Gabriella Wellons

Gabriella Wellons’ research examines the visual and material cultures of Pre-Hispanic Latin America with a particular interest in polychrome mural painting and relief sculpture of ancient Peru. Her dissertation is titled “Sculpting Earthen Architecture: Cupisnique Murals and Monumental Relief in Deep Andean History.” Her early fieldwork examined Moche graffiti imagery incised into mural paintings at the Huacas de Moche archaeological complex. More recently, she participated in the 2022 season archaeological field project Paisajes Arqueológicos de Pañamarca permitted through the Ministry of Culture of Peru. 

Wellons received her BA in the History of Art from UC Berkeley (2018) and held internships at the Princeton University Art Museum (2018) and the Metropolitan Museum of Art (2019). Her interests in Andean art history are grounded in a motivation to explore how architecture and pictorial conventions serve as important visual histories, especially where there are few contemporaneous written records available. 

Project: Mapping Earthen Architecture of Ancient Peru: Early Andean Mural Painting and Monumental Sculpture