Vol. 7, n. 1 - February 2005
John Beldon Scott
Xander Van Eck
Erik Thunø
Rona Goffen
Faculty News
Graduate News
Report from AHGSO
Undergraduate News
Alumni News
Jack Spector's Retirement Party
Notes from the Chair
Given the whirl-wind of activities in New Brunswick Art History, five hundred words is perhaps the best format to telegraph events. Last year at this time, February 2004, the Department began a process that resulted in the hiring of Susan Sidlauskas to join our faculty, effective September 2005, to teach nineteenth-century art. Because she brings so much energy, intellectual excitement, and proven dedication to the task, we are all very pleased that Susan will be a part of the continuing rebirth of the Department!
Sarah McHam and Emma Guest, winner of the 2004 Dissertation Teaching Award, Graduate School, New Brunswick
Over the next several months we had the opportunity to foster a foreign exchange of teachers and students to balance the unfavorable fate of the dollar versus the Euro. First, we met with Peter Hecht, who chairs the Department of Art History at the University of Utrecht, and with him advanced plans to bring a colleague to teach Dutch art in the Fall semester of 2004 and to create a summer program in Holland for our undergraduates. Then we met with Beatrice Abbo, from the Musee du Louvre, who was able to help us arrange a substantial experience in the Louvre for our summer program in Paris.
Sarah McHam and Amy Bloch, winner of the 2004 Dean's research Award, Graduate School, New Brunswick
From these negotiations, we were able to schedule nearly one-half of this summer’s Paris course in the Louvre where students were taught by the Museum staff. In June a permanent agreement was signed by the Director Philippe Loyrette and our FAS Dean Holly Smith, which will provide for this course to continue. Seth Gopin, who developed the Paris program and initiated contacts with the Louvre, represented the Department at the signing ceremony.
Then, in Fall 2004, Dr. Xander Van Eck, arrived from Utrecht to teach our Dutch art course. He filled his class to capacity and proved to be a magnetic presence and an adept organizer, bringing all sixty-plus students on three separate field trips to New York, Philadelphia, and ///. Undergraduates will have the opportunity of studying with him again in Holland in June and July, where our Netherlands summer course ready to go. The itinerary, developed and taught entirely by our hosts, is a model program that will take students from Early Netherlandish Art through the achievements of Mondrian and 20th-century design.
Tod Marder's undergraduate class during their trip to Cambridge, MA to visit the Fogg Art Museum
In fact the academic year began with a Medieval clang and an astronomical bang. Erik Thuno arrived from Rome to join the faculty as a specialist in art of the Midddle Ages, and he has quickly made a happy home with us. Soon after, we were plunged into a multi-disciplinary conference on Galileo, which was organized by Catherine Puglisi under the auspices of the new Italian Studies Program. World renown scholars in the field, including alumnus John Beldon Scott, delivered talks and participated in round-table discussions in front of a capacity audience.
The class on Bernini visits the salander-O'Reilly Gallery in New York for a private viewing of the newly identified Bernini portrait bust, November 2004, which was later on public view
Finally, in November, we gathered to remember the passing of Rona Goffen, whose obituary is found elsewhere in this issue. It was both a happy and sad moment to recall the excitement generated by her arrival in 1988, and the spotlight her work cast on the Department in the following years. Quirky, independent, penetratingly creative, and productive, she remained very much in character to the end.
Tod Marder
RU at CAA in 2005
As in past years, Rutgers faculty and alumni/ae will be participating in all aspects of the College Art Association meeting. Joan Marter, who serves on the CAA board, will be chairing a session, as will Tod Marder. Professor Catherine Puglisi will present a paper, as will emeritus Matthew Baigell and Rutgers Camden’s Roberta Tarbell. The following alumni/ae are also presenting papers or chairing sesssions: Gail Levin, Nancy Siegel, Stacy Schultz Burger, Caroline Goeser, Dennis Raverty, Gregory Gilbert, Lisa Victoria Ceresi, Midori Yoshimoto, Amy Bloch, Kelly Helmstutler Di Dio, and Marice Rose. Current student Denise Rompilla will also present a paper.
Forging Memorial Art for Public Memory On September 12, 2003, the department, The Rutgers University Libraries, Dean's Office, FAS and the Friends of the Libraries sponsored a symposium in the Art Library. An exhibit in the Art Library accompanied the event.
The speakers included (left to right) Meredith Bzdak (Ph.D. 1995, Farewell Mills Gatsch Architects, LLC), Franco Minervini (sculptor), Tod Marder (Chair, Art History), Sara Harrington (Ph.D. 2003, Art Library), Margaret Kuntz (MA 1984, Drew University) and Carol Sterling (International Sculpture Center)
John Beldon Scott Wins Top Book Award from College Art Association
John Beldon Scott's book, Architecture for the Shroud: Relic and Ritual in Turin
John Beldon Scott, Ph.D. 1982, won the Charles Rufus Morey Book Award from the College Art Association for the best book of the year. His book is Architecture for the Shroud: Relic and Ritual in Turin. Professor Scott was a student of Olga Berendsen and a founding editor of the Rutgers Art Review. He is currently a professor at the University of Iowa. The College Art Association’s citation reads in part as follows: “In Architecture for the Shroud: Relic and Ritual in Turin (University of Chicago Press, 2003), John Beldon Scott traces the rich history of Christ's Shroud, the revolutionary chapel designed by Guarino Guarini to house it, and the dynastic fortunes of the dukes of Savoy, who made political capital of both relic and chapel. This beautifully written, profusely illustrated book provides a vivid and compelling account of the Savoy's close identification with the Shroud from its earliest traceable history in the fourteenth century to the present day. In an erudite but accessible study that interweaves the long history of a relic, a dynasty, and an architectural masterpiece, Scott examines the evolution of art, patronage, religion, and politics throughout some seven hundred years. . . .Moving impressively from one methodology to another, Scott traces the history of the relics's public rituals, situates the chapel's construction within the context of Turinese urban planning, and notes the chapel's transformation into a burial site for the Savoy during the nineteenth century. The book ends poignantly in 1997, when the chapel was tragically gutted during an electrical fire. Scott's study is extraordinarily wide-ranging and nuanced, gathering evidence from religious history, popular culture, archival materials, and architectural theory to show how the history of Guarini's chapel is inseparable from the history of the Shroud's cult and its manipulation by the House of Savoy. Architecture for the Shroud provides an inspirational model for studies of the interaction between patron and artist, art and culture, and religion and politics, and brilliantly demonstrates the benefits of studying an artwork over time." The art history department warmly congratulates Professor Scott.
Visiting Professor from Holland, Xander van Eck: Lecturing about Rembrandt at Rutgers as a Dutch Vistitor
As the fall semester I spent here at Rutgers is almost over, it is time to look back. My family and I have had a great time here, full of interesting events like the presidential elections, Halloween and Thanksgiving. We have met many wonderful people and seen beautiful places. We saw Wynton Marsalis and his orchestra perform at the opening festival of Jazz at Lincoln Center; we drove an old Cadillac and were towed away when it broke down; we encountered a big black bear on a dark deserted road and lived to tell.
