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Darius Spieth Awarded LSU Distinguished Research Master; Named Sternberg Professor

Darius Spieth

Image Credit: Jean-Claude Figenwald

Art history professor Darius Spieth has been selected to receive the 2025 LSU Distinguished Research Master Award in the area of Arts, Humanities, Social & Behavioral Sciences. This award recognizes excellence and outstanding achievement in research and creative activity by LSU faculty. He is the first College of Art & Design faculty member to receive the prestigious honor.

Spieth has been named the Ogden Honors College 2024–25 Sternberg Professor by the Roger Hadfield Ogden Honors College. Established by Lea Sternberg in 1996, the Erich and Lea Sternberg Honors Professorship is the highest award conferred to faculty by the Ogden Honors College.

A specialist in modernism, Dr. Spieth focuses his scholarship on the interrelationships between art, intellectual history, and economics. He has published over 50 publications including books, book chapters, articles, prefaces, postfaces, exhibition catalogue entries, and other forms of writing. Every semester, he teaches upwards of 2,000 students, mostly in introductory art history classes. He is the LSU School of Art’s art history area coordinator and is a three-time winner of LSU Reveille/The Mag’s “Best Professor on LSU Campus,” based on a popular vote by students.

Spieth’s major publications include detailed analyses of the market for Netherlandish art during the French Revolution, and the rituals of pseudo-Egyptian secret societies in France during the reign of Napoleon and his aftermath. He is set to unveil “a new, trailblazing study, spanning classical antiquity to the present day, of the synergies between art, art history, money, and rankings.”

“This book project will do nothing less than decipher the macroeconomic and cultural DNA of art markets past and present. I will look at the history of assessing value and beauty by numbers across time. It also will be the first to look at the relationship between macroeconomic shocks and art markets,” Spieth said. “As you know, economic shocks affect all aspects of the economy.”

The LSU Distinguished Research Master awards ceremony will be held on Tuesday, April 15, from 5:30-7:30 p.m. in the School of Mass Communication Holliday Forum. 

Spieth is also the San Diego Alumni Association Chapter Alumni Professor.