Dr. Mina Kim has been appointed assistant professor of art history in art history foundations. Dr. Kim will teach foundations-level courses including art appreciation and survey of art history (from western and global/non-western perspectives) and will work with faculty to coordinate art history foundations curriculum development. She will begin her new position August 16, 2019. Dr. Kim’s research focuses on modern and contemporary art of Korea and East Asia including multimedia and digital art, global modern and contemporary art, transdisciplinarity in art and science/mathematics/physics, cross- or inter-communication between art and science, art and religion, art and society in East Asia and the world, and the art, society and politics of mapping east and west. Before coming to UA, Kim was a post-doctoral faculty fellow in Asian art history at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. She received her BA in the history of art magna cum laude from the University of Michigan, and her MA and PhD degrees in the history of art from The Ohio State University. Kim is the author of Jung Yeondoo’s Media Art: Quantum Deformation through Coincidence of the Real and the Virtual. She has published three articles related to the Chinese artist, Pan Tianshou (1897-1971) in Orientations, Journal of Museum Studies and American Journal of Chinese Studies. Kim is currently researching Korean experimental art of the 1960s and 1970s: performance, participatory and social art in Korea, multimedia and digital art in the global world and transdisciplinarity in art and science, especially mathematics and physics. For more information about The University of Alabama’s programs in studio art and art history,go here: https://art.ua.edu/academics/.
Five Paintings by Wegrzynowski Featured in New Orleans
Instructor and alumnus Tom Wegrzynowski had five paintings selected for the 23rd Annual No Dead Artists International Juried Exhibition Of Contemporary Art. Julian the Apostate, The Red Planet, D Day, Liberation Day and Death of Caesar are all oils on canvas and were painted between 2017 and 2019. writes that he is interested in how history and art "morph together to create identity and culture. I am especially interested in how history functions as a malleable source material that can be shaped and molded to express a wide range of social or political beliefs." Through his paintings, he explores the themes of science, religion, sports, war, and economics. "Each one of these disciplines promises some kind of truth or absolutism yet is subject to manipulation to suit the needs of contemporary ideology," writes Wegrzynowski. "The relationships that develop among these cultural strands become contradictory, paradoxical, or unstable." Tom Wegrzynowski has been a full-time instructor in the department of art and art history since 2006. He teaches courses in both studio and art history, including Art Theory and Criticism (ARH 380), Art Since World War II (ARH 381), Early 20th Century Art (ARH 385), American Modernism (ARH 481), Drawing I (ART 110), Drawing II (ART 210) and Painting I (ART 216). The juried exhibition runs September 4-28, 2019, at Jonathan Ferrara Gallery in New Orleans. An artists' reception will be held on Sat., Sept. 7, from 6-9 pm during the Arts District New Orleans’ (ADNO) First Saturday Gallery Openings. For more information about all our programs, visit this link: https://art.ua.edu/academics/.
Not the Usual Lecture Hall: Spain is the Art Students’ Classroom
For the first time in recent memory, students in The University of Alabama’s art and art history department are studying abroad in Spain. For two weeks in May, 20 students will travel throughout the country, from Madrid to Barcelona, touring the famous art collections, sculptures, museums, architecture and buildings of Spain as they’re taught its art style and history by Jason Guynes, chair of the department of art and art history and professor of art and painting, and Tanja Jones, associate professor of art history. The program is worth six credit hours. “Most of our study abroad programs were in Italy,” Guynes said. “This year we chose Spain for a lot of reasons. It has some of the best collections of artwork in the world, its history and culture have important implications globally, and it’s an opportunity to study Islamic influences in art and architecture without leaving Europe. “In their national museums, they have tremendous work. Among my favorites is an important collection in Madrid called Thyssen-Bornemisza Collection. It’s one of the best painting collections in the world.” Guynes said last year the art department reinvented its study abroad program. Instead of sending students to study with external companies, they now do short-term trips led by art faculty who have expertise in the art of the country they’re leading students through. Jones is an expert on Italy, which is where the program went last year, and Guynes is an expert on Spain. “Instead of meeting in the classroom on campus, we’re meeting in Spain,” he said. “And rather than just looking at pictures of Spain and talking about it, we’re actually going to see things in context.” While in Spain, students will collect information, do historical research, sketch, photograph, search sites, draw and create canvas paintings. When they return to the U.S. they’ll complete more in-depth studies on what they researched, complete papers and work on photographs and paintings to create more complex works. “We will be based in Toledo, a UNESCO world heritage site and a beautiful medieval city famous for three religions living peacefully together,” Guynes said. “You can still see the influence of those cultures in the city. We can just step outside and draw or conduct research.” One feature that Guynes is particularly excited about showing the art students is a type of architecture that’s unique to that country. Spain was once controlled by the Moors, a group of Muslim people who had their own type of architecture called Mudejar, which is characterized by the use of pattern, tile and abstract design. Guynes said it’s like nothing else in the world, and though it can still be seen in other parts of the Arab world, Spain is perhaps the most accessible place to view it. “There’s nothing like studying abroad to open the eyes of students to take all the theory they’ve learned in the classroom and put it into practice–to give them a more complete picture,” he said “A transformation happens when students study abroad. They’re able to see the world in new ways, and the work that they start producing afterwards is always remarkable.” Thanks to the UA College of Arts and Sciences for the story. For more information about The University of Alabama’s programs in studio art and art history, go here: https://art.ua.edu/academics/.