But I was asked to write about my teaching experiences. Before I start giving impressions and passing judgments, here are the facts: I was here as a visiting professor, partaking in an exchange between Rutgers and Utrecht University (The Netherlands). The exchange is still young, in fact my arrival here marked its very beginning, but we’re hoping this will grow into something beautiful and lasting. Plans for a summer course in Utrecht this summer are in a near-definitive phase, and hopefully Rutgers professors will one day cross the ocean to spend a semester over there.
The course I taught was on Dutch seventeenth-century painting. The class counted about 60 students, with 3 graduate students sitting in and doing different assignments. On Tuesdays I gave lectures, and on Thursdays we talked about readings, always in the same room at the Zimmerli Museum, except for a few weeks when our classroom was hijacked by the Holiday Bazaar, and we had to move a few doors down the hall.
I immediately liked the College Avenue Campus with its variety of little buildings, each housing its own little institution, all part of the huge organism this university is, yet projecting their own atmosphere. Voorhees Hall, with its own museum and library attached, soon became a place where I felt at home. For all the talk about American individualism, it felt much more like a community than any of the art historical institutes in Holland (there are six, and I have spent extended periods of time at four of them).
Something else that struck me was the sheer number of students living on campus. I guess they, too, really must have a feeling of belonging to this place. In Utrecht and most other Dutch universities, most student housing is not on university territory, and University buildings themselves are usually scattered around the city. We lack sports facilities like the Werblin Recreation Center, where one can swim across the man-size RUTGERS letters on the floor of the pool. Of course, my outlook may be rosy because I’m only a passer-by, but these circumstances did contribute to my well-being and made me feel good about teaching here. Being a visitor has many pleasant sides, anyhow – a visitor can be ignorant about almost everything and be forgiven, and the daily chores of a regular job are blissfully absent.
During the first few classes, the students struck me as not so different. Nice, young, intelligent people with all kinds of priorities. It took some a little time to get used to me, and it took me some time to get things moving, which, again, is not much different from how it works back home. What I did not expect were the reactions to the material itself. Although in hindsight it seems logical, it came as something of a surprise to me that the artists that I like to talk about – Hals, Rembrandt, Steen, Vermeer and so many others, who are more or less taken for granted in Holland, have an almost exotic ring to them over here. It sometimes made me feel like I had come to bring special and valuable gifts. Still, particularly here in New Brunswick, with New York and Philadelphia around the corner, so many Dutch paintings are readily accessible. One of the great things about this course was that I was able to make students aware of the fact that Dutch Art has also become a part of American heritage. Even in the small museum at Princeton, where we went on a field trip on a windy Sunday afternoon, we found that the Dutch paintings were rather impressive, and the way they were presented was exemplary. I could not name any other place in the world where the importance and essence of Haarlem and Utrecht mannerism is made so clear in just one room. I don’t consider myself much of a patriot, but I can’t deny that it made me feel proud.
On the whole, teaching and living here has been an enormously enriching experience for me and I surely hope the relationship between Rutgers and Utrecht will flourish, as I trust it will. But even if that shouldn’t work out, it is good to know that there is a place in New Jersey where I have lived for some time, and where I’ll hope to come back now and then.
Xander van Eck
New Faculty in Art History: Erik Thunø: Historian of Medieval Art Joins Faculty
Tod Marder asked Erik Thunø, the newest member of our faculty, to tell us a little about his experience moving from Rome to Rutgers. Professor Thunø’s letter follows:
It is amazing how fast your life and professional career can take a new direction. As late as summer 2003, the thought of teaching and doing research at an American university was less on my mind than, for instance, the idea of switching my studies from Italian medieval art to Norwegian stave churches. Having received my Ph.D. at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore in 1999 and having collaborated with many American colleagues, I was not new to the American university and its academic life. On the other hand, I had been back in Europe for several years serving as the assistant director of the Danish Academy in Rome, and moving to the States was not foremost in my mind. I was living and working under the huge pine trees in the Villa Borghese, a splendid walk from both Piazza di Spagna and Piazza del Popolo in the center of Rome. I had been a fellow at the Danish Academy when I wrote my MA thesis, and I had always kept an eye on the specific job of assistant director. In 2000 I was lucky enough to get it! I had a terrific and productive time there, but knowing that the position – as is common at such foreign academies — was not permanent, my restless mind started to call for new challenges. In other words, I started to look around – Denmark? Germany? Italy? Then a colleague called my attention to the American job market, and with my education at an American university, I thought, why not at least give it a try? I soon learned that Rutgers was looking for an historian of medieval art. For somebody doing Italian art, the Art History Department at Rutgers was of course ringing great bells in my ears. Over the years in Rome I had met several of the program’s doctoral students in medieval art. I applied. In the summer of 2003, sitting in my office behind closed shutters in an overheated and deserted Rome, came an email calling me for an interview at the Rutgers campus. I did not hesitate a second to book my flight.
Less than one year passed between when I got the wonderful offer to come to Rutgers, to this September when I found myself driving up Route 27 to teach my first undergraduate class on early medieval art. I was never myself an undergraduate in America and during my four years at the Danish Academy, I was mainly doing research and administration, so this was truly a new challenge. My experiences from teaching undergraduates in Denmark and Germany could not, I soon found out, be directly applied to Rutgers. Generally, the European way of teaching classes is less regulated and controlled. As a teacher, you do not really keep track of the number of students in your class. So first I had to ask myself: what is a roster? And what are special permission numbers? Why did I get all these email excuses for not coming to class because of a sick grandmother? Quickly I learned that the number of students in the class kept constant throughout the whole semester. One advantage of this, it became clear, is that you stay in closer contact with the students. There is more of a team-work aspect to teaching here, because you do more than just come in and lecture. In comparison with European students, American students seem more stressed and pressured, but they are also more aware of what they are doing and for what purpose. This can make it easier to work with them. For some, obviously, the course is just an instrument for getting a good grade, and the topic itself has less priority. But others discover something on the way and in this dialogue with students, I met some really interesting and creative minds! Coming from Denmark where all hierarchical structures and polite ways of addressing the teacher completely vanished in the wake of 1968, it was odd to hear myself suddenly being called “doctor” and “professor!” But then again, compared to Germany where the students are called by their last names, the American university hierarchy seemed less rigid.
Coming to Rutgers has truly been an extraordinary experience. It has reinforced my belief that the drive to create new and different settings for oneself can be productive, inspiring and creative. I rarely miss my morning coffee at Piazza del Popolo, and that says a lot! For this I can only thank the wonderful working conditions at Rutgers, the students and, not the least, all my colleagues who have been extremely helpful and kind in facilitating my step across the Atlantic Ocean.
