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/
Students Gain Insight into the Experience of Medieval Artists
Students in Dr. Jennifer Feltman’s ARH 360-Early Medieval Art course created their own artworks as a way to reflect on the materials and methods used to make early medieval (and a few Byzantine) works of art. Each student chose an object that dates from between 250 and 1150, and researched the original work focusing on the materials that had been used to make it, its context, function and what it meant to the people of that time. Then, the students created their own artwork inspired by the past. Feltman’s goal in the project was to encourage her students to reflect on the importance of materials and processes that medieval artists used in making a work of art. She explained, “I think it really helps students to see that the works of art we study are more than just images projected on a screen. They required meticulous attention, extended amounts of time to make, often in precious materials, all of which contributed to their meaning.” For this assignment, students created their own work of art and conducted research and wrote a short paper, explained Dr. Feltman, “I’ve designed this project to be both a little fun and also challenging. I think it really helps students to see that the works of art we study are more than just images projected on a screen. They required meticulous attention, extended amounts of time to make, often in precious materials, all of which contributed to their meaning.” Feltman encouraged students to make connections and distinctions between the past and present. Junior Rachel Balding, a psychology major with a minor in studio art, painted a folio – or page – of text and images (see right and below). Inspired by the famous 6th century manuscript Vienna Genesis, for her project she drew an analogy between the devotion given to narratives in religious art and the football legends of UA. The original manuscript, an expensive object likely made for the Byzantine Emperor, was dyed purple and its script was written in silver. Balding dyed her page in grape juice and inscribed the UA fight song in gold using Roman Uncial script. Another student, junior Elizabeth Essary, a double major in art history and studio art, created an icon using woodblock printing, a process through which multiple copies can be faithfully replicated, much like the concept of the icon as a true image itself. Here are photos of some of the students' work with images of the original medieval works they were inspired by: Above: Rachel Baldung, junior psychology major with a minor in studio art, and the Vienna Gospel folio. Above: Emily Craven, junior advertising major with a minor in studio art, and the Church of Santa Costanza in Rome. Above: Elizabeth Essary, junior double major in art history and studio art, and the Icon of Christ. Above: Ryan Hogan, junior double major in creative media and studio art, and the Sutton Hoo Belt Buckle. Above: Maggie Hocutt, junior BFA major in painting,with a minor in history, and the Book of Durrow. Above: Victoria Andry, senior double major in studio art and marketing, and the Matthew folio of the Ebbo Gospels. For more information about the UA Department of Art and Art History academic programs, go here: https://art.ua.edu/academics/.
UA/UAB Joint Program in Art History Announces Call for Papers
The University of Alabama and the University of Alabama at Birmingham Joint Program for the MA in Art History announces a call for papers for its 24th Annual Graduate Student Symposium in Art History. This year, the symposium will be hosted by the Department of Art and Art History at The University of Alabama on Friday, March 1, 2019 and will take place on The University of Alabama campus in Tuscaloosa. The symposium’s keynote speaker will be Dr. Catherine Zuromskis, Assistant Professor of Fine Art in the School of Photographic Arts and Sciences at Rochester Institute of Technology. MA students in all fields of art history are invited to submit paper proposals on completed research as well as works in progress. Presentations are limited to 20 minutes and will be followed by discussion. Please submit a 250-word abstract and a one-page c.v. on or before Friday, December 14, 2018 (by e-mail) to both: Dr. Lucy Curzon (lcurzon@ua.edu) and Dr. Cathleen Cummings (ccummings@uab.edu). Notification of acceptance will be made by January 7, 2019. Please do not hesitate to contact Dr. Curzon or Dr. Cummings with questions. In addition, a call for Undergraduate Poster Session Proposals is also announced. To encourage the work of emerging scholars in the discipline, the faculty of the Joint Program invite undergraduate art history majors to submit proposals for presentations of senior-level or thesis work in a poster session, to be held during the day of the symposium. Proposals should consist of a 250-word abstract regarding the project and be accompanied by a letter of recommendation from the student’s advisor or major professor. Please submit completed proposals Friday, December 14, 2018, (by e-mail) to Dr. Tanja Jones (tljones10@ua.edu). Notification of acceptance will be made by January 7, 2019. Please do not hesitate to contact Dr. Jones with questions. Every year, the Joint Program for the MA in Art History presents the Annual Graduate Student Symposium in Art History, which provides a forum for the presentation of graduate student research drawn from all areas of art history, as well as an undergraduate poster session. The symposium also features a keynote lecture by a leading scholar of art history. Previous speakers have included Paul Barolsky (Italian Renaissance art), Allison Kettering (Dutch Baroque art), Michael Yonan (18th-19th century European art), and Graham Boettcher, the William Cary Hulsey Curator of American Art at the Birmingham Museum of Art.
Lucy Curzon Named A&S Leadership Board Faculty Fellow
Dr. Lucy Curzon, associate professor of art history, was named to a three-year term as a College of Arts and Sciences Leadership Board Faculty Fellow. The Leadership Board of the College of Arts and Sciences recognizes its most promising or most accomplished teacher/scholars, individuals early in their careers who demonstrate exceptional promise or faculty members who have brought distinction to the College and University throughout their careers. Curzon will receive a $5,000/year stipend for three years. Curzon teaches graduate and undergraduate courses on modern and contemporary art, and contemporary practice and community engagement. Her current research focuses on national identity and visual culture, particularly relating to the interwar, wartime and early postwar periods in Great Britain. She has also published on contemporary portrait painting. In 2018, Curzon received the Historians of British Artist Book Award for Exemplary Scholarship on the Period after 1800 for her book, “Mass-Observation and Visual Culture: Depicting Everyday Lives in Britain” (Routledge, 2017). For more information about UA Department of Art and Art History programs, click here: https://art.ua.edu/academics/.