Art Major Wins Asian Studies Essay Award
Rising senior Sarah Fields won The University of Alabama College of Arts and Sciences' 2019 Asian Studies Essay Award for her research on the Italian Jesuit painter Giuseppe Castiglione who served as a court painter during the Qing dynasty in China in the 18th century. Fields researched and wrote the paper, titled "Lang Shining: The Italian Jesuit and Chinese Court Painter," under the guidance of Dr. Doris Sung in Survey of Asian Art (ARH 254). Fields, who hails from Bethalto, Ill., is a studio art major with a double minor in advertising and art history. After she graduates in May 2020, she said that she plans to look for positions as an art director or creative director at an advertising agency. "While I don't plan on continuing my formal studies of art history," Fields said, "I love visiting museums and looking at pieces with context, so I hope to continue learning the subject." The Asian Studies program provides an interdisciplinary opportunity for study and research focused on the variety of cultural regions of Asia, particularly South Asia and East Asia. The program incorporates faculty and courses in a range of areas, including anthropology, art history, Asian languages, history, literature, political science, and religious studies. For more information about The University of Alabama’s department of art and art history, visit this link: https://art.ua.edu/.
UA Art Historians to Host National Graduate Student Conference
The Department of Art and Art History is pleased to host the 24th Annual Graduate Student Symposium in Art History on March 1, 2019, in the Bryant Conference Center on UA campus. Dr. Catherine Zuromskis, associate professor of fine art at RIT, will present the keynote address at 4:15 p.m., titled, “Feeling History: Evidence, Affect, and the Visual Culture of the Kennedy Assassination.” The symposium, a shared production of the departments of art and art history at The University of Alabama and the University of Alabama at Birmingham, will take place this year at the Bryant Conference Center on UA’s campus. Students from colleges and universities around the country will participate in the conference, as graduate research presenters and in undergraduate research poster presentations. Along with the University of Alabama at Birmingham and UA, schools represented are Columbus State University (Columbus, Ga.), Florida State University (Tallahassee), Savannah College of Art and Design, University of Kentucky (Lexington), University of Missouri (Columbia), University of Montevallo (Montevallo, Ala.), University of St. Thomas (St. Paul, Minn.) and University of West Florida (Pensacola). This year’s symposium is generously supported by The Graduate School; Dr. Robert Olin, Dean, College of Arts & Sciences; Dr. Tricia McElroy, Associate Dean, College of Arts & Sciences; Blount Scholars Program; New College; Department of Art and Art History; College of Continuing Studies; Harrison Galleries, LLC; Department of Modern Languages & Classics; and the Department of American Studies, of The University of Alabama. About the symposium: The Annual Graduate Student Symposium in Art History, sponsored and shared by the departments of art and art history at The University of Alabama and the University of Alabama at Birmingham, alternates campuses each year. In addition to presentations from graduate students from multiple institutions, the symposium also features poster presentations from undergraduate researchers. The symposium was begun in 1995 by faculty on both campuses to bring their students together to hear and be heard by eminent scholars working in the field of art history. Renowned scholars such as Paul Barolsky in the field of Italian Renaissance art, Allison Kettering in the field of Dutch Baroque art, and young, up-and-coming scholars like Michael Yonan, Krista Thompson, and Graham Boettcher, now director of the Birmingham Museum of Art, have been keynote speakers. The Joint Program for the M.A. in Art History began in 1987 between The University of Alabama and the University of Alabama at Birmingham. The Joint Program offered the first, and still the only, graduate degree in art history in the state of Alabama. For more information, contact: Dr. Lucy Curzon, lcurzon@ua.edu, (205) 348-6458.