Rona Goffen,
1944-2004
Obituary by David Rosand, Meyer Schapiro Professor of Art History
Columbia University, reproduced by kind permission of the author
With each book, Rona Goffen consolidated her place as one of the most influential and innovative of Italian Renaissance art historians in the 20th Century. Her 1986 study, Piety and Patronage in Renaissance Venice: Bellini, Titian, and the Franciscans (Yale, 1986) earned her attention as one of the "new" art historians, combining detailed attention to the ways painters work with a probing view of how social and economic forces shape the subject matter of, and responses to, painting. It earned wide attention for its focus on the roles of piety and politics in the construction of the Franciscan church Santa Maria del Frari, which was supported by the patronage of the Pesaro family. Her Spirituality in Conflict: Saint Francis and Giotto's Bardi Chapel (University of Pennsylvania, 1988) concerns the intense religious debate within the Franciscan Order during the Duecento and Trecento and how this conflict plays out in commissions associated with the Florentine church of Santa Croce (notably the Bardi Saint Francis Panel and Giotto's frescoes for the Bardi Chapel). Her Giovanni Bellini (Yale, 1994), now in its second printing (Italian edition in 1990), is the definitive study of Bellini, and has earned international acclaim for the boldness of its argument and the deftness of its attention to the cultural forces that shaped Bellini's work. Her Titian's Women (Yale, 1997) brought a feminist theoretical perspective to Titian's preoccupation with women as subjects. Writing in the New York Times Book Review, Gary Wills celebrated Professor Goffen's study as showing "one of her principal strengths, her skill as a social historian reconstructing the conditions of patronage, gift giving and market pricing that affected Renaissance Venice." Her Renaissance Rivals: Michelangelo, Leonardo, Raphael, Titian (Yale, 2002) explored the fascinating Italian Renaissance environment that produced perhaps the greatest of all art.
Professor Goffen was working on two new books at the time of her death, Renaissance Women: Art and Life in Italy, 1300-1600 and Fathers of Invention: The Last Judgment, from Giotto to Michelangelo (the Rand lectures, to be published by the University of North Carolina Press). Two chapters had been completed of Renaissance Women: the first on representations of the Virgin, the second on “wives, widows, and mothers.” The book focuses on placing female portraiture in its cultural, religious, and social contexts.
In addition, Professor Goffen edited and provided chapters in studies of Titian's Venus of Urbino and of Masaccio's Trinity; wrote numerous articles and reviews; received ACLS, NEH, Guggenheim and many other fellowships; and became one of the most widely sought-after speakers at major conferences and museums throughout the world because her work was so widely read and discussed. Her writing was reviewed not only in the major journals of Renaissance art, history, and literature, but regularly in the Times Literary Supplement, the New York Review of Books, the London Review of Books, and the New York Times Book Review. Her standing insured that her books received the attention of the general public. Indeed, the London Independent named Titian's Women an "Art Book of the Year." As Gary Wills noted in his discussion of this volume: "To argue with Goffen's book is to see how much she equips all others for the argument."
Rona Goffen's professional standing is indicated by the boards she served on and the colleges and universities interested in having her join their faculties. In Fall 1997 she was asked to serve on the Board of Advisors of the Center for Advanced Study in the Visual Arts at the National Gallery of Art. She was also a board member of the Renaissance Society of America. From 1988-94 she was co-editor of Renaissance Quarterly; and she remained an associate editor of the journal through 2000. She also served on the editorial board of Venezia Cinquecento. In Fall 1997 she was Robert Sterling Clark Visiting Professor of Art History at Williams College. Professor Goffen was Chair of the Department of Art History at Rutgers from 1990 to 1996, and taught at Rutgers until her death.
Current graduate students and recent alumni/ae who studied with Professor Goffen gathered at the memorial service in November 2004. From left to right: Aileen Wang, Patricia Zalamea, Christine Goulding, Mary Shay Millea, Katie Poole and ZB Smetana.
The Renaissance Society of America is pleased to announce a travel grant in honor of Rona Goffen. If you are interested in contributing to the Rona Goffen Venetian Art Travel Fund, please contact Lauren Schwartz at the RSA: (212) 817-2130 or
For further information, please contact Claire Brown at (609) 273-4259 or
Faculty News
Matthew Baigell. Professor emeritus Baigell has written several articles including "Newman's The Stations of the Cross: Lema Sabachthani: A Jewish Take," Art Criticism 19 (no. 1, 2004): 52-62, "Archie Rand: The Nineteen Diaspora Paintings," in Archie Rand: The Nineteen Diaspora Paintings (New York: Hebrew Union College, 2004), "Clement Greenberg and Harold Rosenberg and Their Jewish Issues," Prospects (2005), in press and "George Inness' Images and Emanuel Swedenborg's Writings," Source (in press). He published a chapter in a book edited by Rutgers alumna Nancy Siegel "Getting a Grip on God: Painting the Christianized Landscape," Within the Landscape: Perspectives on Nineteenth-Century American Scenery (University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press (2005), in press. And he gave the following talks: "Archie Rand," Hebrew Union College, New York, October 15, 2004. "Newman's The Stations of the Cross," Association of Jewish Studies, Chicago, December 19, 2004. "Jewish Artists: Complex Identities," Jewish Artists Initiative Lecture Series, Los Angeles, February 3, 2005. "Six Jewish American Artists and the Bible," College Art Association, Atlanta, February 17, 2005.
Sarah Brett-Smith attended the meetings of the Association of African Studies in New Orleans in November. She was surprised and disturbed to see several stuffed domestic cats on sale near the meeting hotel. She has been enjoying Rutgers’ membership in the Inter-University Doctoral Consortium, since it has enabled several CUNY graduate students to study with her. She has been in touch with one graduate student who plans to work in Mali and has helped to provide contacts there for this student.
Martin Eidelberg has been busier than ever in retirement. In March 2004, he curated an exhibition on the iconographical sources of the fête galante at the Museum of Fine Arts in Valenciennes (Antoine Watteau's natal city in northern France). This well-received exhibition included paintings and drawings from cities as far flung as Los Angeles, Helsinki, St. Petersburg, and Salzburg. Among the works were some ten paintings and even more drawings by Watteau himself. The lavish catalogue was published by the Réunion des musées nationaux, and he was proud to have been joined in this project by Dr. Barbara Anderman, a Rutgers graduate. In addition to authoring various articles on modern decorative arts and eighteenth-century painting, Dr. Eidelberg has written a book on Tiffany Studios’ lamps which will be published in September 2005. He continues to be quite active on the lecturer circuit with lectures extending from museums in Colorado Springs, Colorado, to Winter Park, Florida, and points between. This past January, he was one of the main speakers at a conference on Siegfried Bing at the Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam.
Archer St. Clair Harvey teaches the core seminar "Preserving Cultural Heritage," in the new Certificate in Historic Preservation Program, and serves on the Archaeological Institute of America's Program Committee, Professional Responsibilities Committee, and Cultural Heritage Legislation Committee. Her current projects include two publications: the ivory and bone remains from Morgantina, Princeton University's excavation in southeastern Sicily, and the archaeological finds from the Palatine East Excavation in Rome, Italy (Vol. II of the Final Excavation Report), where she is Associate Director. Her research in Art History is centered on Constantinian overpainting of frescoed walls in fourth century Rome and Ostia.
