Faculty & Student News
Dear Alumni,
As last year’s events and activities recede and next year’s begin to generate excitement, I wanted to write you with art history news. Our department has long wanted to keep in better touch with alumni and that has now become easier. We have redesigned our Web site, making it more informative and more user-friendly, and we are on a campaign to update contact information so that we can reach more of you effectively. Art History is in transition, and we are anxious to make you part of it.
Last year was busy and rewarding. Our Burke Lecture Series continued in its tradition of bringing outstanding scholars to campus. We enjoyed delightful lectures on such topics as Central African art, 19th century illustration, Chinese art and politics, American landscape painting (by a British art historian, no less), and the politics of defining “contemporary.” We also had six additional lectures because the department was interviewing for two faculty positions, both filled. Along with these activities the School of Fine Arts gallery (SOFA) as usual offered up a series of highly dynamic and thought provoking shows, while the IU Art Museum presented several fine exhibitions, ranging from African Currency to Art and Travel in Europe.
Among our faculty accomplishments, Sarah Burns spent the year as a distinguished fellow at the Terra Foundation for American Art Fellowship in Art History at the Newberry Library in Chicago—a most prestigious appointment and Sarah is the first art historian to have been so honored. Christian Gruber was extremely active around campus, guest curating an exhibition in the IU Art Museum on Islamic book art, in which she involved several of our graduate students who contributed to an edited scholarly book that will be published this fall. Several of us published books this past year, including:
Sarah Burns: Co-Authored American Art to 1900: A Documentary History (California 2009)
Michelle Facos: Symbolist Art in Context (California 2008)
Christiane Gruber: The Timurid Book of Ascension (Mi’rajnama): A Study ofText and Image in a Pan Asian Context (Valencia, 2008) and The Ilkhanid Book of Ascension: A Persian-Sunni Devotional Tale
(London, 2009)
Giles Knox: The Late Paintings of Velázquez: Theorizing Painterly Performance (Ashgate 2009)
Patrick McNaughton: A Bird Dance Near Saturday City: Sidi Ballo And The Art Of West African Masquerade (Bloomington, IU Press, 2008)
Julie Van Voorhis: Aphrodisias ll. Roman Portrait Statuary from Aphrodisias (R.R.R. Smith 2008)
Michelle Facos, who was promoted to the rank of Full Professor, is garnering much international attention for research projects that emphasize the relevance of art to national identity in the very early 20th century. Giles Knox, who was promoted to the rank of Associate Professor with Tenure, made a dramatic scholarly move as a Renaissance expert researching Spanish art, and his book has been so well received it is already being translated into Spanish.
Through their student organization (AHA, the Art History Association) our graduate students once again choreographed an excellent annual symposium, Art on the Edge: Contesting Boundaries in Art and Art History, and once again the talks were very high caliber. We are fortunate to have consistently excellent graduate students, and this past year several of them were awarded major research fellowships
We are looking ahead to the new Burke lectures. Here are the details so far: Burke Lecture Series Speakers 2009-2010.
Date: September 18, 2009
Speaker Name: Charles Colbert (Assistant Professor, Portland State University)
"Whistler's Haunted Nocturnes: Spiritualism and Art in the Nineteenth Century." Sponsoring Faculty: Sarah Burns
FA 102, Time 4:30 pmAfter graduating with a Ph. D. from Harvard University in 1978, Charles Colbert taught at Middlebury College. He has also taught at Boston College and Brandeis University. Since 2000 he has resided in Portland, Oregon, where he teaches at Portland State University. He is the author of A Measure of Perfection: Phrenology and the Fine Arts in America and many articles on American art. His current project, a book on Spiritualism and American Art, is awaiting publication.
