Vol. 5, n. 1 - February 2003
Faculty News
Graduate News
Undergraduate News
Alumni News
Zimmerli Art Museum
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.
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.
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.
Students in Jennifer Tonkovich's (PhD '02) seminar on "Old Master Drawings - Connoisseurship and Conservation" at the J.Pierpont Morgan Library
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.”
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.
Professor Elena Quevedo-Chigas
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!
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
Faculty News
Matthew Baigell (retired ’01) and his wife Renee were featured in the Rutgers Focus (October 5, 2001) for their scholarly contributions to the Zimmerli Art Museum and last year’s release of Peeling Potatoes, Painting Pictures: Women’s Art in Post-Soviet Russia, Estonia, and Latvia (Rutgers Univ. Press), a book on post-Soviet women artists. Dr. Baigell’s 2001 publication Artist and Identity in Twentieth Century American Art (Cambridge) was praised in the Art Bulletin for its contribution to defining and shaping the field of American art. His publication of books and articles in 2002 include: Jewish Artists in New York: The Holocaust Years (Rutgers Univ. Press); Yefim Ladyzhenski (catalogue: Zimmerli Art Museum); Residue of Silence: Francisca de Beurges Rosenthal, Joyce Lyon, and Howard Oransky, traveling exhibition (catalogue: Univ. of Northern Iowa Gallery of Art, Cedar Falls); and “Hyman Bloom’s Jewish Paintings,” in Color & Ecstasy: The Art of Hyman Bloom (National Academy of Design, New York). In November 2002, in a response to “The Last Expression (Art and Auschwitz),” Dr. Baigell participated in the symposium at the Bloch Museum, Northwestern University.
Wendy Bellion was a contributing author to the exhibition catalogue, Deceptions and Illusions: Five Centuries of Trompe l'Oeil in Europe and America, at the National Gallery of Art, Washington, DC, (October 13, 2002-March 2, 2003), where she was also a Research Associate for the Department of American and British Painting. Carl Hartman (Associate Press) interviewed Dr. Bellion about the exhibition for an article that ran in newspapers nationwide. Her recent publications include: “Pleasing Deceptions: The Material Culture of Optical Illusion,” Common-place: The Interactive Journal of Early American Life 3, an on-line journal at www.common-place.org (October 2002); “Illusion and Allusion: Charles Willson Peale's Staircase Group at the Columbianum Exhibition,” American Art (Summer 2003, forthcoming); and a review of Alexander Nemerov’s book, “The Body of Raphaelle Peale,” CAA Reviews online (forthcoming). In November 2002, Dr. Bellion delivered a paper, “Hooking the Eye: Meat and Markets in William Birch's Views of Philadelphia,” at the American Studies Association annual conference, Houston. In April 2003, she will chair a panel on “New Approaches to Visual Culture,” at the Society of Early Americanists, Third Biennial Conference, in Providence.
Martin Eidelberg’s (retired ’01) recent and forthcoming publications include: Behind the Scenes of Tiffany Glassmaking: The Nash Notebooks, with Nancy A. McClelland (New York and London: St. Martin’s Press, 2001); “Watteau and Audran at the Hôtel de Nointel,” Apollo 155 (January 2002); “Watteau’s Rêve de l’artiste Unveiled,” Gazette des Beaux-Arts (October, 2002); The Ceramic Forms of Leza McVey (New York: Philmark Publishers, to appear March 2003); and, “More About Old Nollekens,” Apollo (to appear March 2003). Projects currently underway are: Les fêtes galantes de Watteau; rêve et realité – an exhibition and catalogue at the Musée des Beaux Arts in Valenciennes (Watteau’s hometown in France), to open in 2004; and Louis C. Tiffany, The Artful Enterprise -- an exhibition and catalogue, in collaboration with Janet Zapata, to open in 2005 at the Museum of Art and Design, New York; touring to the Toledo Museum of Art in Ohio, the Seattle Museum of Art, and Dallas Museum of Art.
Rona Goffen marked 2002 with the publication of Renaissance Rivals: Michelangelo, Leonardo, Raphael, Titian (Yale Univ. Press), named one of the best art history books of the year by two English papers, the London Times and the Evening Standard. Published this past fall, it is already going into a second printing. Dr. Goffen’s forthcoming articles include: “Raphael’s Designer Labels,” Artibus et Historiae, and “Leonardo vs. Michelangelo,” BBC History, both to appear in Spring 2003. She will also give the following presentations: “Adam and Eve, or Sex and Gender in the Beginning,” at University College of the University of London, February 2003; “Titian and His Rivals” and “Renaissance Rivals,” both presentations at the National Gallery, London, May 2003; “Adam and Eve in the Brancacci Chapel” at Villa I Tatti, Harvard University Center for Italian Renaissance Studies in Florence, Italy, June 2003; and “Seeing Things” in a plenary session of the Fiftieth-Anniversary meetings of the Renaissance Society of America in New York, February 2004. This spring, Professor Goffen will appear in a BBC/Discovery Channel series on Leonardo da Vinci, to be aired in April or May.
