Art Historian Questions Depictions of Masculinity in Art

Sam Nehila is a Providence-based art historian and artist. His love of art has led him to work in museums and art galleries for the last five years.

He earned his B.A. in art history at Rhode Island College in 2019, with a minor in printmaking, and then an M.A. in the history of art and architecture at the University of Massachusetts-Amherst in 2021.

Today, he is a museum educator for K-12 students at the RISD Museum, a tour guide for Gallery Night Providence, an independent curator and an artist who creates prints from stone lithographs in his Providence studio.

In both his studio and research practices, Nehila studies depictions of masculinity in art.

“My first introduction to thinking about masculinity in art was during my junior year at RIC,” says Nehila. “I wrote a paper about a painting by John Singer Sargent of his model Thomas E. McKeller. The painting was titled “Nude Study of Thomas E. McKeller. 

“There was no explanation for the painting. Usually the artist would create a sketch of the model and then reuse the sketch for something else. That didn’t happen here. I think the painting was Sargent’s celebration of McKeller’s body. It made me realize that there’s a lot of queer history in art and that masculinity is not as rigid as people think it is. Identity is fluid rather than rigid.”

As a queer trans man, Nehila confronts the lack of transgender representation in the canon of art history. He criticizes art historians for failing to include a queer perspective in their analyses of art and artists. 

“Michelangelo was queer,” Nehila says. In a series of passionate poems, he expressed his love and desire for a young nobleman named Tommaso Dei Cavalieri.

“And many of Michelangelo’s images are homoerotic, showing his love of men. So, where are the queer art interpretations?” Nehila asks. He’s all for an uncensored, unedited art history.

Last year Nehila was commissioned to create a body of drawings for the Providence Art and Letters Journal, produced by Providence College Galleries. The collection was titled “My Mom is a Body Builder and So Am I.” In this collection, he drew similarities between how a body builder transforms their body and how he, a trans man, has transformed his.

“I take testosterone while my mom takes vitamins, supplements and protein powders to transform her body,” he says. “I had surgery to make my body look a certain way, while my mom is in the gym for hours to make her body look a certain way.”

“These drawings are the beginnings of my exploration with my body as subject, while also thinking about the transness of my body and the experience of my gender transition,” he says in his artist statement. “By pairing them with the body of my professional bodybuilder mom and the ways her body transitions, it feels simultaneously more lighthearted as well as more personal.”

Why are we so obsessed with altering our bodies? 

“Perhaps it’s because it’s the thing we spend the most time with,” says Nehila.

Or perhaps it has to do with our human need to create. Perhaps we are all Michelangelos, chiseling away at our own image to create an idealized one.

Sara Picard, associate professor of art history, commends Nehila’s observations as an art historian. She says, “Sam layers diligent research and clear prose on top of complex connections across artworks and contexts. As both scholar and artmaker, he shows rich insight into understanding objects.”

“I love research,” says Nehila. “I love talking about the things I researched. I love sharing that information with people. The skills I gained in RIC’s art history program – research, writing, distilling information, picking out what is visually important in an artwork and sharing that information with others – are skills that are useful anywhere. I’m fortunate in that I get to focus it all on art.”

He also enjoys spreading his skills around, noting, “I like teaching in an art museum. I like curating a show every once in a while. I like working with different arts organizations. I like wearing many hats. I might complain about being too busy, but I do love it.”

For information on a degree in art history, visit the Department of Art.