Date: September 25, 2009
Speaker Name: Renata Holod (Professor, University of Pennsylvania) "Event and Memory: The Portrayal of a (Minor) Victory in 13th-Century Iran."Sponsoring Faculty: Christiane Gruber
FA 102, Time 5 pmRenata Holod is Professor of the History of Art, and Curator, Near East Section, Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology at the University of Pennsylvania. She received her BA in Islamic Studies from the University of Toronto, MA in the History of Art from University of Michigan and Ph.D. in Fine Arts from Harvard University. She has carried out archaeological and architectural fieldwork in Syria, Iran, Morocco, Central Asia, Turkey, Tunisia, and Ukraine. She has co-authored and edited works such as: City in the Desert: an account of the archaeological expedition to Qasr al-Hayr al-Sharqi, Syria; Architecture and Community: Building in the Islamic World Today; Modern Turkish Architecture; The Mosque and the Modern World; The City in the Islamic World; and An Island Through Time: Jerba Studies. Professor Holod has served as Convenor, Steering Committee Member, and Master Jury Chair of the Aga Khan Award for Architecture. She also served as consultant to Skidmore, Owing and Merrill (SOM), Arthur Ericson Architects, and Venturi Scott-Brown Architects. In 2004, the Islamic Environmental Research Centre honored her with an Award for outstanding work in Islamic Architectural Studies.
Date: October 23, 2009
Speaker Name: Barbara Frank
“Texts and Textures in African Ceramics”
Sponsoring Faculty: Diane Pelrine/IUAM
Radio-TV 251, 5 pmBarbara Frank is an Associate Professor at the State University of New York, Stony Brook. She received her Ph.D. from Indiana University (1988) and holds a joint appointment with art and anthropology. She works on African art history, especially Mali, as well as with arts of the African Diaspora and ancient Mesoamerica. Her specialty is West African pottery. In 2005 she held a Senior Fellowship at the National Museum of African Art, Smithsonian Institution in order to further her research on African ceramics. Some of her notable publications include her two books: Mande Potters and Leatherworkers: Art and Heritage in West Africa and Status and Identity in West Africa: Nyamakalaw of Mande, published by Smithsonian Institution Press and Indiana University Press respectively. She has had a variety of articles published in African Arts and Mande Studies journals, as well as being featured in several exhibition and encyclopedic tomes.
Date: November 5, 2009
Speaker Name: Dr. Gloria Groom, Art Institute of Chicago
“Eva Gonzalès and Berthe Morisot: Manet's Muses and Models”
Sponsoring Faculty: Michelle Facos
FA 015, 5:05 pmGloria Groom is the David and Mary Winton Green Curator of Nineteenth Century European Painting and Sculpture at The Art Institute of Chicago. She received her Ph.D. from the University of Texas at Austin (1989) with a specialty in late l9th century French painting. During her three years in Paris she studied at the Université de la Sorbonne, UNESCO and Ecole du Louvre, in addition to interning at the Musée Picasso. She came to the Art Institute in November 1984 as a research assistant for the popular exhibition A Day in the Country: Impressionism and the French Landscape (1984-1985). Two years later, she worked on and wrote for the exhibition and catalogue The Art of Paul Gauguin (1986-1987). Her book, Edouard Vuillard: Painter-Decorator was published by Yale University Press in 1993. Since then she has been involved as both curator and catalogue author for exhibitions on important French artists including: Redon (1994), Caillebotte (1995) Renoir (1998), Bonnard and Vuillard (2001) Manet (2003) Seurat (2004), Toulouse-Lautrec (2005) and the major loan exhibition held in New York, Chicago and Paris , entitled Cézanne to Picasso (2007). Most recently she played a major role in the reinstallation of the 19th century European Art galleries, which reopened in January 2009. An internationally acclaimed author, curator, and lecturer, she was bestowed the title Chevalier des arts et lettres by the French government in 2005. Her current projects include the organization of a major loan exhibition, Fashion Impressionism and Modernity, which will open in Paris in fall of 2012 and preparations towards an on-line scholarly and technical catalogue of the 19th century collection.