Angela F. Howard conducted a graduate seminar in collaboration with Professor Li Chongfeng of the Archaeology Department, Beijing University, in Xinjiang, the Autonomous Uighur Republic, during Summer 2002. The seminar studied, in situ, the caves of Kizil, Kumtura, Subashi, Simsim, Kizilgaha, Mazabaha, Tuhulakeaiken, Taitai’er. For the first time, foreign scholars and students were welcomed to reside for an extended period at Kizil, and permitted to undertake in-depth study of the grottoes that represent Buddhist art of the ancient Kingdom of Kucha, on the northern Silk Route. Topics addressed in this unprecedented seminar included: the chronology of the sites, the structure of the caves and their mutual relationship, changes of the natural surroundings affecting the distribution of the caves, and the doctrinal importance of the earliest phase of Indian Buddhism (Hinayana) in the decoration of the caves. This seminarwas funded by the Luce Foundation and administered by the Asian Cultural Council, New York. Additionally, Dr. Howard’s recent lectures include: “Early Buddhist Cave Temples of India and Kucha on the Northern Silk Route, Xinjiang,” Haverford Distinguished Visitor Program, Haverford, PA, November 2002; “Visions and Miracles Among the Monastic Communities of Kucha in Central Asia,” Museum of Fine Arts Houston, in conjunction with the exhibition “Afghanistan: A Timeless History," January 2003.
John Kenfield co-organized a major international conference entitled "Deliciae Fictiles III, Architectural Terracottas in Ancient Italy: New Discoveries and Interpretations," held at the American Academy of Rome, November 7-8, 2002, and sponsored by the American Academy, the University of Texas at Austin, and Rutgers University. Dr. Kenfield presented the paper “Dipoinos, Skyllis and an Artefix in Houston.” The conference attracted more than 100 attendees from all regions of Italy as well as Germany, Sweden, Holland, France, Canada, Greece, and the United States. Co-organizers included Ingrid Edlund-Berry (U. of Texas-Austin), Giovanna Greco (U. of Naples-Frederick II), and Ingrid Rowland (American Academy in Rome). A publication of essays will follow, to be edited by the organizers and published by the American Academy as a volume of the institution’s Memoires. In February, Dr. Kenfield will present the lecture “From Crete to Magna Graecia: an Early Archaic Artistic Nexus” at a conference entitled “One Island, Many Languages: Art and Architecture in Ancient Sicily,” held at Columbia University.
Tod Marder contributed the chapter, “Sources and Inventions in
Bernini’s Architecture,” to a collection of essays on seventeenth-century architecture in Rome published in Storia dell’ architettura italiana: il Seicento (ed. Aurora Scotti), one volume in an extensive series on architecture in Italy, published by Electa Editore. Dr. Marder also presented a paper entitled “Bernini in Word and Deed” at the international conference “Inchiostro Opaco: Da Leon Battista Alberti a Louis Kahn,” held in Rome, November 2002, and sponsored by the Istituto Italiano per gli Studi Filosofici and the Istituto Universitario di Architettura di Venezia. In February 2003, he gave the lecture “Bernini and the Landscape” to the Annual Meeting of the American Society of Landscape Architects, Atlantic City, NJ. In April 2003, Dr. Marder will travel to St. Petersburg to lecture on Bernini at the Academy of Fine Arts.
Joan Marter was awarded a Getty Research Grant for a residency in the summer of 2002 at the Getty Research Institute. The Andrew W. Mellon Grant from the Zimmerli Art Museum offered release time during the fall semester to examine American sculpture in preparation for an exhibition. Dr. Marter was appointed as Chair of the Museum Committee of the College Art Association in 2002, and recently she has been nominated for the Board of Directors of CAA. She will co-chair a session entitled “Re(de)fining Abstract Expressionism” at the annual meeting of the CAA in February 2003. In August 2002, Dr. Marter organized a panel of renowned feminist artists in connection with the exhibition Personal and Political, The Women’s Art Movement, 1969-1975 at Guild Hall Art Museum, East Hampton, NY. Participants included Marter as moderator, Miriam Schapiro, Joan Semmel, May Stevens, Harmony Hammond, and Carolee Schneeman. Dr. Marter was also a discussant at a session “Preparing Art Historians for Museum Work” at the annual meeting of the CAA in February 2002. In February she also spoke on women artists and narratives at the University of Scranton, and in September she was invited to give a presentation on contemporary sculpture at the Storm King Art Center, Mountainville, NY. Dr. Marter’s review of the exhibition and publication Amazons of the Avant-Garde appeared in Women’s Art Journal, Fall 2002/Winter2003. An essay on David Smith and Dorothy Dehner is forthcoming in an anthology of Abstract Expressionism, Yale Univ. Press.
Sarah Blake McHam was awarded the Distinguished Graduate School Award for Teaching Excellence in 2002 from Rutgers University. Dr. McHam was also the Rutgers Nominee for the Northeast Association of Graduate Schools Mentoring Award in 2003. Her forthcoming publications for 2003 include: “La Bottega dei Lombardo alla Cappella di Sant’Antonio e la teoria di Pomponio Guarico,” in La Bottega dei Lombardo. Architettura e scultura a Venezia tra Quattro e Cinquecento, ed. Howard Burns et al. (Venice, in press); “Padua, Bassano, and Treviso,” in Venice and the Veneto, ed. Peter Humfrey (Cambridge Univ. Press); and a review of Charles Dempsey’s Inventing the Renaissance Putto in Studies in Iconography (in press). Her publications for 2002 include: “Establishing the Space and Imagery of the State – II: The Interior Decoration of the Palazzo della Signoria,” in Re-Visioning the Renaissance City: Art, Patronage, and the Dynamics of Space, eds. Roger Crum and John T. Paoletti (Cambridge Univ. Press, in press); “La Scultura esterna di Santa Maria dei Mircoli,” in Santa Maria dei Miracoli, eds. Mario Piana and Wolfgang Wolters (Venice: Instituto Veneto di Scienze, Lettere, ed Arti); Review of Francesco Caglioti, Donatello e i Medici, CAA Reviews (December). Dr. McHam was the Chair and Organizer of “Artist’s Strategies for Elevating their Status,” at the Renaissance Society of America Meetings, Scottsdale, Arizona, March 2002.
