025) to support research on the Sicilian painter Agostino Scilla.
Johnson received an M.A. in Art History from the University of Delaware in 2017 and a B.A. in Art History and Italian Studies from Colby College in 2014. An undergraduate semester at Trinity College’s Rome Campus sealed her interest in seventeenth-century Italian art.
“I am excited to work with the rich and historic collections at Capodimonte,” Johnson says. “Naples was never on the periphery of artistic achievement, but very much an important and original chapter in the history of Italian art. The fellowship is a great opportunity to enrich the public’s understanding of southern Italian art, especially within Italian diaspora communities.”