Bai and McCoy present on transcultural exchange in Eastern Eurasian religious art at MARAAS
HAA graduate student Mengtian Bai (presenter) and faculty member Micki McCoy (discussant) jointly participated in the panel, "Negotiating Foreignness: Rethinking Religious Art within and beyond East Asia, 12th-17th Centuries," at the Mid-Atlantic Region Association for Asian Studies which was held this year at Pitt.
Read Mengtian Bai's student profile here: https://www.haa.pitt.edu/people/mengtian-bai
Students Explore African and Diasporic Dance with Legacy Arts Project’s Erin Perry
On October 16, Erin Perry, executive director of the Legacy Arts Project, led a dynamic workshop for students students enrolled in the course Arts of Africa. Based in Homewood, The Legacy Arts Project is a non-profit organization dedicated to preserving and promoting the arts of Africa and its diasporas through performance, education, and community programs.
Copeland Contributes Interview to Echo Delay Reverb Exhibition Catalog
An interview with Professor Huey Copeland was published on October 17, 2025 in the catalog for the exhibition Echo Delay Reverb: American Art, French Thought, on view through February 2026 at the Palais de Tokyo in Paris. Copeland was interviewed by art historian and co-editor of the publication Elvan Zabunyan.
Copeland Participates in Vision & Justice Now Convening
Professor Huey Copeland moderated a “Fireside Chat” with artist Glenn Ligon for the 2025 convening of Vision & Justice Now: The Challenge and Promises of American Democracy. The event, which ran from October 6-7, 2025 at the Ford Foundation Center for Social Justice in New York, convened artists, legal scholars, cultural leaders, and civic thinkers to examine how art and culture shape, explore, and reimagine the democratic ideals we claim to hold.
Copeland In Conversation at Carnegie Museum of Art
On September 25, 2025, Professor Huey Copeland joined Ananda Cohen-Aponte, Associate Professor of History of Art at Cornell University, and Dr. Marie-Stéphanie Delamaire, Curator of European and American Art at Carnegie Museum of Art, for an evening of dialogue concerning the exhibition Fault Lines: Art, Imperialism, and the Atlantic World at the Carnegie Museum of Art.
Smith organizes exhibit at Hillman Library
In September, Teaching Assistant Professor of Museum Studies Deirdre Smith's exhibit "We Humans" at 70: Educating Pittsburgh on Race in the 1950s opened at the Hyland Gallery at Hillman Library. The exhibit focuses on "We Humans," an exhibit on race and racism developed by two curators of Anthropology at the Carnegie Museum that opened in downtown Pittsburgh in 1955.
Design Studio 2 Students Visit Proposed Development Site in Strip District
On a sunny Saturday in September, ARC 1202 Design Studio 2 met with Riverlife Pittsburgh Director of Planning and Projects Gavin White to tour a proposed development in the Strip District at the corner of Railroad Street and the 31st Street Bridge. Riverlife is a community organization dedicated to the development of Pittsburgh's riverfronts. The group hopes to transform the site into a mixed use development and a public park.
Art Journal Publishes Article by Alex Taylor on James Rosenquist
The latest edition of Art Journal (Volume 84, 2025) includes Taylor's article titled "Body Count: The Critical Matrices of James Rosenquist’s Growth Plan."
Nygren's forthcoming book awarded Meiss Prize by CAA
Christopher J. Nygren received the Millard Meiss Prize from the College Art Association for his forthcoming book, Sedimentary Aesthetics: Painting on Stone and the Ecology of Early Modern Art (Yale, 2026).
Read more about the Meiss Prize: https://www.collegeart.org/programs/publishing-grants/meiss
Bertagnolli Begins Public Lectures Series
Isaiah Bertagnolli (Ph.D. 2025) has partnered with a local theater in Bozeman, Montana to deliver a public lecture series through October. The series, "Art! With Dr. Ike, PhD" will draw on his dissertation research and a new archival project. Through an hour long format, this conversational lecture series will explore topics like art nuclear weapons, social movements, and the Bozeman architect Fred F. Willson (1877-1956).
López begins Will Barnet Foundation Predoctoral Fellowship at SAAM
PhD candidate Janina López has joined the Smithsonian Institution's Fellowship Program as the Will Barnet Foundation Predoctoral Fellow at the Smithsonian American Art Museum. This fellowship will support work on her dissertation, “The Royal Chicano Air Force’s Comuniversidad: Public Art and Education in Northern California since 1969,” which examines the murals, printed materials, and educational programs of the Sacramento-based collective of artists and activists.
Alex Taylor Reports on Calder Mobile at New Airport Terminal
Alex Taylor was consulted by local journalists on the reinstallation of the Alexander Calder mobile Pittsburgh (1958) in the new terminal of the Pittsburgh International Airport. Taylor has written the new interpretative label for the work, which is now suspended over a two-story atrium as the centerpiece of the landside terminal. The terminal will open in the last quarter of 2025.
Bertagnolli Presents at Smithsonian American Art Museum
Isaiah Bertagnolli (PhD 2025) presented dissertation research on during SAAM's annual fellow's lectures. Bertagnolli discussed Barbara Donachy's "Amber Waves of Grain" (1983), a 35,000 piece model of the US nuclear arsenal made from clay. In his analysis, he described audience emotional reactions to the artwork as logged in viewer comment books, how "Amber Waves of Grain" facilitated social organizing against the arms race, and how the material of fired clay made connections to antinuclear platforms.
Fava-Piz Appointed Curator of Modern Art at the Phillips Collection
Alumna Clarisse Fava-Piz (PhD 2022) has been appointed the new Curator of Modern Art at the Phillips Collection in Washington, DC. She will help steward the Phillips’s internationally recognized modern art collection and collaborate across departments to create dynamic exhibitions and fresh scholarship that foster more inclusive narratives about modern art within a global context. Clarisse’s work will focus on expanding the modernist canon through transnational and interdisciplinary approaches that resonate with contemporary audiences.
Bromberg Receives Tenure
Alumna Sarah Bromberg (PhD 2013) was awarded tenure at Fitchburg State University.