Catherine Puglisi’s study of taste and collecting in Baroque Rome, “Paolo Veronese e la Roma dei Barberini,” co-authored with William Barcham, has
recently appeared in Saggi e Memorie di Storia dell’Arte 25 (2001). She also published a review of the exhibition “Orazio and Artemisia Gentileschi” in Apollo 46 (2002). She was the recipient of a Rutgers University Research Council Grant to begin research on a project on the image of the Dead Christ in the art of Paolo Veronese. As part of a new statewide initiative to promote Italian and Italian-American Heritage, Dr. Puglisi was appointed to head the University Committee on Italian Studies and serve on the Academic Advisory Committee to the NJ State Commission on Italian American Heritage.
Jane Sharp recently published the article “The Cherkashinís Museum
Metropolitan” in Valeryi and Natasha Cherkashin (St. Petersburg: State Russian Museum, 2002). Her soon-to-appear book, Russian Modernism East and West: Natalia Goncharova and the Moscow Avant-Garde, will be published by Cambridge Univ. Press. Dr. Sharp will edit and contribute to the Russian volume of the Zimmerli Journal, a new publication from Rutgers’ Museum. She curated a second exhibition on abstraction entitled “Identity and Resistance: Abstract Painting in the Norton and Nancy Dodge Collection of Nonconformist Art from the Soviet Union” (September 6-November 18, 2002, Zimmerli Art Museum). Currently, she is co-curating, with Alla Rosenfeld and Amy Bryzgel (a Rutgers graduate student and Dodge Fellow), the exhibition “Fantasy and Figuration: a Selection of Graphic Works from the Dodge Collection” (opening April 6, 2003). In March 2002, she presented the Edith W. Clowes lecture at Oberlin College, Department of Slavic Languages and Literatures, entitled “Revival or Invention? Modernism and Tradition in the Visual Arts of Central Asia” and “Bridging the Gap: Soviet Abstract Painting After the Thaw.” In January 2002, she gave the lecture “Modern Art Survey: Lecture on the Russian Avant-Garde” at Christies, New York. Dr. Sharp will chair the session, “Abstract Painting ‘Once Removed,’” at the College Art Association annual conference in February 2003. Additionally, she was invited to present the following lectures in spring 2003: “Orientalism and the Art of the Russian Avant-Garde,” at the Walters Art Gallery, Baltimore in April; “Natalia Goncharova Before the Ballets Russes,” at Harvard University, Busch-Reisinger Museum in May; and “Modes of Being: Late 20th-Century Abstract Painting in the USSR,” at Forschungstelle Osteuropa, University of Bremen and the Department of Art History, International University of Bremen, in May.
Penny Small presented the following papers: “When is a Picture an
Illustration? Scholars, Texts, and Vases” at “Visual Vocabularies,” a colloquium at the Center for the Ancient Mediterranean, Columbia University, October 2002; “Hats Off: The Entry of Tarquinius Priscus into Rome?” at “Etruscans Now,” an
International Colloquium at the British Museum, December 2002. At the
invitation of the State Department, Dr. Small participated in a roundtable
discussion at the World Monuments Fund in New York on October 30, 2002. The roundtable was part of a two-week long visit of Italian museum curators and archaeologists who came to the United States under the auspices of the US Embassy in Rome and the International Visitor Program of the Bureau for Educational and Cultural Affairs. The visit stemmed from the January 2001 agreement between the United States and Italy to provide long-term loans of Italian archaeological materials to US institutions for research, educational, art historical and humanistic purposes.
Jack Spector traveled to Beijing for a four-day international symposium on “Aesthetics and Culture: East and West.” He presented the paper entitled “Some Influences of Chinese Calligraphy on Western Modernism,” which has been accepted for publication (in 2003) in Chinese and English versions by the Chinese Society for Aesthetics in Beijing. In November 2002, he presented the lecture “Collage, Rebus and Early Education in Paris after 1871: A Source for the Cubist Avant-Garde?” in the Public Lecture Series of the Nova Scotia College of Art and Design, Halifax, Nova Scotia. His review of Louis Rose’s The Survival of Images: Art Historians, Psychoanalysis, and the Ancients (Wayne State, 2001) will be published in American Imago, Spring 2003.
Carla Yanni is presently Ailsa Mellon Bruce Senior Fellow at the Center for Advanced Study in the Visual Arts, the National Gallery of Art, Washington D.C., for 2002-2003. She held a colloquium on "The Architecture of Insane Asylums in the United States: Victorian Psychiatry and the Environmental Cure" at the 178th Colloquium at the Center for Advanced Study in the Visual Arts, National Gallery of Art, in November 2002. She was invited to participate in the conference, "Space, Psyche and Psychiatry: Mental Health/Illness and the Construction and Experience of Space, ca. 1600-2000," at Oxford Brookes University, Oxford, December 2002, where she gave a lecture titled “The Apex of Asylum Architecture: Three State Hospitals for the Insane in the United States.” She also spoke on a related subject to the Latrobe Chapter of the Society of Architectural Historians in Washington, D.C. in January 2003. On February 19, 2003 she will be one of four speakers in a panel on the state of museum historio-graphy, at the inaugural meeting of the Association of Museum History, Maison Français, NYU, New York City.
