Robert Nelson studies and teaches medieval art, mainly in the Eastern Mediterranean, and the history and methods of art history. He was the co-curator of Holy Image, Hallowed Ground: Icons from Sinai at the J. Paul Getty Museum in 2006-2007. His book, Hagia Sophia, 1850-1950, 2004, asks how the cathedral of Constantinople, once ignored or despised, came to be regarded as one of the great monuments of world architecture. Current projects involve art and the ideology of war, the social lives of illuminated Greek manuscripts in Byzantium and their reception in Renaissance Italy, the artistic perception of light in the Middle Ages, and the collecting of Byzantine art in twentieth-century Europe and America.