Catherine Zuromskis to Keynote Art History Symposium at UA
Tuscaloosa. – Dr. Catherine Zuromskis, associate professor of fine art at RIT, will present the keynote address at the 24th Annual Graduate Student Symposium in Art History at UA on March 1, 2019. Zuromskis' talk at 4:15 p.m. is titled, “Feeling History: Evidence, Affect, and the Visual Culture of the Kennedy Assassination.” The symposium, a shared production of the departments of art and art history at The University of Alabama and the University of Alabama at Birmingham, will take place this year at the Bryant Conference Center on UA’s campus. In her talk, Zuromskis will explore shifting perceptions of the camera’s evidentiary capabilities through an analysis of the notorious Zapruder film of the Kennedy assassination. The Zapruder film is an enigmatic piece of evidence, at once allowing us to witness the crime “first hand,” through the eyes of an everyday citizen, yet failing to prove anything we don’t already know or solve the crime we see committed. Examining the film in the various contexts in which it has been presented – Life magazine’s coverage of the assassination, popular films like Oliver Stone’s JFK and Peter Landesman’s Parkland, and the didactic exhibition of the Sixth Floor Museum at Dealy Plaza – Zuromskis argues that the Zapruder film constitutes not so much a failure of technological representation as a move away from ideological narrative photographic or filmic truth to one of affective, first-person experience. Catherine Zuromskis is Associate Professor of Fine Art at Rochester Institute of Technology where she focuses on photography, contemporary art and twentieth-century American visual culture. Prior to coming to RIT, she taught at The University of New Mexico and University of California, Berkeley. She received her Ph.D. in Visual and Cultural Studies from the University of Rochester in 2006. She also has an M.A. from the University of Rochester, as well as an M.A. in Art History and Criticism from State University of New York at Stony Brook. In addition to her academic experience, she has worked at Pace Gallery in New York and at the ICA in Boston. Zuromskis is the author of Snapshot Photography: The Lives of Images (MIT Press, 2013), a finalist for the College Art Association 2015 Charles Rufus Morey Book Prize; and the author and editor of The Factory (La Fabrica, 2012), the catalog for the exhibition From the Factory to the World: Photography and the Warhol Community, which she curated for PhotoEspaña 2012. Her writings on photography, film and visual culture have appeared Art Journal, American Quarterly, The Velvet Light Trap, Photography & Culture, Criticism and the edited volumes Photography: Theoretical Snapshots (Routledge: 2009) and Oil Culture (Minnesota: 2014). Her teaching interests center on histories and theories of photography, visual culture, contemporary art and critical theory. She also has taught courses such as Public Art in Twentieth-Century America, Photography and Celebrity Culture, The Snapshot Aesthetic, and Contemporary Art and New Media. This year’s symposium is generously supported by The Graduate School; Dr. Robert Olin, Dean, College of Arts & Sciences; Dr. Tricia McElroy, Associate Dean, College of Arts & Sciences; Blount Scholars Program; New College; Department of Art and Art History; College of Continuing Studies; Harrison Galleries, LLC; Department of Modern Languages & Classics; and the Department of American Studies, of The University of Alabama. About the symposium: The Annual Graduate Student Symposium in Art History, sponsored and shared by the departments of art and art history at The University of Alabama and the University of Alabama at Birmingham, alternates campuses each year. In addition to presentations from graduate students from multiple institutions, the symposium also features poster presentations from undergraduate researchers. The symposium was begun in 1995 by faculty on both campuses to bring their students together to hear and be heard by eminent scholars working in the field of art history. Renowned scholars such as Paul Barolsky in the field of Italian Renaissance art, Allison Kettering in the field of Dutch Baroque art, and young, up-and-coming scholars like Michael Yonan, Krista Thompson, and Graham Boettcher, now director of the Birmingham Museum of Art, have been keynote speakers. The Joint Program for the M.A. in Art History began in 1987 between The University of Alabama and the University of Alabama at Birmingham. The Joint Program offered the first, and still the only, graduate degree in art history in the state of Alabama. For more information, contact: Dr. Lucy Curzon, lcurzon@ua.edu, (205) 348-6458.
Acclaimed Atlanta Artist To Speak at UA
Artist and educator Larry Walker will offer a presentation on his six decades of artwork and experiences in the art world as part of the Paul R. Jones Lecture Series, Tuesday, February 26, 2019, in the AIME Building on UA campus. Walker's art has been featured in over 200 exhibitions, including a two-part retrospective – Larry Walker: The Early Years and Larry Walker:The Later Years – at Atlanta's Museum of Contemporary Art of Georgia in 2018. He also possesses decades of experience as an art educator in the Detroit school system, the University of the Pacific, and Georgia State University. This event is sponsored by the College of Arts & Sciences.