Graduate News
Chris Atkins has accepted a position as Research Assistant II in the Art of Europe Department at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston. He presented a paper entitled “Presenting Himself Among the Ranks: Frans Hals’s Self-Portrait in the St. George Civic Guard Portrait” at the Historians of Netherlandish Art International Conference, held in Antwerp, March 2002.
Chiara Sophie Melcher
Francesca Bacci and David Melcher are pleased to announce the birth of Chiara Sophie Melcher, on September 15, 2002 at 2:38 a.m. On arrival, Chiara weighed about six pounds and was approximately 19 inches long.
Stacey Schultz Burger presented the following papers in March 2002: “Performing Body Image: Hunger Ideology as Cultural Roadmap” at the Graduate Student Symposium, “Somatic Art: Attitudes Toward the Body University,” at the University of Missouri-Columbia and the University of Kansas at Lawrence; “The Mark of Culture in Hannah Wilke’s S.O.S. Starification Object Series,” in the Graduate Student Symposium, “New Visions in the History of Art and Archaeology,” at Cornell University. In February 2003, she presented the lecture “Beyond Barbie: Women Artists, Body Image, and the Search for Self” as part of the Rutgers Counseling Center’s week-long “Body Appreciation Week.”
Amy Bloch’s review of Margaret Haines, ed., Santa Maria del Fiore: The Cathedral and its Sculptures (Florence, 2001) has been published online by the College Art Association, available at www.caareviews.org/reviews/haines.html. In March 2003, she will present a paper on the reconstruction of St. Zenobious’ chapel in the Duomo in Florence at the Toronto Renaissance Society of America conference. She will also present “Ritual, Space and the Bronze Doors of the Florentine Baptistery.” Amy is teaching at the Rochester Institute of Technology.
Brian Clancy received the 2002-2003 Bevier Dissertation Fellowship. He will present the paper “A Good Story Marred in the Telling: J. C. Cady and the Metropolitan Opera House” in the session, “Architects in New York, 1865-1930,” at the College Art Association annual conference in New York, February 2003 (Friday, 2/21, 2:00-4:30).
Caitlin & Michael Davis
Caitlin Sproule Davis married Michael Davis on June 1, 2002 in Red Bank, NJ.
Lisandra Estevez will present a paper, “The Triumph of the Text: A Selected Reading of Giovanni Vendramin’s Architectural Frontispieces,” at the 21st Annual Symposium for Graduate Students in the History of Art, Florida State University, February 2003.
David Fitzpatrick
Tracy Fitzpatrick will defend her dissertation “Tunnel Vision: Images of the New York City Subway, 1904-1941” in April 2003. She represented the Rutgers Art History Department at the annual Symposium on the History of Art, sponsored by the Frick Collection and the Institute of Fine Arts, NYU, in April 2002. She presented the paper, “Futurism Underground: Max Weber, Joseph Stella and the New York City Subway.” She also presented “Joseph Beuys’s Creativity=Capital and the New York City Subway as Performance Space” at the 2001 Andrew Mellon Colloquium, “From Different Perspectives: Looking at Art at the Zimmerli,” April 5, 2001. Tracy and her husband Bill are pleased to announce the birth of their son, David, on August 1, 2002.
Howard A. Fox has just completed cataloging the holdings of approximately 1200 etchings by Old Master,” for the session, “The Self-Wenceslaus Hollar (1607 Prague –1677 London) in the Department of Drawings and Prints at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. The cataloging was designed to create a computerized database that will be incorporated into the museum-wide database. This past summer, Fox
participated in the selecting and hanging of six of Hollar’s major works, as well as writing the wall labels, in the Johnson Gallery at the Met. He continues in his third year as a member of the Visiting Committee of the Department of
Drawings and Prints at the Met.
Aaron Freedman curated two exhibitions at the Lowe Art Museum, University of Miami, Coral Gables, FL. The exhibitions entitled “Change and Continuity: Indian Folk and Tribal Art from the Low Art Museum” and “Heart and Hand: Indian Drawings from the Subhash Kapoor Collection” will run from January 29–March 28, 2004. He published “Nonconformist Art in the Soviet Union” and “Censored and Sanctioned: Soviet Art of the Cold War,” exhibition catalogue, The Grace Museum, Abilene, Texas, 2002. He presented the following papers: “A Tiny Nest and the Vast Sky: Defining Modernism in the Contemporary Art of India,” at the Zimmerli Art Museum, Rutgers, April 12, 2002; and “Terror, Dread and Unspeakable Sin: Siva-Bhairava and the Act of Brahminicide,” Mellon Lecture Series, Zimmerli Art Museum, October 2002. He also delivered a guest lecture, “The Sacrifice of Abraham’s Son in Islamic Art: Issues of Iconography and Iconology” at Vassar College, Poughkeepsie, NY, November 21, 2002.
Emma Guest announced the birth of her son, Lorenzo Robert Consales, on December 21, 2002. Watch out for Lorenzo’s national TV debut in “A Baby Story” on TLC (The Learning Channel) in March.
