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Notes from the Chair General News The events of last Spring 2001 continued after our happy CAA reunion in Chicago. For Black History Month, we organized the "Mississippi Project" which was a presentation of the musical background of the Obie Award- winning "Ain't Nothing But the Blues". Our star was Mississippi Charles Bevel and he held forth to an audience of 75 in the Art Library, where we had visitors from all of the New Brunswick campuses sitting in a half- circle and singin' along with the master. It's the first of a number of collaborative events we hope to have with the Art Library under the new direction of Joe Consoli. Joe has been a fresh presence in every way at the Library and we welcome him warmly to the activities of the Department. With his newly appointed assistant Sara Harrington, they have instituted a new and effective outreach at the Library, to which all have responded in a positive way. The Spring term concluded with the traditional Graduate Party, which we staged in a slightly different manner. Rather than the sandwiches in the basement of Voorhees, we did a hot lunch at the Rutgers Club for all our newly minted BA, MA, and PhD students. The huge room was full and the tributes to the retiring Professors Baigell, Eidelberg, and McLachlan were beautifully delivered by their former students Barbara Mitnick, Barbara Anderman, and Michael Bzdak. It was a fitting close to the academic year. Our academic year of activities opened on September 20, with a reception for undergraduate majors, who were welcomed by the Department Chair, Tod Marder, and the Undergraduate Advisor, Sarah Brett-Smith. This was immediately followed by a seminar on the use of PowerPoint for class presentation of digital images, conducted by Carla Yanni, in hopes of increasing the use of digital imagery among our students. Dr. Yanni has been especially helpful in leading groups and individuals through the paces of preparing digital images to incorporate into class presentations. University grants for which she has applied have enabled students to use our digital cameras and projectors to complete their projects. We hope that it will become a regular feature of the Senior Seminar to have students composing their materials in this way. Despite the apparently bleak economic outlook for New Jersey and the University, we fully intend to continue this initiative. Already Dr. Yanni has been instrumental in bringing us two very significant external grants to support the expansion of this program, so that our ability to make the necessary equipment available to all art history majors and graduate students will soon be very impressive. Thank you, Carla Yanni and Sensors Inc.! On October 24 Don Beetham held an Open House at the Visual Resources Collection and provided us with a seminar on the use of Adobe PhotoShop and other digital imaging tools. This is the place to mention how important Don Beetham has been for the development of digitization in the Department and the whole University. Through his research, the Vice-President of Academic Affairs, Joseph Seneca, was convinced to award the University the purchase of the Luna Insight image software, which will eventually be administered by the Libraries and provide all campuses with their visual resources. It is a tribute to the whole VRC operation (run on a proverbial shoe-string) that graduate students from SCILS will occasionally check in at our office for training in these materials. One day we hope that the VRC can be adequately staffed and funded to support its three entirely diverse operations: the slide room, digital imaging, and web site and newsletter work. (Though the funding has hardly changed in 25 years, the latter two tasks are entirely new.) Our visiting lecture series in the Fall term included a talk by Al Acres of Princeton University, who spoke on "Porous Subject Matter and Christ's Haunted Infancy" in the Art Library on November 15. His presentation on Netherlandish art complements the course presently being offered in the Department by Dr. Sue Jones, who comes to us from the Courtauld Institute by way of the Chicago Art Institute, where she was co-authoring a catalogue of the Chicago collection. We are extremely fortunate to have such a gifted expert in our midst at exactly the moment when we find ourselves "short-handed North of the Alps." Her expertise lies in the works of and around the Van Eycks, so a warm welcome to Sue Jones, and a hearty thanks for your important contributions to our programs. Another interesting initiative took place on November 5, when the Department Chair organized the loan of a camera capable of infrared reflectography. This technology allows us to "photograph" a painting and look through the surface to see the artist's early underdrawing that guided the original arrangement of shapes and colors. Taking advantage of the Zimmerli Museum's interest in this project, we brought the camera to the collection and found some extremely interesting and unexpected things under some works. In the case of an Early Netherlandish Painting the entire composition, with notable variations, was discovered under the surface. In another case, an eighteenth- century American painting revealed the same sort of unexpected information. Perhaps the most exciting revelation appeared under a late nineteenth-century French portrait, where the underdrawing looked years ahead of its time. The equipment was lent by Sensors, Inc. and was demonstrated with the help of Carla Yanni, Sue Jones, Tod Marder, as well as Dennis Cate, Jeff Wechsler, and Greg Perry from the staff of the Zimmerli Museum. In the near future we hope to write up our finds with the helping eyes, minds, and research of undergraduate majors.
The Spring term has begun in busy fashion. Jack Spector gave a
lecture on Frank Gehry at the Mason Gross School of the Arts on
February 6 that was fascinating and well received. On February 13
Nicholas Adams, Vassar College, lectured on the architecture of
Gunnar Asplund to the pleasure of all who attended.
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