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General News

 The Art Library is the fortunate recipient of a bequest of more than $400,000 from the estate of Beatrice MacCarter, a former employee of the university!  The gift is unrestricted and can be used all at once or over the years.  A committee has been appointed to examine the most valuable ways in which to spend the money and enhance the library.  Suggestions solicited from faculty and students have focused on more computer stations with attached printers, scanners, color xerox machines, electronic resources such as bibliographic databases, and fundamental books and journals that the library has been unable to acquire in the past.  If you have any ideas about what should be purchased, please send them to Sarah Blake McHam, Chair, Art History Department. 

 A reunion breakfast will be held in the Verdugo Room of the Omni Hotel from 7:30-9.  We hope to see all you west-coasters there. 

 An international conference, organized by Prof. Archer St. Clair Harvey, with the help of Sharon Lorenzo, a current graduate student and lawyer, and the Global Studies Program, headed by alum Dean Seth Gopin, was held from October 30-November 1 in Voorhees Hall.  More than 300 museum professionals, arts administrators, legal experts, dealers, professors, and students from all over the world registered for the conference. 
 

At the conference: Archer St. Clair Harvey with Malcolm Bell, Professor of Archaeology,  University of Virginia

Sessions focused on areas of the world in which the cultural heritage was most endangered, such as Iraq, Italy, China, Mali, and Bosnia, alternated with panels in which museum professionals, archaeologists, dealers, and law enforcement officials spoke on how best to eliminate illegal traffic in artifacts.  Representing the regions were speakers such as Muhammed Filipovic, Bosnian ambassador to the UK and a member of the Bosnian Academy of Arts and Sciences, Tereba Togola of the Ministry of Art and Culture of Mali, Samuel Sidible, Director of Mali's National Museum,  Zou Heng, one of China's foremost archaeologists and Chair of the Chinese Society of Archaeology, and Mario Bondioli-Osio of the Italian Ministry of Culture.

The role of museums, both in fostering and preventing the international traffic in objects, was articulated by speakers such as Drs. Wolf-Dieter Heilmeyer of the National Museums, Berlin; Marion True of the Getty Museum, Malibu; Thomas Killion and Jenny Fong-Suk So of the Smithsonian Museums, Washington, D.C.  Representatives of UNESCO, Canadian Heritage, the USIA, Scotland Yard and the FBI also delivered papers. 

 Prof. St. Clair Harvey's graduate seminar relating to the conference has been invited as a group to review Patrick O'Keefe's new book on ethics and the international trade in antiquities for the International Journal of Cultural Property.   Approximately 25 undergraduates and graduate students from the Art History Department participated in seminars related to the conference over the semesters of its preparation.  Many other students from the department worked as volunteers. 
Two members of the Art History faculty participated as speakers: Profs. Angela Falco Howard in the panel on China and Sarah Brett-Smith in that on Africa.  Architectural projects from the class of Prof. Carla Yanni decorated the conference site in Voorhees Hall.  Art History students working on the conference made many valuable contacts, for ex., one whose research focused on Latin America in Prof. St. Clair Harvey's seminar was invited by Prof. Steve Bourget to join his excavation in Peru. 
 Major funding for the conference was provided by the Getty Grant Program, the Samuel H. Kress Foundation, the Emily and John Harvey Foundation, and the New Jersey Council for the Humanities. 
 The conference was reported in local papers, in the Boston Globe, and filmed by PBS, which conducted more that fifteen hours of interviews with the speakers and panelists as phase one of their proposed documentary on the subject.  Phase two will be on site at areas around the world where the cultural patrimony is threatened. 

Art History faculty and students were all in attendance at Mary Torbinski's retirement party held in April at the Zimmerli Art Museum.  Many of you benefitted from Mary's special attention during the fifteen years she worked in the department, as we all did.  It was a bittersweet celebration but we appreciated that Mary had long wanted to devote full-time attention to her own family -- and wish her a long and happy retirement.

Mary flanked by party goers click picture to enlarge & for more pictures

Sadly, we learned at just about the same time that Grace Duffy, whom Mary Torbiniski replaced, died.  Many of you probably remember her with fondness. 
 

Mary Hoffman

The department is very fortunate to have hired Mary Hoffman away from the Dept. of Computer Science.  She is equally competent, warm, and hard-working so the department is operating with its usual efficiency and welcoming atmosphere.

 Last spring also marked the retirement of Beryl Smith, an alum and long-time librarian in the Art Library.  At the party held in her honor, and attended by all the grateful faculty and graduate students whose initiation into the world of bibliographic databases and other computerized wonders she had made so smooth, there was a equal sense of loss and happiness that Beryl will get to pursue the avocations she loves so much.  Again, we have been lucky.  Maya Gervits, formerly a curator at the Hermitage, St. Petersburg and after settling here, a librarian at the Marquand Art Library, Princeton University, was hired to assist Halina Rusak. 

 Thanks to the able efforts of Prof. Jack Spector, the founder;  Prof. James Smalls, long-time director; and Profs. Martin Eidelberg, Seth Gopin, Sarah Blake McHam, and Elizabeth McLachlan, who all taught in the program, the department's summer program in Paris has become a rousing success.  The program offers two three-week courses in English that expose undergraduates from a range of universities to a survey of the history of art and architecture of Paris and the Ile-de-France taught on site.  The department intends to use program profits to underwrite more scholarships for interested undergraduates and, if current high enrollments hold, to offer a fellowship to a graduate student who will help part-time with logistics. 

 The most recent issue of the RAR was recently guided through publication by its hard-working editors, Julia Alderson and Alexis Boylan.  It is full of interesting articles and an interview with Keith Christiansen, Curator of European Paintings, Metropolitan Museum of Art.  Its successor is already well underway.  Any of you not yet subscribers are missing an opportunity, which you can readily rectify by writing to the RAR, c/o the department, or consulting its information page elsewhere on this Web site. 

 

Department of Art History
Voorhees Hall
71 Hamilton Street
New Brunswick, NJ 08901
Tel: 732-932-7041
Fax: 732-932-1261

Catherine Puglisi, Chairperson

Erik Thunø , Undergraduate Director

Susan Sidlauskas, Graduate Program Director

Cathy Pizzi, Department Administrator

Geralyn Colvil, Student Coordinator

The Department Website is maintained by the Art History Webmaster.
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