Ann Keen had a 12-week summer internship in 2002 with the Upstate History Alliance in Oneonta, NY, researching the history of protest in the 19th and 20th centuries in upstate New York. The project was partially funded by the NEH and NYSCA. Ann conducted primary research at participating historical societies and museums in search of documentation and artifacts for a proposed 2005 exhibition. During the Spring 2003 semester, Ann is coordinating research for the Transcultural New Jersey Initiative on behalf of the Stedman Art Gallery at Rutgers-Camden. The Initiative's purpose is to document creative achievements of underrepresented non-European artists in order to recognize and examine how they are shaping culture and communities in New Jersey. The Stedman Art Gallery is planning an exhibition in 2004 focusing on religious architecture. In conjunction with Dr. Meredith Bzdak's undergraduate seminar on New Jersey Architecture, Ann is working with several students conducting interviews, compiling research, and writing exhibition catalog entries.
Patricia Kiernan will give a paper entitled “‘All Nations Gathered Together Before Him’: The Last Judgment Tympanum of Sainte-Foy at Conques,” at the Medieval Academy of America conference, “Encounter and Exchange,” in April 2003. Her presentation will be included in the “Saints” session of the conference. She will also deliver this paper at the annual conference of the Medieval Academy of America, to be held in Minneapolis, MN, April 10-12, 2003. She is currently assisting the forthcoming exhibition, “Prague: The Crown of Bohemia 1350-1450,” in the Medieval Department of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, scheduled to open in the fall of 2005.
Students in Dr. Bellion's seminar at the trompe d'oeil show in Washington: (l-r): Thea Gunhouse, Danny Lanzafama, Sascha Scott, Katie Poole, Kandice Rawlings and Kate Hammond
Natalia Kolodzei published two reviews: “The Russian Avant-Garde Book: 1910-1934 at MoMa,” in ArtChronika 3 (2002), and “Unknown Segal at State Hermitage Museum,” Iskusstvo 16 (October-November 2002). She curated the exhibition, “New Identities, New Forms: Contemporary Russian Women Artists from the Kolodzei Collection,” at Georgetown University Art Galleries, Washington, DC (March 12 – 27, 2002).
Sharon Matt Atkins will present a paper entitled “‘Becoming’ Rembrandt: Yasumasa Murimura as the College Art Association annual conference, February 2003. In October 2002, she gave the paper “Between Two Worlds: Yasumasa Murimura’s Art History Photographs” at the Southeastern College Art Conference held in Mobile, Alabama. She is currently a part-time research assistant in the Department of Contemporary Art at the Boston Museum of
Fine Arts.
Mary Kate O’Hare will represent Rutgers Art History Department at the Philadelphia Symposium on the History of Art, March 22, 2003. She will present a paper entitled “Teaching Men Manhood: John Singer Sargent’s Portrait of Henry Lee Higginson at Harvard University.” In October 2002, she presented the paper at the annual Southeastern College Art Conference, held in Mobile, Alabama. On August 3, 2002 she married Chris Edelson at her parent’s beautiful home in Rochester, New York.
Alison Poe contributed an entry on the Annunciation for P.C. Finney, ed., Encyclopedia of Early Christian Art and Archaeology (Grand Rapids, Michigan: Eerdmans, forthcoming). She delivered a paper entitled “Gatherings at the Tomb: The Ritual Context of the Frescoes in the Hypogaeum of the Aurelii, Rome” at the annual meeting of the Archaeological Institute of America, New Orleans, January, 2003.
Wendy Streule represented Rutgers Art History Department at the Philadelphia Symposium on the History of Art in March 2002. She delivered a paper entitled “The Mirrored Image: Reflections on the Use of Mirrors in Seventeenth-Century Dutch Genre Paintings.” She will present the paper, “A History of Unruly Objects: The Place of Erotica in Seventeenth-Century Holland” at the Boston University Symposium on the History of Art, Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, March 29, 2003. Wendy has been selected to participate in the Getty Research Institute’s Dissertation Workshop, to be held at the Getty, April 11-12, 2003.
Mary Tinti and Kim Curtiss with a Roy Lichtenstein Sculpture at the national gallery of Art
Mary Tinti interned in the Contemporary Art Department of the Brooklyn Museum in 2002 and worked with curator Charlotta Kotik. She was also an intern in the Curatorial Department of the Whitney Museum of American Art.
Aileen Wang was the 2003 recipient of the Graduate School’s Dissertation Teaching Award, which has enabled her to design and teach a 400-level undergraduate seminar, “Michel-angelo and Self-Imaging in the Renaissance.” She presented a paper entitled “The Virgin and Child with Four Musical Angels: Issues of Attribution and Dating” at the 2001 Andrew Mellon Colloquium, “From Different Perspectives: Looking at Art at the Zimmerli,” April 5, 2001.
Patricia Zalamea gave a paper entitled, “Redressing Griselda’s Nudity. A Comparison of Narrative Structure in Text and Image,” at the Interdisciplinary Conference at the Siena Center for Medieval Studies, Siena College, New York, October 2002. The conference was titled, “Soul and Psyche: Mind, Body and Spirit in the Medieval and Early Modern Eras.” Her paper, “Rome’s Mirabilia in Giovanni Marcanova’s Sylloge. An itinerant guide and imaginative exercise in remembering things past,” was accepted at the 2003 Kalamazoo Medieval Conference.
Jennifer Zarro was invited to present a guest lecture entitled “Looking with a Feminist Eye” at the Temple University Honors program, Philadelphia, April 2002. She also delivered the gallery talk, “The Light of Impressionism,” at the Philadelphia Museum of Art, July 2002. She published an article “Mourning and Melancholia in Joseph Hu’s Table Paintings” in A Graduate Journal of Contemporary Art Criticism, Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, June 2002.
Undergraduate News
Lisa GibersonLisa Giberson, an Art History major at Douglass College, published the article, “Maya Angelou: Finding a Voice through Her Complex Vision of Self and Shakespeare,” in Dialogues@RU (Spring 2002), the undergraduate research journal of Rutgers University.
