Smith to Give Carnegie Discoverers Talk at CMNH
Deirdre M. Smith will deliver the talk, “Looking Closely: Lessons From the Carnegie’s “Natural History Art” Collection”, at the Carnegie Museum of Natural History on May 9, 2024, 6-8pm. This talk will share images and stories from the collection, exploring what it can teach audiences today about the history of the museum, and the history of art and science. Learn more on the CMNH website.
Larson Co-Authors and Illustrates Children’s Book on Fu Hao
Ellen Larson (PhD 2022), co-founder of ARTSQ, a new platform and imprint for early-age art historical education, has co-authored and illustrated ARTSQ’s first publication. “Unearthing Fu Hao: China’s Warrior Queen'' guides readers through the objects of Fu Hao’s tomb, using close looking skills to tell the story of “one of ancient China’s most powerful women.” Read more on ARTSQ.
López Receives Humanities Center Summer Fellowship
Graduate student Janina López has been awarded a Summer Fellowship from the Humanities Center at the University of Pittsburgh. López will pursue her dissertation research in conjunction with the Center’s 2024-2025 theme of “Method?”, investigating interdisciplinary methodological practices of art history. Read more about the fellowship on the Humanities Center website.
Vuković Receives Humanities Center Summer Research Fellowship
Graduate student Vuk Vuković receives the Humanities Center Summer Research Fellowship. With the support of the Humanities Center, the project Vuković plans to complete over the summer will allow him to finalize archival research and finish writing the second chapter of his dissertation project. By completing all archival research this coming summer, Vuković will be in a great position to finish the Ph.D. in his fifth year while utilizing the advantage of being part of the Humanities Center’s intellectual network during the 2024-25 academic year.
Vuk Vuković Publishes in the Journal of Film and Video
PhD candidate Vuk Vuković recently published a book review in the Journal of Film and Video. His review of "Encounters in Video Art in Latin America ed. by Elena Shtromberg and Glenn Phillips" examines the complex history of making, exhibiting, storing, archiving, and preserving video art in Latin America.
Kupfer Organizes and Speaks on Brasa XVII Panel
Graduate student Paula Kupfer recently organized and took part in the panel, “Reciprocal Views: Interdisciplinary Approaches to the History of Rio de Janeiro’s Tijuca Forest,” at the Biennial Congress of the Brazilian Studies Association (Brasa) XVII. The panel explored the history of the forest from interdisciplinary perspectives. Read more on the Brasa website.
López to Participate in Voces Oral History Summer Institute
Graduate student Janina López will participate in the Voces Oral History Summer Institute in the Moody College of Communication at UT Austin. This week-long workshop includes training in conducting oral history as well as workshopping of participants’ research. López will continue her dissertation work and prepare to conduct artist interviews this summer. Read more on the Voces website.
Hands-On Encounters With Ed Ruscha’s Artists’ Books
Explore Ed Ruscha’s unusual approach to the book medium and see how he rejected the conventions of sequential narratives, photography, and fine art in general. The event, April 16 1-2:30pm in the Frick Fine Arts Library, will commence with remarks from Grace Marston, student curator of the exhibition of Ruscha’s books on view in FFAL throughout April.
Villela Balderrama Receives ALAA Article Award
Graduate student Marisol Villela Balderrama was recently awarded the Article Award from the Association for Latin American Art (ALAA). Villela Balderrama’s article, “Doves and Machetes: Rina Lazo’s Portable Mural Venceremos (1959) in Guatemala, North Korea and Beyond,” appeared in Art History Vol. 45, issue 5 (November 2022). Read the article here.
Gao and McCoy Receive Collaborative ASC Grant
Graduate student Naren Gao and Dr. Michelle McCoy have received an Evelyn and Thomas Rawski Graduate Student/Faculty Partnership Grant from the Asian Studies Center. Gao will develop an undergraduate course in collaboration with McCoy, and conduct field research in Inner Mongolia, China, this summer. Learn more on the UCIS website.
Wyatt Curates Upcoming AFAM Exhibition
Graduate student Brooke Wyatt curated the new show, Somewhere to Roost, at the American Folk Art Museum. Opening April 12, 2024, the show explores the ways that artists evoke and construct ideas of “home” – from experiences of immigration and incarceration to visions of home that are inventive and unexpected. Read more on the AFAM website.
Brownlee and Savage Host a Curator Talk on Artists' Books Exhibit
Chrislynn Brownlee and Eli Savage will host a curator talk on their exhibit, "May Induce an Epiphany”: Artists’ Books on the Future." All books on display deal with the imagination of the future. Their creative, ambitious approaches to the idea of the future mirror their manifold approaches to the format of the book, from Julie Chen’s “Space-Time Geometry,” where the accordion fold structure of the book reflects its thesis that time collapses in on itself, to Anne de Vries’ “Deep Scroll,” a traditionally bound book simulating a partly-AI-generated doomscroll session out of a fever dream.
Larson Curates Studio Art Faculty Exhibition
Ellen Larson (PhD 2022) recently curated the University of Pittsburgh Studio Art faculty exhibition, Neither Here nor There, which opened at the Brew House Gallery on March 21, 2024. Neither Here nor There features recent work by seventeen faculty members of the Studio Arts department whose unique practices underscore shared investments in locating the fluid nature of things in between.
Ptaschinski Presents at the Royal Netherlands Institute in Rome
On Feb. 22, Claire N. Ptaschinski presented her paper, "Catastrophic Thinking: Picturing Natural Disaster in Quarant’ore Altar Design of 17th-century Rome," at the Koninklijk Nederlands Instituut Rome as part of a two-day workshop on Anthropocentrism and Ecocentrism in the Early Modern Netherlands and Italy. Ptaschinski's paper formed part of a panel addressing flooding's impact on architectural design in premodern Italy and considered how printed designs for ephemeral Baroque altars reveal an ecological vision of human impermanence in the face of powerful climatic agents.
Bertagnolli Receives SAAM Fellowship
The Smithsonian American Art Museum has awarded Isaiah Bertagnolli the Douglass Foundation Predoctoral Fellowship. This fellowship will support work on his dissertation "Landscapes of Disarmament: US Antinuclear Arts Activism," which examines the role artists played in the disarmament cause. Bertagnolli will work under the supervision of Dr. Sarah Newman, the James Dicke Curator of Contemporary Art. Read more about the fellowship here.