Date: November 6, 2009
Speaker: Henry Drewal
Lecture Title: TBA
Sponsoring Faculty: Patrick McNaughton
FA 102, 5 pmHenry Drewal received his BA from Hamilton College majoring in French and minoring in Fine Arts. After graduation he joined the Peace Corps, taught French and English and organized vacation arts camps in Nigeria . It was during his two years in Nigeria that he apprenticed himself to a Yoruba sculptor. That experience was transformative. He received two Masters' degrees (1968/69) and a PhD from Columbia in 1973.From 1973 to 1990, he taught at The Cleveland State University (where he was chair of the Art Department , developed a collection of African and African Diaspora art, and curated several exhibitions). He was also a Visiting Professor at SUNY-Purchase (1986) and the University of California-Santa Barbara (1988).He has served as Curator of African Art at the Neuberger Museum-SUNY-Purchase (1986), The Cleveland Museum of Art (1988-90), and Curator of African Art at the Toledo Museum of Art (1989). Since 1991 He has been the Evjue-Bascom Professor of Art History and Afro-American Studies at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and Adjunct Curator of African Art at the Chazen Museum of Art, UW-Madison.Over the years, he has published several books and edited volumes and many articles on various aspects of African art, primarily on the arts of Yoruba-speaking peoples of West Africa and the Yoruba Diaspora in the Americas. He has curated many exhibitions of African art, the most recent being Beads, Body, and Soul: Art and Light in the Yoruba Universe (with John Mason), which toured five US cities (Los Angeles, Atlanta, Miami, Madison, and New York ) between 1998-2000. The book/catalogue for the exhibition was a finalist for the Arts Council of the ASA award in 2001.Since 2001, he has been researching (funded by a Senior Fellowship from the American Institute of Indian Studies) the arts, identities, cultures, and histories of African descendants in India, helping to establish the Siddi Women’s Quilting Cooperative and organizing several exhibitions and sales of their quilts. In addition, he was the guest curator at the Fowler Museum at UCLA for a major traveling exhibition entitled Mami Wata: Arts for Water Spirits in Africa and Its Diasporas and is the editor of the Sacred Waters: Arts for Mami Wata and other Water Divinities in Africa and the Diaspora, which was published by Indiana University Press in 2008.
As lecture times solidify we will have full announcements on our website. These lectures are open to the public, and if you find yourself in the vicinity we hope you will join us.
In addition, our graduate students will continue to run their Brown Bag Presentations, which feature informal lectures on research in progress and can be attended by anyone who is interested. There will be more outstanding exhibitions from both SOFA and the Indiana University Art Museum. For example, SOFA will present a William Itter retrospective, while the IU Art Museum will exhibit a large selection of William Itter’s collection of African ceramics, textiles, and basketry. Both of these exhibitions will be visually stunning and well worth a visit.
We are most fortunate to have two new faculty members joining us. Sarah Basset is a specialist in the arts and visual culture around the Mediterranean Sea from when the Roman Empire dwindled and Christianity rose to the rise of Islam. She is well published and a great asset to our department and the University. Dawna Schuld has just received her Ph.D. from the University of Chicago. She specializes in contemporary art, especially in America, and is an expert on conceptual and installation art, and even the modern history of gardens. We could not be more pleased to welcome these fine teachers and researchers to our program.
If you get a chance, please do visit our revitalized website www.indiana.edu/~arthist. In the meantime, we are anxious to have up to date contact information on all of our alumni. In addition we would love to hear your news, and even share it on our website and future newsletters if you would find that desirable. Many undergraduate art history majors do not make careers of art history. But we have found to our delight that a many alumni feel their art history interests and backgrounds have proven quite beneficial in their careers or in their lives. If you have found this to be true we would love to hear about it.
So here is wishing you all the best for the upcoming fall and winter months, and hoping we can be in touch.
Yours sincerely,
Patrick McNaughton
Chancellor’s Professor of African Art History
Chair, Department of the History of Art