Angela F. Howard For Angela F. Howard the major event of the year was the opening of the exhibition China, Dawn of a Golden Age, 200-750 AD, at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, October 12, 2004-January 23, 2005. As Special Consultant of Chinese Buddhist Art, 1998-October 2004, she chose most of the Buddhist sculpture in the exhibition. Howard was also active in the various activities which accompanied the exhibition -- contributing to the catalogue by James C. Y. Watt et al., China, Dawn of a Golden Age, 200-750 AD (New York: The Metropolitan Museum of Art, 2004) with the essay “Buddhist Art in China,” and writing twenty-seven entries. Besides giving several gallery talks, she participated in the related symposium on November 13th, 2004 with the paper “The Acculturation of Buddhist Images in China: An Astonishing Pluralism of Styles.” Lastly, she wrote “From Han to Tang: The Acculturation of Buddhist Images in China,” Orientations (October 2004), an article focusing on the Buddhist sculpture in the exhibition.
In 2004, Angela F. Howard presented the following papers: March 2004 “A Preliminary View of an Exhibition of Chinese Buddhist Art in The Metropolitan Museum of Art, NY,” Hopkins-Nanjing Center, Nanjing, China; June 2004 “Pluralism of Style in Sixth century China: A Reaffirmation of Indian Models,” Freer Gallery of Art, Washington DC, in conjunction with the Exhibition Return of the Buddha: the Qingzhou Discoveries; November, 2004, “Buddhist Caves of Kucha, Xinjiang,” panel on Buddhism in the Dark, Stephen F. Teiser presiding, American Academy of Religion annual meeting, San Antonio, Texas.
Tod Marder continues as Chair of the Department. In addition, he saw the publication of his article on Bernini’s Neptune and Triton statue, now in the Victoria and Albert Museum in London, in the Acts of a conference held at the French Academy in Rome, Villa Medici: “Bernini’s Neptune and Triton Fountain for the Villa Montalto,” in Bernini dai Borghese ai Barberini. La cultura a Roma intorno agli anni venti (Atti del Convegnno, Accademia di Francia a Roma, Villa Medici), eds. Olivier Bonfait-Anna Coliva, Rome, 2004. As a fun project he took the opportunity to collaborate with the authors of a 
book about the Dan Brown best-seller, Angels and Demons, with contributions published as "A Bernini Expert Reflects on Dan Brown's Use of the Baroque Master" and "A Scholar Visits the Vatican Library" in Dan Burstein and Arne de Keizer, Secrets of Angels and Demons: the Unauthorized Guide to the Bestselling Novel, New York: CDS Books with Squibnocket Partners LLC, 2004. A pleasant and amusing detour from serious scholarship, the project also provided the excuse for an assignment to his undergraduate students on Bernini, who were asked to write papers on the facts and inaccuracies of Dan Brown’s portrayal of the artist and his art. In the Spring of 2004, he gave a paper entitled “The Literary Myth of Bernini” at the Annual Meeting of the Renaissance Society of America, New York, April 2004, where Rona Goffen was a keynote speaker. A very busy Fall term ensued, beginning with the Rutgers symposium entitled “Galileo and the Arts, The Age of Galileo: Art and Science in Early Modern Italy,” held in Alexander Library, October 2004, which was organized and led by Catherine Puglisi. There followed a lecture for the symposium “From Raphael to the Grand Tour, A Symposium in Celebration of Malcolm Campbell’s Seventieth Birthday,” University of Pennsylvania, October 2004. And finally, Dr. Marder gave the Josephine von Henneberg Lecture in Italian Art at Boston College, with the title “Missionary Science-Hieroglyphic Art: Bernini, Kircher, and the Fountain of the Four Rivers in Rome,” in November 2004. This February 2005, he will serve as the organizer of a session sponsored by the Italian Art Society on St. Peter’s Basilica at the College Art Association meeting in Atlanta. While presiding over the visit of our Dutch colleague, Xander van Eck, Dr. Marder continued to press for an exchange with our colleagues in Utrecht, which will now include an undergraduate summer program in Dutch and Flemish art taught on site. The summer program in Paris, coordinated by Dean Seth Gopin, now includes the formal cooperation of the Louvre Museum on an on-going basis, and we anticipate expansions into at least two other European cities.
Joan Marter Currently Professor Marter is on competitive fellowship leave. She was awarded a research fellowship from the Pollock-Krasner Foundation and Stony Brook University for 2004-05. Her residency at the Jackson Pollock-Lee Krasner Study Center in East Hampton, New York has offered an opportunity to work on a book on changing views of science and technology by sculptors working from the 1930s to the 1950s. In June 2004 Dr. Marter was inducted into the Alumni “Wall of Fame” for distinguished graduates of the University of Delaware. She continues as a member of the Board of Directors of the College Art Association. As chair of CAA’s Museum Committee, Dr. Marter was co-author of “Guidelines for Curatorial Studies Programs,” which has now been posted on the website of the CAA. At the upcoming annual conference of the CAA in Atlanta, February, 2005, Dr. Marter’s paper “Science Fiction and Technological Interface: Constructivist Sculpture of the 1940s and 1950s” will be presented in a session entitled “Mass Culture before Pop.” In March 2004, Dr. Marter presented “Reg Butler and the Competition for the Monument to the Unknown Political Prisoner,” at the Tate Britain, London, in a symposium on British sculpture sponsored by the Henry Moore Institute. Forthcoming publications include an essay. “Arcadian Nightmares: David Smith and Dorothy Dehner at Bolton Landing,” in Reading Abstract Expressionism: Context and Critique, edited by Ellen G. Landau (Yale University Press, 2005). Recent publications include “Joan Mitchell Paintings,” Woman’s Art Journal (Spring/Summer 2004) and Samuel Rothbort, A Modernist in America (New York, 2004). Dr. Marter worked with graduate students in her exhibition seminar last spring to organize Artists on the Edge: Douglass College and the Rutgers MFA, which will be exhibited at Douglass College beginning in March 2005. The exhibition catalogue, edited by Dr. Ferris Olin, will publish essays by graduate students on Rutgers MFA graduates Joan Snyder, Keith Sonnier, Jackie Winsor, Mimi Smith, Rita Myers, Alice Aycock, and others. Dr. Marter will chair a panel discussion on March 9, 2005 featuring many of these artists. She is also organizing and chairing a symposium entitled “All-over: Abstract Expressionism’s Global Context,” to be held at Stony Brook’s Manhattan campus on April 8 and 9, 2005. Speakers include David Craven, Ellen Landau, Ann Gibson, Jane Sharp and Lewis Kachur. Dr. Marter will also edit a book entitled Abstract Expressionism, An International Language to be published by Rutgers University Press.
Sarah McHam. During the past year Dr. McHam continued work on her book about Pliny's influence on Italian Renaissance art and theory (about which two articles are in press). She presented a paper on "The Equestrian Monument to Cosimo I by Giambologna," at the Provo-Athens Italian Renaissance Sculpture Conference at the Univ. of Georgia in November (where former students Victor Coonin and Amy Bloch also presented). She was co-chair and organizer of two sessions, The Rise and Fall of Memorial Sculpture, at CAA in Seattle in February 2004, and the Italian Art Society's four sessions on great monuments in Italy at Kalamazoo in May.
