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.
Vuk Vuković Presents at the Society for Cinema and Media Studies
Vuk Vuković delivered a paper at the 2024 SCMS Conference in Boston, Massachusetts.
UAG Featured in NEXTPittsburgh
Boaz Frankel, the host of NEXTpittsburgh's popular segment Yinzer Backstage Pass, visited the Frick Fine Arts building for a tour of the Cloister, University Art Gallery, and the Fine Arts Library. Dr. Sylvia Rhor, Gallery Director, shared the history of the building and its unique architecture. She also guided Frankel through the Cloister and the three exhibitions currently on view at the Gallery. The visit concluded with a look at some of the unique objects and artwork in the UAG's collection.
Giordano Contributes to LARB “Short Take” Series
Graduate student Rebecca Giordano recently reviewed an exhibition of the work of multidisciplinary artist Yoshie Sakai at the Vincent Price Art Museum for the Los Angeles Review of Books. Read Giordano’s review, “Grandmas Gone Wild,” on the LARB website.
Miramontes Olivas Opens New Show at Schnitzer Museum of Art
Adriana Miramontes Olivas (PhD 2022) recently opened her latest exhibition at the Jordan Schnitzer Museum of Art as Curator of Academic Programs and Latin American & Caribbean Art. My Body, My Choice? Art And Reproductive Justice considers bodily autonomy through the work of Nao Bustamante, Judy Chicago, and Alison Saar. Read more on the Schnitzer Museum website.
Nygren to Present at Renaissance Society of America
Chris Nygren will present his paper, “Bones of the Earth: Subterranean Materials in The Florentine Studiolo” at the Renaissance Society of America annual meeting on March 21, 2024 in Chicago. In the paper, Nygren approaches early painting on stone as a philosophical exercise that sought to highlight material transformations and the role of human labor. Read more on the RSA website.
Alex Taylor Presents at Business History Conference
Alex Taylor will present his work at the Business History Conference in Providence, Rhode Island, March 14-16, 2024. The theme for the 2024 meeting is "Doing Business in the Public Interest." Alex will chair a session on Public-Private Partnerships in the Arts and Education, and present a paper titled “Beautify America with Billboards: Art and the Outdoor Advertising Lobby,” research that extends research in his most recent book Forms of Persuasion: Art and Corporate Image in the 1960s (California, 2022).
Roberts Awarded Lyons Canadian Film Scholarship
Graduate student Emma C. Roberts was awarded The Jeffrey & Sandra Lyons Canadian Film Scholarship in support of work that will engage TIFF's Film Reference Library (FRL). Roberts will have extended access to the resources and collections housed in the FRL as she continues to develop research on Allan King’s 1983 film Who’s in Charge? Read more about the scholarship on the Toronto International Film Festival's website.