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Notes from the Chair

It is a happy circumstance that our regular annual meeting at the College Art Association takes place in February -- unlike any other academic period, a report on the last twelve months really does conform to a single calendar year. So what happened in 2002? In short, a lot. Our searches for faculty at the Philadelphia CAA in 2002 were highly successful, and we were able to hire a new faculty member in American Art, Wendy Bellion. Wendy’s credentials and her experience dovetail beautifully with the needs and desires of the Department, and these facts were especially clear on her campus visit last Spring. Her lecture on Raphaelle Peale was delightfully presented, and her meetings with groups of undergraduate and graduate students left our folks hoping very much that she could join us. With the enthusiastic participation of the Deans at the Faculty of Arts and Sciences, Holly Smith and Barry Qualls, we all achieved our goals, despite the rapidly deteriorating economy, a University-wide job freeze, and the cancellation of our hopes also to hire an 18th - 19th-century Europeanist.

From the questions I often receive, both at home and on the road, it is clear that there are many concerns about the effect on the Department of the economy and well publicized University cutbacks. The only true
answer is that while the picture is not pretty, we have been able to hold our own and even to flourish in these unlikely circumstances. Wendy Bellion was one of just six junior faculty members hired last year at Rutgers in all thirty units of FAS -- usually there are 20-35 new hires replacing retirements or resignations. Also over the last year, we saw the long-promised renovation of our primary teaching room, Voorhees 104, which is now a high- and low-tech room, with all the devices needed to accommodate digital imagery and video.

The permanent replacement of our graduate secretary, after the retirement of Doris Gynn, has been assured. The job posting solicited the resumes of many talented candidates and we are pleased to have our offer of the position accepted by Geralyn Colvil. Indeed, despite the cutbacks and other dire circumstances, we have even had the position upgraded. During this time, not a single dollar has been cut from the graduate fellowships, stipends, or the program -- indeed, the Graduate School has increased both the total allotment of graduate scholarship money and raised the award of each fellow-ship to remain competitive with our rivals.

Success in all endeavors is not only due to the support of FAS, but also the success of the faculty, students, and alumni in achieving professional goals that are worthy of a very distinguished program. In 2001, Matthew Baigell won a Distinguished Teaching Award from the Graduate School, one of just two such awards across the departments of FAS. This past year, defying all odds (but not our expectations!), Sarah McHam won the same prize. In 2001, Alison Poe won the Graduate School’s student dissertation award; in 2002 Aileen Wang came away with the prize. As stipulated by the award, Aileen is currently teaching an undergraduate seminar on Michelangelo and artistic identity, a topic related to her dissertation. Midori Yoshimoto won the Graduate School award for distinction in research in 2001; this past year Torie Reed won the honor. Brian Clancy won a University and Bevier Dissertation Fellowship. For a small department in a large university, these are major accomplishments in view of the competition from the combined departments in the humanities, sciences, and social sciences. Those achievements and others that many of you listed with us in this Newsletter are equal matters of pride to the program, and we boast about you all the time.

Award-winners and presenters: (l-r): Holly Smith, Executive Dean, FAS and Graduate School; Professor Sarah Blake McHam; Harvey Waterman, Associate Dean of Academic Affairs; Aileen Wang; and Torie Reed.

You might imagine that we could rest on our laurels in these circumstances, but the truth is that the vitality of Art History at Rutgers depends on teaching and curriculum in the first instance. This is why, in addition to the well-rounded vision of world art we offer each term, we have also tried to promote different kinds of “opportunity” courses that give students a special chance to explore an emerging field or one not represented by regular faculty. Examples of such courses in Spring 2002 included “Art and Commerce: Corporate Support of the Arts in America 1900-2000,” given by Michael Bzdak, who heads the office of corporate giving at Johnson & Johnson and is also the president of the New Jersey Council for the Humanities; an architecture course, “New York/Los Angeles - Urbanism and Architecture in the 20th Century,” by Meredith Bzdak, an architectural historian and preservationist at Ford, Farewell, Mills and Gatsch; and Alison Poe’s seminar, “The Ancient Roman Art of Death.” In the Fall of the current academic year, Jennifer Tonkovich, Assistant Curator of Drawings at the J. Pierpont Morgan Library, gave a semester-long seminar at the Library in New York on “Old Master Drawings - Connoisseurship and Conservation” in the presence of the drawings themselves; and Mark Hewitt, architect, architectural historian, and preservationist, offered a course entitled “Theories and Practice of Historic Preservation.”

Students in Jennifer Tonkovich's (PhD '02) seminar on "Old Master Drawings - Connoisseurship and Conservation" at the J.Pierpont Morgan Library

An attentive reader may have picked up the theme of preservation in the paragraph above, and that is no coincidence. For more than a year we have worked with members of the Department and the larger faculty of the University to pull together a program in Historic Preservation, largely based on existing faculty interests and regularly offered courses. The response to this initiative by Deans Smith and Qualls has been overwhelmingly positive, and it is likely that we will see a Certificate Program in Historic Preservation for both undergraduate and graduate students in place for the coming academic year. The program, complementing our Curatorial Studies certificate, will be based in Art History and will require four courses and an internship. The courses available will be in Art History, but also in Urban Planning/Urban Policy (the Bloustein School), Geography, Anthropology, History, Landscape Architecture, and other departments. Because of the particular distinction of architectural history in our Department and planning/policy specialties in the Bloustein School, we seem to have the corner on a very exciting and popular field among colleges and universities that offer similar certificates. In the current semester, Spring 2003, we are offering a course on “New Jersey Architecture” by Meredith Bzdak and a course on “Conservation of Building Materials and Systems” by a noted preservation professional, William Foulks. The promise of additional support from the Mitnick Jacobs Fund makes it certain that we will have an ongoing certificate with visitors whose professionalism and visibility will serve the students well. Thank you Barbara and Howard!