Catherine Puglisi organized the interdisciplinary symposium, The Age of Galileo: Art and Science in Early Modern Italy,” that took place at Rutgers in October 2004 and was sponsored by the University Committee on Italian Studies, directed by Dr. Puglisi. The symposium was cosponsored by the NJ Council for the Humanities, the Center for Comparative European Studies, the NJ Italian and Italian American Heritage Commission, and the Office of the Vice President for Academic Affairs. Lisandra Estevez, a doctoral candidate in the program and assistant to the committee, was responsible for many of the logistics involved in planning the symposium, which was attended by 100 people. Tod Marder chaired the panel, Galileo and the Arts, in which John Beldon Scott (Rutgers PhD, 1982) presented a paper. In May 2004, on the occasion of "La Mostra Impossibile," Dr. Puglisi was invited by the Caravaggio Foundation to speak on the painter in front of the artist's Beheading of St John the Baptist in the Oratory of the Co-Cathedral in Valletta, Malta. In December, she traveled to Naples, Italy, to see the show and attend the symposium, "L'ultimo Caravaggio," and is reviewing the exhibition for Simiolus. At the upcoming CAA in Atlanta, she will be presenting a paper "Re-envisioning the Imago Pietatis: Two Altarpieces by Paolo Veronese." Her article, "The Pala Feriale and the Cristo passo in Early Venetian Art," coauthored with William Barcham, is now in press, and she continues to conduct research with her coauthor for a forthcoming book on Christ as Man of Sorrows in Venetian art.
Jane Sharp curated "Identity and Resistance: Abstract Painting from the Dodge Collection" at the Zimmerli Art Museum, and published an article by the same title in the first number of the Zimmerli Journal. An essay entitled "Allusive Form: Painting as Idea," has just appeared in the second number of the Journal. She gave several lectures including "Malevich/Makarevich: Abstraction and Irony" at the Institute for Art History, Russian Ministry of Culture, Moscow; and "The Transposition of Modernism to Central Asia," for a panel on Russian Orientalism at the annual conference of the Association for the Advancement of Slavic Studies. She served on a panel at the Bard College, Annandale-on-Hudson, Shostakovich Festival. In February 2004, Professor Sharp chaired a panel for the Society of Historians of East-European and Russian Art and Architecture at CAA. Her book on Natalia Goncharova is in production and will be out in 2005. She is also working on a new book on late 20th-century abstract painting in the former Soviet Union which will be linked to a large exhibition at the Zimmerli.
Penny Small published a book review this past year in the New England Classical Journal and prepared two invited essays ("Memory and the Roman Orator" to appear in the Blackwell Companion to Roman Rhetoric and "Pictures of Tragedy?" to appear in the Blackwell Companion to Greek Tragedy). She currently has a one-term sabbatical in which she is working on her new book on optics and illusionism in classical art from the Archaic period through the Late Antique.
Jack Spector's recent lectures and publications touch on topics directly or indirectly related to research for a book on the emergence and disintegration of the Cubist avant-garde in pre- and post-World War I Paris: an associated issue concerns the interplay between the visual and the verbal, hence the article “Some Influences of Chinese Calligraphy on Western Modernism” to be published in Chinese by the Chinese Society for Aesthetics in Beijing and in English in World Sinology. A sustained interest in the postmodern implications of the Dada and Surrealist avant-gardes led to “Duchamp’s Gendered Plumbing: A Family Business?” published in Tout-Fait: The Marcel Duchamp Studies Online Journal, available at marcelduchamp.net. A lecture for the Rutgers Center for Historical Analysis seminar "The Gendering of Children" titled “Regression as Transgression in the Parisian Avant-Garde: Gender Fusions in Cubist Collage” contains material integral to the projected book. A
lecture "Dali and Hitler: between Surrealistic Fascism and Fascistic Surrealism," was presented at the international conference held in Lausanne Switzerland from Dec. 2 to 4, 2004 and for the Rutgers Graduate Art History Department on Feb. 3, 2005. It will be published in the minutes of the conference.
Erik Thunø. In August 2004 appeared Erik Thunø's co-edited book: The Miraculous Image in the Late Middle Ages and Renaissance (Rome: L'Erma di Bretschneider, 2004). Dr. Thunø also spoke at the department's faculty symposium in September 2004. The title of his talk was “The Miraculous Image and the Urban Space: Santa Maria della Consolazione in Todi.” In December 2004, Dr. Thunø participated in the XXVIII Coloquio Internacional de Historia del Arte: La imagen sagrada y sacralizada Campece, Mexico, with the paper "From Neglect to Sacred Space. The Discovery and Institutionalization of the Miracle-Working Image of the Early Modern Period."
Carla Yanni Carla Yanni now serves the art history department as graduate chair. This past year she co-taught an honors class with prize-winning historian Alison Isenberg. The class, called “The Spaces Between,” explored the history of cities as defined not by buildings but by the spaces between buildings, such as parks, streets, and historic districts. She continues her research on the architecture of psychiatric hospitals; her first book, Nature’s Museums, will be released in paperback in March 2005. In spring 2004 she was asked to serve on Rutgers' Vice-Presidential Task Force on Undergraduate Education, where she is co-chairing the Subcommittee on Classrooms and Facilities. She has just begun a three-year term on the Board of Directors of the Society of Architectural Historians.
Graduate News
Ashley Atkins has won the 2004 Winterthur Research Fellowship.
Christopher Atkins presented the paper “Frans Hals Out of the Frame” at the conference “Framing in Literature and Other Media” at the Karl Franzens Universität Graz, in Graz, Austria in June. He was also invited to present a lecture in the Boston University Art History Lecture Series. The title of his talk was “Not So Fast: A Reconsideration of Frans Hals’s Rough Manner.”
Amy Bryzgel presented the paper "The Metaphysical Journeys of Miervaldis Polis” at the Association of Women in Slavic Studies First Annual Conference, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, June, 2004. She also presented a paper during the 10th Annual Graduate Student Symposium in Art History at the Graduate Center, CUNY. This paper, "Afrika's Crimania: Negotiating Post-Soviet Identity, " was also delivered at the Student Members' Group of the Association of Art Historians "New Voices" Conference, University of Reading, UK.
Meghan Callahan received a Council on Library and Information Resources (CLIR) fellowship, funded by the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation.
Kim Curtiss presented a paper, "Veiled Identities: George Caleb Bingham’s Fur Traders Descending the Missouri and the American Art-Union in 1845," at the Frick Symposium on the History of Art in New York. She was awarded the Patricia and Phillip Frost Pre-doctoral Fellowship at the Smithsonian American Art Museum to conduct research for her dissertation, “Making Red Skins White: The Construction of Racial and Cultural Identity through Paintings and Photographs of the Native American, 1800-1900.”
Caitlin Davis presented the paper "Lee Miller: Images of Death" at SECAC (Southeast College Arts Conference) in Jacksonville, Florida in October, 2004.
Lisandra Estevez presented the paper “Artemisia Gentileschi and the Spanish Taste for Italian Painting in the Seventeenth Century” at the Renaissance Society of America’s Conference in New York last April.
Christine Filippone delivered a lecture, “Feminist Utopianism in the Work of Alice Aycock and Martha Rosler,” at the Southeastern College Art, and was awarded the SECAC Graduate Student Travel Fellowship. She has also been selected to co-chair the panel “The Potential of the Print: Public Art and the Role of New Technologies” at CAA 2006.