Soo Hee Kwon, a student at Livingston College, published her essay, “Without Sanctuary: Lynching Photographs and Museums as their Sanctuary,” in Dialogues@RU (Spring 2002), the undergraduate research journal of Rutgers University. Kwon wrote this essay for a class taught by Alexis
Boylan (PhD, ‘01) on “Photography and Visual Culture.”
Alumni News
Steve Arbury (PhD ’92) presented the following papers: “Some Thoughts on Marian Images in Spanish Art,” College Art Association annual conference, Philadelphia (February 2002); and “The Role of the University Art Museum: A Director’s Point of View,” Southeastern College Art Conference, Mobile, AL (October 2002). In May 2002, he led a student group to Greece for two weeks on the mainland and one week in Crete.
Alexis Boylan (PhD ’01) will present a paper entitled “A Mother’s Touch: Sculpting the Career of Abastenia St. Leger Eberle” at the College Art Association annual conference, February 2003.
Denise Budd (BA ’95) will present a paper entitled, “Bianca Maria as La Belle Ferronniere” at the College Art Association annual conference, February 2003. She is currently a part-time lecturer in our undergraduate Art History department.
Meredith Bzdak (PhD ’95) will present a paper entitled “Ralf Thomas Walker and the Barclay-Vesey Telephone Building: Architectural Ornamentation during the Interwar Period” at the College Art Association annual conference, February 2003.
Michael Bzdak (PhD ’95) will present a paper entitled “Images and
Traditions of Medieval Wisdom and Learning” at the Southeastern Medieval Conference (September 2002). He will chair a session entitled, “Art and
Commerce,” at the 2004 College Art Association annual conference in Seattle.
Nick Capasso (PhD ’98) co-organized the exhibition, “Painting in Boston: 1950-2000,” and contributed the catalogue essay, “Expressionism:
Boston’s Claim to Fame,” (Univ. of Massachusetts Press, 2002) at the DeCordova Museum and Sculpture Park in 2002, where he is Curator. He also organized the exhibition, “Rona Pondick: New Work,” the first show of outdoor work by this contemporary sculptor. He participated in panels on public art at Phillips Academy, Andover, MA, and ArtSpace, New Haven, CT, and lectured on site-specific sculpture at Rhodes College, Memphis, TN.
Ching-Jung Chen
Ching Jung Chen (PhD ’01) is the slide curator at City College in New York.
Elizabeth Thompson Colleary published “Marguerite Thompson Zorach: Some Newly Discovered Works, 1910-1913” in Woman’s Art Journal 23 (Spring/Summer 2002).
Victor Coonin (PhD ’97) will chair a session entitled, “Continuity and Changes in Italian Art: The Sense of Touch,” at the College Art Association annual conference in February 2003.
Adrienne DeAngelis (PhD ’99) published an article entitled, “Danese Cattaneo’s Portrait Bust of Girolamo Giganti,” in the Burlington Magazine 143 (December 2001). The bust had been in storage in the Victoria and Albert Museum and is now on
display as a result of the article.
Amy Driscoll (MA ’00) is the Assistant Curator of Education at the Hood Museum at Dartmouth College.
Henry J. Duffy (PhD ’01) is Curator and Chief of the Division of Collections Management at Saint-Gaudens National Historic Site. In February 2003, a retrospective of Augustus Saint-Gaudens will open. The exhibition will travel to twelve venues during the next three years and will end in Buffalo in 2006.
Philip Earenfight (PhD ’99) presently teaches at Dickinson College.
Lois, Craig and Emi Eliason at their new home in St. Paul, MN
Craig Eliason (PhD ’02) presented the paper, “Theo van Doesburg, Italian Futurist?” at the 11th Interdisciplinary Conference on Netherlandic Studies in Ann Arbor, MI, April 2002. Since September 2002, he has assumed a tenure-track position as Assistant Professor of Modern Art History at the University of St. Thomas in St. Paul, MN, a medium-sized Catholic university with an MA program in Art History. In October, he participated in a peer seminar with the paper, “From Colleague to Critic: Van Doesburg, Mondrian, and Dada,” at the 4th Modernist Studies Association conference in Madison, WI.
Marianne Ficarra (MA ’94) is the Coordinator of the Transcultural New Jersey Initiative at the Rutgers Office for Intercultural Initiatives. She is working on a multicultural project that will culminate in a 2004 series of statewide exhibitions focusing on the achievements of New Jersey artists from African American, Asian American, Latin American, and Native American backgrounds. The Rutgers Art History department’s involvement in this project includes alum Meredith Bzdak, whose Spring ’03 architecture class will select several religious architectural sites as research topics, and current graduate student, Ann Keen, who will act as a research-liaison both with this class and Rutgers’ Stedman Gallery’s curator, Nancy Maguire. Also related to the Transcultural Initiative, Joan Marter’s graduate class will engage in research on sculpture in the collection of the New Jersey State Museum.
Alison Fleming (BA) will present the paper, “ ‘Real Saints and ‘Spectral’ Prophets: The Role of the Painted Bodies in the Pomposa Chapterhouse,” at the Early Italian Art Conference, University of Georgia, November. Alison is currently at the College of the Holy Cross.
Joanna Gardner-Huggett (PhD ’97) will present the paper, “The Case of Ebony and Topaz: Racial and Sexual Hybridity in Harlem Renaissance Illustrations,” at the College Art Association annual conference, February 2003.