In other news from the graduate program, we were pleased to welcome Beatrice Rehl, Fine Arts Editor of Cambridge University Press who led a publishing workshop on campus last Spring, which was jointly sponsored by the Classics Department. In early November, Dr. Bellion and Dr. Puglisi led a field trip to the National Gallery in Washington, DC to view the exhibition Illusions and Deceptions: Five Centuries of Trompe l'Oeil in Europe and America, to whose catalogue Dr. Bellion had contributed. The students also had the opportunity to meet Faya Causey, Director of Academic Programs at the National Gallery, who discussed CASVA programs for graduate students. Also, two guest lecturers joined us this past year: Nicholas Adams, Mary Conver Mellon Professor at Vassar College, who spoke on modernism in Swedish architecture, and Yurii Bobrov from the Academy of Fine Arts, St. Petersburg, Russia, who presented a talk on Russian icons. We are looking forward to a full schedule of lectures in the upcoming year.

In matters of technology the Department of Art History at Rutgers has more than held its own. Thanks to a generous gift from Sensors Inc. arranged through Carla Yanni, we have set up the Sensors Lab for the use of graduate students, who are eagerly utilizing the opportunity to make digital presentations in seminars and lecture courses. In addition to computers, printers, and scanners, the Sensors gift enabled us to buy a digital camera and projector for these purposes. Sensors Inc.: we are grateful!

Other resources have been coming through University funds. Thanks in large measure to the initiative of Don Beetham, the Department has received significant funds from the New Brunswick Advisory Committee for Instructional Computing over the last two years. In the first installment, realized only in 2002, we received enough funds to purchase six computers for the Art Library, to be used by our students for consulting departmental Web pages and internet resources. The second installment, now being put into service, includes a new server that can adequately handle our Web images, as well as two laptops for teaching and a desktop computer to round out the equipment in Voorhees 104.

While all of the above was being put into place, Don Beetham was also working closely with the University Libraries to realize the potential of our newest large purchase, the Luna Insight software that handles huge image-bases from our server and the internet suppliers. Don “discovered” Luna for us, and the fact the Yale University and the New York Public Library were already subscribers helped us to sell it to our University. The software is amazingly flexible -- it can project multiple images simultaneously and zoom in on details with pinpoint accuracy. After slightly less than a year of hands-on preparation, we are ready to teach with Luna and the honors are being done by our trusted Visiting Professor, Elena Quevedo-Chigas. Her students have been treated to a comparison of in-class lecture presentations with Luna and conventional slides, and the Luna wins each time for precision, clarity, and brilliance of color (yes, digital images with brilliance of color!). Our thanks to Don and Elena for making this happen!

Professor Elena Quevedo-Chigas

In May at our (now famous) annual luncheons for graduating seniors and MA and PhD students, we had a last chance to socialize with those who are moving out from the wings of the Department and on to more challenges in the professional world. It is generally a happy and celebratory moment, but for those of us left on campus (I mean the faculty), it is also a moment for reflection on our direction and accomplishments. This year was special in that regard, and the moments for reflection were more widely shared than ever before, for in the wake of the 9/11 tragedy that struck all of us, the Department lost Patrick Quigley, a 1982 graduate of the program. Pat was a dedicated student who worked his way through college before taking a position in business with PriceWaterhouseCoopers, where he was a highly valued employee, and one who never forgot the advantages of the critical thinking he learned as a Rutgers undergraduate in our field. Through the generosity of his wife Patti and his family, and with the help of PriceWaterhouseCoopers, a memorial endowment fund was established to provide prizes each year to the most outstanding undergraduate majors, who are also working their way through school, as Pat did. I have to tell you that the presentation of this endowment to us was the most emotional experience I have had in my 27 years in the Department. This Spring at our graduation luncheon, we look forward to making the first two awards to outstanding Juniors in Art History, and we find some solace in the tragedy of the previous year. To Patti and the entire Quigley family go our heartfelt thanks and our continuing thoughts of consolation.

It would be nice to end on a note of optimism, and I am indeed excited about our future prospects, both immediate and long-range. On the other hand, I am aware that the Department and the University are facing unprecedented challenges. Last year at this time, we were forced to cut our budget by 10 percent for all but teaching activities. This request was met by tapping some standing sources, some rainy-day funds, and some faculty research and travel money. Again this Spring we will surely be asked to do the same thing, and we will be prepared to do so. In this process, however, some small but important activities are lost. The graduate students have not felt as free as previously to organize outside lecturers that benefit all aspects of the program. We have also cut back on refreshments and snacks at meetings and events for undergraduates. In short, we have shown that we can sympathize with the plight of the University and the State of New Jersey, until the economy rebounds. In the meantime, we depend on your support in countless ways. It is extremely important that you continue to feed us that streaming tape of good news of your accomplishments and attainments so that, in turn, we can give a fulsome account of the Department’s success. It is crucial for you to keep us up to date on your whereabouts, your publications, your promotions, your research, your families, and your lives. From these facets of our relationship, everyone at Rutgers draws strength, encouragement, and dedication. The continuing sense of loyalty you have shown toward your work and the Department is the chief reason for our success. It is also and without question the most reassuring feature of our program as we look forward to another year of success and fulfillment.

                                          Tod Marder

 

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

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