Heather Hess won the Polaire Weisman Fellowship at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, which will allow her to continue her dissertation research while working in the Met’s Costume Institute.
Ann Keen curated "Creating Sacred Spaces in Transcultural New Jersey" at the Stedman Gallery at Rutgers-Camden from October 13 - December 22. The exhibition was warmly reviewed in the Sunday New York Times, New Jersey section.
Patricia C. Kiernan recently had a paper accepted at a conference at the Henry Moore Institute in Leeds, England. The conference, “Making, Selling, Seeing: The Production and Experience of Relief in the Renaissance,” will take place March 4-5, 2005 in conjunction with the exhibition, “Depth of Field: The Place of Relief in the Time of Donatello.” Her paper is entitled “Romancing the Visconti? An Embriachi Composite at the Metropolitan Museum of Art.”
Karen Lloyd presented a paper at the Ninth Annual Philadelphia Symposium on the History of Art on Saturday, March 27, 2004 in the Van Pelt Auditorium at the Philadelphia Museum of Art. The paper was entitled “Bernini’s Ludovica Albertoni and the Representation of Divine Love”.
Ljubomir Milanovic presented a paper, “Reconsidering the Significance of the Esphigmenou Chrysobull,” at the Byzantine Studies Conference at Johns Hopkins.
Alison Poe received a Graduate School –New Brunswick Special Opportunity Grant to travel to Rome in January, 2004, as a Visiting Scholar at the American Academy in Rome. She delivered three conference papers in 2004: “Banqueting and Belonging in the Precincts and Solaria of Roman Imperial Cemeteries,” at the Archaeological Institute of America Annual Meeting, San Francisco, January 3-6; “Bringing light to the tomb: The Mosaic of Christ-Helios in the Mausoleum of the Julii, Rome,” at a conference entitled “The Survival and Revival of Antiquity” at Hood College, Maryland, January 31; and “Shedding New Light on the Mosaic of Christ-Helios in the Mausoleum of the Julii, Rome,” at the International Congress of Medieval Studies, Kalamazoo, Michigan, May 6-9. In Fall, 2004, she taught Greek and Roman Art as an adjunct lecturer at Drew University in Madison, New Jersey. She will give a paper entitled “Brickwork in the Earliest Christian Catacombs: Crypta as Aedes, Sepulcrum, and Domus” as part of the Association Villard de Honnecourt for Interdisciplinary Study of Medieval Technology, Science, and Art (AVISTA) session at the International Congress of Medieval Studies, Kalamazoo, Michigan, in May, 2005.
Katie Poole and Rachel Winter, Winners of the olga berendsen Prize for Baroque art
Katie Poole presented the paper "The Fountains of Juno and Neptune: Cosimo I de' Medici and the Power of Water" this past October at the University of Virginia Department of Art History Graduate Student Symposium, “Politics and Art.” Katie will also present "Heroines and Triumphs: Visual Lessons for Cassandra Ricasoli-Ruccellai in the Palazzo Sacchetti, Rome" at the annual Renaissance Society of America Conference being held in Cambridge, England, this April.
Suzan Slominski has been awarded a research grant from the Lemmermann Foundation, an interdisciplinary organization that funds scholarship on various aspects of Roman society. She also received a research grant from the Elkins Foundation for the Study of Italian Art and a summer research grant from the Graduate School, New Brunswick, for pre-dissertation support.
Wendy Steule on her wedding day flanked by bridesmaids Lois Eliason (Ph.D. 2004) and Christine Goulding (current student).
Aileen Wangreceived her Ph.D. in January 2005. Her dissertation title is Michelangelo's Self-Fashioning in Text and Image”, and her advisor was Dr. Rona Goffen.
Undergraduate News
The Department of Art History is privileged to help offer tribute to the memory of Patrick Quigley through the establishment of the Patrick J. Quigley IV Memorial Scholarship. Soon after the attack on 9/11 PriceWaterhouseCoopers established a fund to help the families of the victims of 9/11, and the Quigley family chose to use this support to endow a Memorial Scholarship in Patrick's name. The endowment will fund two annual scholarships given to Seniors majoring in Art History. The winners for 2004 were Stephen Mirra (left) and Sarah Beetham (second from left.)
The following undergraduate students received Honors in Art History 2003-2004:
Alexandra Drakakis
Lisa Giberson
Sheena Persaud
Elizabeth Royzman (2003 Quigley Winner)
Dorothy Schwartz
Congratulations to all!
Junior year Abroad in Florence
Cristina Toma, 3rd year Rutgers College
Art History/French major looking at the Duomo from the Campanile.
Report from Cristina Toma
Undergraduate art history major
Last semester several Art History majors and minors embarked on the Rutgers Study Abroad program in Florence, Italy. We found ourselves immersed in Italian culture, and surrounded by art that we had only seen in class or in our textbooks. A walk past 500-year-old statues in the niches of Orsanmichele became part of our daily routine. The nature of study abroad distanced us from the ordinary tourist: we inhabited the city, and in turn we were able to gain knowledge far beyond the means of our Lonely Planet tour books. Our experience extended far beyond the context of Florence’s streets, churches, and museums, into our own apartments. I was a fortunate Florentine dweller, residing in Piazza del Duomo with five other students. From our narrow balcony we stood at a stone’s toss from Brunelleschi’s Dome. The architecture of the Florence Cathedral, down to its stonework pattern, became a continuation of the living room and kitchen area. None of us would have ever imagined that our living arrangements would ultimately become our direct contact with Florence architecture: we awoke every morning and went to sleep every night for four months in the heart of Renaissance art. Whether or not we realized it at the time, we became Florentines for the duration of our brief stay.
Alumni News
Stacy Shultz Burger (Ph.D. 2004) In May, Stacy completed her Ph.D. ("The Female Body in Performance: Themes of Beauty, Body Image, Identity, and Violence"), and on July 28, she became the mother of Logan Neil Burger (9 lbs., 4 oz., 21 inches). Currently a visiting assistant professor at Kentucky State University, she will present the paper “Performing the Black Nude: The Artist’s Body as a Contested Site” during the Black Nude session at CAA in Atlanta this year.
Kristin Byrne (B.A. 1999) On June 18th , 2004, Kristin was privileged to be a member of the largest class to graduate from the Certificate in Historic Preservation program at Drew University in Madison, NJ, since its inception in 1997.
Louise Caldi (Ph.D. 2002) Louise is now administrative assistant to James Ulak, Deputy Director of the Freer and Sackler Galleries at the Smithsonian in Washington, DC.
Nick Capasso (Ph.D. 1998) is curator at the DeCordova Museum and Sculpture Park in Lincoln, Massachusetts, where he recently organized solo exhibitions of sculptors Rona Pondick and Pat Keck. His current project is the group thematic exhibition, “Pretty Sweet: The Sentimental Image in Contemporary Art,” which runs through April 17, 2005. He is also board chair of the Urban Arts Institute at the Massachusetts College of Art, a nonprofit, public art service provider and think tank. He was recently appointed to the General Services Administration’s National Register of Peer Professionals, which selects public artists for federal building projects. Nick, who will teach a course on curatorship for Boston University’s Department of Art History this spring, has also been working as a curatorial consultant to private collectors of outdoor sculpture, and has helped to realize site-specific projects by contemporary artists Andy Goldsworthy, Ursula von Rydingsvard, and Anne and Patrick Poirier. He lives with his wife, Andrea Southwick, and daughter Maya, 6, in a co-housing community in Acton, Massachusetts.