Caroline Goesser (PhD ’00) will present a paper entitled “The Case of Ebony and Topaz: Racial and Sexual Hybridity in Harlem Renaissance Illustrations” at the College Art Association annual conference in February 2003.
Pamela Goldsteen (PhD ’97) and her husband David welcomed their second child, Gabriel Alexander Goldsteen, on August 4, 2002.
Andrew Graciano (BA ’95) is a Visiting Assistant Professor of Art History at the University of South Carolina, after having completed his PhD in May 2002 from the University of Virginia. From November-December 2001, he was a Visiting Fellow at the Yale Center for British Art. He recently presented a paper at the British Society for Eighteenth-Century Studies annual conference in a session entitled, “Medicine and the Human Condition,” St. Hugh’s College, Oxford University (January 2003), and will be delivering a paper on Joseph Wright’s Derbyshire landscape paintings at the Huntington Library in California in February. He has three more papers planned for August at the joint American and International Societies for Eighteenth-Century Studies annual conference at UCLA.
Donna Gustafson (MA ’84) is the Director of Exhibitions at the Hunterdon Museum of Art in Clinton. Her book Images from the World Between: The Circus in Twentieth-Century American Art was published in 2001 by the American Federation of Arts and MIT Press.
Penelope Harkness (MA ’77) presently lives in “the heartland with my two big dogs, many books, pictures, paint and silk thread, restarting my nearly lost artistic life.”
Frima Hofrichter (PhD ’79) was appointed Chair of the Art History Department at Pratt Institute in New York. She will present a paper entitled, “Births and Biography,” at the College Art Association annual conference, February 2003.
Elizabeth Howard (PhD ’79) is teaching at the California Institute of Technology.
Cheryl Kramer published the article, “Natalia Goncharova: Her Depiction of Jews in Tsarist Russia,” in Woman’s Art Journal 23 (Spring/Summer 2002).
Melissa Beck Lemke (MA ’94) published A Guide to the National Gallery of Art Photo Archives, Washington, DC, 2002.
Thomas J. Loughman (PhD ’02) is currently teaching Byzantine and Renaissance courses, as well as a survey, at Pennsylvania State University. This year he is the organizer for the 38th International Congress on Medieval Studies, to be held on May 8-11, 2003, at Kalamazoo, MI.
Dina Comisarenco Mirkin (PhD ’97) published the book review of Margaret A. Lindauer’s Devouring Frida: The Art History and Popular Celebrity of Frida Kahlo in Aurora, The Journal of the History of Art 3 (2002).
Francesca Isabella Montgomery
Scott B. Montgomery (PhD ’96) is Assistant Professor of Art History at the University of North Texas. He and his wife, Alice A. Bauer (BA ’89), are proud to announce the birth of their daughter, Francesca Isabella Montgomery, on April 9, 2002. In the fall 2002, Scott and Alice co-authored an article, “Caput sancti regis Ladislai: The Reliquary Bust of St. Ladislas and Holy Kingship in Late Medieval Hungary,” Decorations for the Holy Dead: Visual Embellishments on Tombs and Shrines of Saints (International Medieval Research: Art History, Vol. 8), eds. E. Valdexdel Alamo and S. Lamia Turnhout: Brepols, 2002). Scott also contributed an essay, “Lignum Vitae: The Grain of Thought,” for the exhibition catalogue, Grain of Thought: A Survey of Works by Don Schol (Denton: University of North Texas Art Gallery, 2002).
Amy Mooney (PhD ’01) will chair the session, “Passing as Self-Portraiture,” at the College Art Association annual conference, February 2003.
Ferris Olin (PhD ’98) will be a discussant at the session, “Institutional Representation,” at the College Art Association annual conference, February 2003.
Allison Palmer’s (PhD ’94) article, “The Maternal Madonna in Quattrocento Florence: Social Ideals in the Family of the Patriarch,” was featured in Source 21 (Spring 2002).
Pam Phillips-Malcolm (MA ’01) was appointed Curator of Education at the Albany Institute of Art.
Felicia Messina-D’Haiti (MA ’95) was a participant in the Fulbright Memorial Fund (FMF) Teacher Program in October 2002. To earn this outstanding honor she was selected from a national pool of more than 2,100 applicants by a panel of educators. This program allows distinguished primary and secondary school teachers in the U.S. to travel to Japan for three weeks in an effort to promote greater intercultural understanding between the two nations.
Christine Poole is now a gallery manager at Schwarz Gallery in Phila-delphia, which specializes in 18th and 19th century American and European oils and watercolors.
Dennis Raverty (PhD ’96) will present a paper entitled, “Intersubjectivity in Rumi’s Cellar,” at the College Art Association annual conference, February 2003.
Torie Reed
Torie Reed (PhD ’01) published an article, based on her dissertation, entitled “Rogier van der Weyden’s Saint John Triptych for Miraflores and Reconsideration of Salome,” in the leading Dutch journal of art history, Oud Holland 115 (2002-2002). In June 2001, she was appointed Friends Curatorial Intern at the Princeton Museum.