Art Historian Publishes on Early 20th-Century Women’s Art in China
Assistant Professor Doris Sung published a chapter, “Redefining Female Talent: ‘The Women’s Eastern Times,’ ‘The Ladies’ Journal,’ and the Development of ‘Women’s Art’ in China, 1910s-1930s,” in the book, Women and the Periodical Press in China’s Long Twentieth Century: A Space of their Own, edited by Michel Hockx, Joan Judge, and Barbara Mittler (Cambridge 2018). Sung joined the Department of Art and Art History at UA in 2018. Her research focuses on modern and contemporary art of East Asia, cultural interactions between Asia and Europe, and gender and visual culture. Prior to coming to Capstone, she was an Assistant Curator at the Peabody Essex Museum (PEM) where she worked on Empresses of China’s Forbidden City, an exhibition organized by PEM, Freer|Sackler of the Smithsonian Institution, and the Palace Museum, Beijing. She taught Chinese and East Asian art at York University (Toronto), and the University of Toronto Scarborough. She also held the position of Project Coordinator for the international research and digital humanities project “A New Approach to the Popular Press in China: Gender and Cultural Production, 1904–1937.” Dr. Sung is also an independent curator and has curated a number of exhibitions on the works of Chinese-Canadian women artists, new art of the Asian diaspora in Canada, and experimental calligraphy. She earned her Ph.D. in Humanities, and MFA in visual arts from York University. For more information about The University of Alabama’s programs in studio art and art history, go here: https://art.ua.edu/academics/.
A Gentlewoman in Verona: UA Graduate Student Researches In Italy
Sometimes there’s just no substitute for seeing the object you are studying first hand. For more than three semesters, from a graduate seminar in medieval cathedrals, to intensive thesis research, art history graduate student Rebecca Teague has focused on the sculpture programs of three 12th-century cathedrals in three small towns in northern Italy. She has written her master’s thesis on the cathedral facades designed by the sculptor Niccolò in Verona, Piacenza and Ferrara. Teague’s research focuses on what may have shaped the iconography of the programs, especially local influences. “My thesis looks at some of the large-scale political issues going on at the time of the cathedral was built, filtered through a local lens," she said. "Why, for example, was a less common historical figure or saint chosen over one more commonly used? You have to delve into what the local people valued, what the local culture was like at the time. So, not only do sources for some of this imagery come from farther afield, such as the Lateran in Rome, but there are similar examples of the imagery at sites nearby.” Last May, Teague got a chance to see the cathedrals up close and in context during a study-abroad trip with the Department of Art and Art History. She was able to visit Rome, Florence and Venice with the group and served as a teaching assistant to Dr. Tanja Jones, who is also Teague’s thesis advisor. After the main part of the trip was over, Teague and Jones made a side trip to Verona to view in person the sculptured doorways of the cathedrals at Verona, and nearby Piacenza and Ferrara. Teague made her home base in Verona for four days. Each day she would work on one of the cathedral sculpture programs. She traveled to each town to experience the space, take photos and make notes about details that particularly struck her as she viewed the work up close. To get to Ferrara, for example, she traveled by train, which took a little over an hour. Once there, she explained, “I would spend the rest of the morning taking photos of the cathedral all the way around.” After lunch, she returned to the cathedral square to take more photographs. “I would look at the interior and take photos of the architectural plans that nearly every church displays in the crypt. I would also often take a walk in the area surrounding the church and make notes about nearby buildings. Then I would check to see if the same buildings were around during the time period that the cathedral was being built.” Getting to see the buildings and their sculptures up close, and to explore the town around the cathedrals, some of which existed in the 12th century, helped Teague visualize what they were like 900 years ago. She said, “I devoted all my time to the actual experience of the space,” and saved researching sources for when she was back in the US. This fall, Teague still sounded in awe of the scale of the architecture she was able to see: “I got a sense of how weathered they are, how large they are, their sense of power.” Rebecca Teague received the BA in psychology at Auburn University at Montgomery before being accepted in the MA program in art history at The University of Alabama, where she was awarded a teaching assistantship for three years. In 2017, she was awarded a mid-year Academic Merit Scholarship from the Joseph and Carolyn Bolt Endowed Support Fund in Art History. At the 22nd Annual Graduate Student Symposium in Art History, she won second place for the Harrison Award for Excellence in Research – Graduate Paper Presentation for her paper, “Nanni di Banco’s St Luke as a Statement Against Albizzi Control.” After defending her thesis, “Carving Politics: Niccolò’s Façades at Piacenza, Ferrara, and Verona Cathedrals,” Teague will graduate in December and take time off before she continues her studies in a doctoral program. [fall18] For information about UA Art and Art History's programs, go to: https://art.ua.edu/academics/. For information about our trip to Spain in 2019, go to: https://art.ua.edu/study-abroad/