David Carroll (Ph.D. 2003) is an adjunct professor of Art History at Simmons College in Boston this year.
Lisa Victoria Cerisi (Ph.D. 2003) The Deutscher Akademischer Austauschdienst (German Academic Exchange Service) has awarded Lisa a six-month postdoctoral grant to conduct a research project in Germany through June of this year. Her paper, “Of Offerings and Kings: the Shrine of the Three Kings in Cologne and the Aachen Karlsschrein and Marienschrein in Coronation Ritual,” was accepted for publication by Forschungen zur Kunstgeschichte (Akademie Verlag, Berlin). Lisa will also present the paper “‘In Medio Chori and Sub Corona’: The Cult Site of St. Charlemagne in Aquensian Ritual” at CAA.
Brian Clancy taught architectural history and urban planning as a visiting professor at Marlboro College in southern Vermont during 2003-04, and he completed his dissertation, "An Architectural History of Grand Opera Houses: Constructing Cultural Identity in Urban America from 1850 to the Great Depression." Brian and his wife Amy Driscoll (M.A. 2000) are celebrating the birth of their first child, Katherine Linnea Clancy in November, 2004.
Jonathan Clancy (B.A. 2001) Jonathan is a graduate student at CUNY, where he won the 2003-2004 Catherine Hoover Voorsanger Fellowship in American Art History for students focusing on the decorative arts.
Adrienne DeAngelis (Ph.D. 1997) Adrienne, who teaches at Morehead State University in Kentucky, has two articles slated for publication this year: “The Apollo Wellhead of Danese Cattaneo as a Source for Ammannati’s Juno Fountain in Florence” in Artibus et Historiae (vol. 51, 2005); and “On the Ashmolean Bust of Lorenzo de’Medici” in The Sculpture Journal (March, 2005). In April, she will present a paper on “The Fregoso Monument” at the 2005 Conference of the Renaissance Society of America in Cambridge, UK, for which she also organized the panel, “New Studies in the Italian Renaissance Portrait Bust.”
Sara Doris (M.A. 1990) Sara has been appointed Fellow to The Smithsonian American Art Museum in Washington, DC, for the 2004-05 academic year.
Kathleen Enz Finken (Ph.D. 1998) Kathleen is currently serving as interim dean of the College of Arts and Humanities at Minnesota State University Moorhead. She received the university's 2003 Academic Affairs Award for Excellence in Teaching, and was selected to represent the university in a year-long leadership development program for leaders in academic institutions throughout Minnesota.
Tracy Fitzpatrick (PhD. 2004) Tracy has been hired by SUNY Purchase to fill a joint position, Assistant Professor of Art History, Purchase College, SUNY and Curator, Neuberger Museum of Art. She will be teaching modern and contemporary art history and curatorial studies, as well as curating at the museum. In addition, the University Relations Office at Rutgers interviewed her about her dissertation topic for the new Graduate School brochure.
Gregory Gilbert (Ph.D. 1998) Last spring, Greg was granted tenure at Knox College, Galesburg, Illinois, which had awarded him the 2002 Philip Green Wright/Lombard Prize for Distinguished Teaching. His article, "Robert Motherwell's World War II Collages: Signifying War as Topical Spectacle in Abstract Expressionist Art" -- which originally appeared in the festschrift which he organized with Caroline Goeser in honor of Professor Matthew Baigell’s retirement -- has also been published in the Oxford Art Journal (vol. 27, no. 3, 2004). Greg will present a talk, “Rethinking De Kooning's Women: Gender Identity, Mass Culture and the Social Construct of the ‘Patriotute,’ ” in the session "Mass Culture Before Pop" at the 2005 CAA conference in Atlanta. In addition, he has been invited to present a lecture on Motherwell’s collages at the international conference “Collage as Cultural Practice” at the University of Iowa.
Andrew Graciano (B.A. 1995) is assistant professor of Art History and faculty senator at the University of South Carolina. He recently published "Shedding New Botanical Light on Joseph Wright's Portrait of Brooke Boothby: Rousseauian Pleasure versus Medicinal Utility" in the Zeitschrift fur Kunstgeschichte (3:2004). His article, " ‘The Book of Nature is Open to All Men': Geology, Mining and History in Joseph Wright's Derbyshire Landscapes," will be published this fall in the Huntington Library Quarterly. Andrew spent one month last summer in Liverpool, where he found information relating to a painting in the Columbia Museum of Art in Columbia, SC. His research culminated in "The Picture of Unhappiness: Benjamin Wilson's Portrait of the Earl and Countess of Derby," a paper that he presented during the conference of the British Society for Eighteenth-Century Studies at Oxford University in January, 2005. He will also present "Joseph Wright and the Scottish Enlightenment: Painting for Men of Feeling," at the American Society for Eighteenth-Century Studies conference in Las Vegas this April. In the meantime, he is wrapping up his lecture series at the Columbia Museum of Art, and continues to act as faculty advisor for the newly created Art History Student Association.
Frima Fox Hofrichter (Ph.D. 1979) Professor and chair of the History of Art and Design Department at Pratt Institute, is a contributor/collaborator for Janson’s Basic History of Art, 7th ed. (writing Part III-Renaissance to Rococo, the Early Modern World ) which will be published this Spring. She is also a contributor/collaborator for Janson’s History of Art, 7th ed., writing the Baroque and Rococo chapters. The new Janson editions will include more social and cultural history— the focus of Frima’s work.
Meisha Hunter (M.A. 1997) Meisha, historic preservationist for the New York City Landmarks Preservation Commission, delivered the paper "Bringing the Croton to New York: Exploring Manhattan Landmarks" at the Berliner Denkmaltage conference in Berlin during September, 2004.
Norman Kleeblatt (B.A. 1971) Among Norman’s most recent publications are: “The Nazi Occupation of the White Cube: Piotr Uklanski's The Nazis and Rudolf Herz's Zugzwang," in Impossible Images: Contemporary Art after the Holocaust, ed. Shelley Hornstein, Laura Levitt, and Laurence Silberstein (New York University Press, 2003); "Istanbul Biennial," Reviews: International, in ARTNews (vol. 102, no. 11, December, 2003); 21 entries in Masterworks of The Jewish Museum (Yale University Press, 2004); and "House Rules: Norman Kleeblatt on Maison Rouge" in Artforum (vol 43, no. 3, November, 2004). His critical introduction for a series of four articles, “Identity Roller Coaster,” will appear in the Spring issue of Art Journal. Norman is also curator of “Collective Perspectives: New Acquisitions Celebrate the Centennial,” which runs through March, 2005 at The Jewish Museum in New York, and was one of six curators of “Six Feet Under: Make Nice, A Presentation of work by Rainer Ganahl and Artur Zmijewski.,” which took place last summer at the White Box, New York. Norman gave the talk "The Distanced Mirrors of Memory: Contemporary Artists Respond to Nazi Imagery and Evil" during the Jewish Heritage Lecture Series, The University of Wisconsin-Madison, Madison in March; was session chair for "Identity Roller Coaster" at CAA 2004; was the speaker on "Wertheimer, Rothschild, and Kahnweiler: Jewish Patrons and the Paradox of Portraiture" at the Yellin Memorial Lectures, The Judah L. Magnes Museum, Oakland, in February; and served as panelist for "Israel in America: Challenges of Presenting New Israeli Art" at the National Foundation for Jewish Culture, New York, in June.