Nancy Siegel’s (PhD ’99) recent publications include: Along the Juniata: Thomas Cole and the Dissemination of American Landscape Imagery (Seattle: Univ. of Washington Press, in association with the Juniata College Museum of Art, 2003); “An Oil Sketch by Thomas Cole of the Ruins of Kenilworth Castle,” Burlington Magazine (September 2002); and a book review of Philadelphia’s Cultural Landscape: The Sartain Family Legacy, eds. Katharine Martinez and Page Talbott in Aurora 3 (2002). She also delivered several conference papers: “Dishing it Out: Staffordshire Pottery and American Nationalism: a Transatlantic Journey,” Annual Meeting of the American Studies Association, Houston, TX (November 2002); “Pleasing the National Palate: American Landscapes at the Bottom of Staffordshire Soup Plates,” Southeastern College Art Conference Mobile, AL (October 2002); “Over the River and Through the Woods: Topographical Accuracy and the Art of Thomas Cole,” PA Dept. of Conservation and Natural Resources: Bureau of Topographic and Geologic Survey, Middletown, PA (October 2002); “Of Fields and Farmlands-Images of the Eastern Seaboard by Thomas and Mary Nimmo Moran,” The Morris Museum, Morristown, NJ (September 2002); “A Drawing, An Etching, and A Pink Soup Plate: The Dissemination of American Landscape Imagery through the Art of Thomas Cole,” American Culture Association, Toronto (March 2002).
Zbynek Smetana (PhD ’97) published the article, “Setting the Record Straight: Titian’s Pietà and Vittoria’s Zane Altar,” in Aurora, The Journal of the History of Art 3 (2002).
Thomas Somma (MA ’83) will present a paper entitled, “Why Not Live In a Palace? An American Versailles 1916-1917,” at the College Art Association annual conference, February 2003.
Francesca Toffolo (BA ’97) is now completing her dissertation at Princeton University. In October, she presented the paper, “Emillia Michiel, Patritiae Venetae: Patron of the Arts in Renaissance Venice,” at the Sixteenth Century Study Conference in San Antonio, TX. In March, she will present the paper, “Art and the Conventual Life. Veronese’s Mystical Marriage of St. Catherine of Alexandria,” at the RSA.
Ian Verstegen (MA ’96) will present a paper entitled, “Oratorian Quietude from Federico Barocci to Pietro da Cortona,” at the College Art Association
annual conference, February 2003.
Midori Yoshimoto (PhD ’02) defended her dissertation, “Into Performance: Japanese Women Artists in New York, 1955-75,” in May 2002. She has also signed a contract with Rutgers University Press for the publication of her dissertation. In October, Midori completed an exhibition, with a bilingual catalog, on a Museum that traveled to its sister museum in Fukui, Japan. On November 2, 2002, she married Clark Gregory Hagerty (PhD, Computer Science). Their wedding was held at Princeton Friends Meeting House.
Lilian Zirpolo (PhD ’94) co-organized with Allison Palmer (PhD ’94) the session, “Politics, Marriage, and Civic Identity in Italian Renaissance and Baroque Painting,” at the Sixteenth Century Studies Conference in San Antonio, TX, in October 2002. At the same session, Dr. Zirpolo presented the paper, “Pietro da Cortona’s David Cycle in the Villa del Pigneto Sacchetti: Chronological and Iconographic Considerations,” forthcoming in expanded form as an article. She also presented a paper, “Death, Philosophy, and Civic Duty in Lanfranco’s Sacchetti Chapel Frescoes at S. Giovanni dei Fiorentini, Rome” at CAA 2002 in Philadelphia, which stems from her book on Sacchetti patronage in seventeenth-century Rome that was recently completed. Her latest publications include: “Bernini’s Faun Teased by Children,” in Discoveries, The South-Central Renaissance Conference News and Notes (forthcoming, 2004) and “Artemisia Gentileschi’s Spada Madonna and the Trauma of Loss,” to be published in an anthology on women artists by Mellen Press, ed. L. de Girolami Cheney. She presented a version of this article at the South-Central Conference in St. Louis, in April 2002. She continues to act as Co-Editor/Co-Publisher, with Joanna Gardner-Huggett (PhD ’97) of Aurora, The Journal of the History of Art, published under the aegis of the WAPACC organization, and now in its third year. The editors hope to expand the activities of the organization to include an art history monograph series.
Zimmerli Art Museum
A new joint initiative between The Jane Voorhees Zimmerli Art Museum and the Department of Art History at Rutgers University will take art beyond the confines of the academy to the heart of the community. The museum’s outreach program, called “Artreach,” coordinated on the museum’s side by Vonda Givens, will send exceptionally motivated Art History graduate students to public schools, senior centers, and other community institutions to lecture about art. These speakers will present not only the Zimmerli’s collections, but also offer talks on significant periods of art history, such as the Renaissance, and Post-War American art.
Artreach seeks to take art to audiences that have either never thought of visiting a museum or are physically prevented from doing so. In addition, Artreach seeks to make art once again a key part of the community’s concerns as well as restore its place in the general educational curriculum. Using art in English, History, or even a Mathematics class can help schools reestablish the essential unity of knowledge.
Representing the graduate student team are Katie Poole and Catherine Reed. They will work closely with Vonda Givens on scheduling and logistics. All participating students will receive training in public speaking and in using the museum’s specific collections. Speakers will travel in pairs within an 18-mile radius of New Brunswick and use slides for their presentations. As the curator of Education at the Zimmerli, I am particularly delighted to collaborate with such a distinguished art history program as we have at Rutgers and with the knowledgeable young scholars that it produces. I believe that together we will make a difference in the community. All interested students may contact Ms. Poole and Ms. Reed for further information or may call me at the Zimmerli at 732/932-7237, ext. 636.
- Alfredo Franco
|
TO ALL ALUMNI AND FRIENDS OF THE DEPARTMENT OF ART HISTORY AT RUTGERS UNIVERSITY: |