Christine W. Laidlaw (Ph.D. 1996) Christine’s article, "Painting with Silken Threads: Fanny Dixwell Holmes and Japanism in Nineteenth-Century Boston," (Studies in the Decorative Arts, Spring-Summer 2003, pp. 42-68), was honored by the Decorative Arts Society with the Robert C. Smith Award as one of two distinguished decorative arts articles published in the U.S. during 2003.
Gail Levin (Ph.D. 1976) Professor of Art History and American Studies at Baruch College and the Graduate Center of CUNY, Gail announces that her book, Aaron Copland's America (Watson-Guptill, 2000), co-authored with Judith Tick, has been published in Japanese translation by Toshindo Press, Tokyo. Also in Japan, Gail’s article “American Women Artists, Art Dealers, and Museum Personnel: Feminists or Self-Involved Careerists?” was published in Art Research (vol. 4, March 2004, Ritsumeikan University, Kyoto). Last fall, her article, “Between Two Worlds: Folk Culture, Identity, and the American Art of Yasuo Kuniyoshi,” appeared in The Archives of American Art Journal (vol. 43). Her article, “Biography and the Visual Arts: The Problematic Interface of Images and Life,” was published in Biography and Source Studies (vol. 8, 2004). During 2004, Gail presented several papers and lectures in the U.S. and Canada: “How Realism Can be Modern,” in “Redefining American Modernism,” College Art Association Annual Meeting, Seattle, WA, February 19, 2004; "Problems in Dating: Putting the Catalogue Raisonne in Order," at "The Catalogue Raisonne: A Seminar," at New York University on April 17, 2004; and "Edward Hopper and the Cinema," at the University of Toronto, April 30, 2004. In February of this year, she will chair two sessions at the annual meeting of the College Art Association on "Film and the Visual Arts," parts I & II.
Joanna Lindenbaum (B.A. 1997) Joanna curated the exhibition “Innovator, Activist, Healer: The Art of Friedl Dicker-Brandeis,” organized originally by The Museum of Tolerance, Los Angeles, and “Erwartung/Expectancy: A Video Installation by Dara Birnbaum” at the Jewish Museum in New York in September. Joanna was a contributor of three entries in Masterworks of The Jewish Museum (Yale University Press, 2004), and served as a panelist in "Institutional Issues in Community Engagement" at the Animating Democracy Conference, Flint, Michigan, Americans for the Arts in October, 2003.
Linda Backer McKee (M.A. 1983) In 2004, Linda, head librarian at The John and Mable Ringling Museum of Art in Sarasota, Florida since 1994, published two books with assistant curator Francoise Hack: Cà d'Zan: The Ringling Winter Residence and The Art Galleries at the Ringling Museum. A third publication on the historic John Ringling Library is in preparation.
Rose Merola (M.A. 2000) Rose was curator of “White Matter(s),” a group exhibition presented by NATUREart Non-Profit, Inc. The exhibition took place September 10 through October 10, 2004.
Felicia Messina-D'Haiti (M.A. 1995) Felicia earned her National Board Certification in Art /Early Adolescence through Young Adulthood, in November, 2004. She is one of three art teachers in Prince George's County to earn this certification. She also presented a paper titled "Conversations with Art: A Phenomenological Study of Children's Lived Experiences of Being in the Presence of their Own Art" during the conference of the Society for Phenomenology and the Human Sciences, held at the University of Memphis in October, 2004.
Amy Mooney (Ph.D. 2001) Amy published the book Archibald J. Motley, Jr. in the David C. Driskell Series on African American Art, vol. 4 (Petaluma, CA: Pomegranate Press, 2004).
Anina has been promoted to associate director of development at the Morgan Library. She and her husband, Jeremy Abbate, have recently moved to South Orange, New Jersey. Anina can be reached at
Elizabeth Weinfield (B.A. 2002) Elizabeth is currently living in New York City, where she is enjoying careers in both music and art history. A freelance violist, she recently joined the violin faculty of Boys Harbor Conservatory. Elizabeth also works part-time at the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s department of European painting, where she does provenance research on nineteenth-century French art.
Stephan Wolohojian (B.A. 1984) Stephan recently won the George Wittenborn Memorial Book Award and the Book Prize from the AAMC (American Association of Museum Curators) for his book A Private Passion: 19th-century Paintings and Drawings from the Grenville L. Winthop Collection, Harvard University (Yale University Press, 2003).
Midori Yoshimoto (Ph.D. 2002) Midori has co-organized the exhibition “A New Diversity: Art from Northern New Jersey's Latino Diaspora” at New Jersey City University Galleries, where she currently serves as director. Part of the state-wide arts initiative “Transcultural New Jersey,” the exhibition has traveled to the Perth Amboy Gallery Center for the Arts and will also be mounted at the Montclair State University Art Gallery. Since November, 2004, she has been giving occasional gallery talks at the MoMA as one of the museum’s education lecturers. In February, 2005, she will present the paper “What is Japanese Painting Today? Young Artists Deconstruct Nihonga” at the CAA Annual Conference. Midori’s book, Into Performance: Japanese Artists in New York, will be published by Rutgers University Press in spring, 2005.
Lilian H. Zirpolo (Ph.D. 1994) Lilian’s book, Ave Papa/Ave Papabile: The Sacchetti Family, Their Art Patronage, and Political Aspirations, for which she received a Samuel H. Kress Publication Grant, will be published by the Centre of Reformation and Renaissance Studies, Victoria College, Toronto (with Toronto University Press) in early 2005 as part of their Essays and Studies Series. Also forthcoming are her reviews of Caravaggio by John Gash (Chaucer Press, 2003) in Art History; Philip II of Spain: Patron of the Arts by Rosemarie Mulcahy in the Renaissance Quarterly; and Architecture and Politics of Gender in Early Modern Europe, Helen Hills, ed. (Ashgate, 2003) in the Woman's Art Journal. In April, 2004 Lilian co-organized and co-chaired (with Rutgers alumnus Zbynek Smetana) a session at the South Central Renaissance Conference in Austin, Texas entitled "Artistic Construction of an Identity." At the same venue she presented a paper on "Christina of Sweden: Pier Francesco Mola's Patron," and in May, 2004 she presented a paper at the Mediterranean Studies Association Conference in Barcelona entitled "Who is Depicted in Simon Vouet's Allegory of the Human Soul? Prudence or Memory?" She continues to co-edit and co-publish (with Joanna Gardner-Huggett) Aurora, The Journal of the History of Art, now in its sixth year.
Jack Spector's Retirement Lecture
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TO ALL ALUMNI AND FRIENDS OF THE DEPARTMENT OF ART HISTORY AT RUTGERS UNIVERSITY: |
