Tuscaloosa – Contemporary Australian Aboriginal art is one of the most significant art movements of the late 20th and early 21st centuries, according to Anne Keener, curator of the Sarah Moody Gallery of Art's upcoming exhibition, Pattern Thinking: Australian Aboriginal Art from the Collection of Tom and Cynthia Schneider. Keener will speak about the exhibition and the art on Wednesday, Oct. 10, 2018 at 3:00 pm in Lloyd Hall 226. “The indigenous Australian paintings express stories of patterns of interrelation of the forces of all of life, laid down by creator beings,” Keener said. She will talk about the Aboriginal artists in this exhibition and the ideas behind their work, including the idea that the paintings themselves set up a dialogue among themselves in the exhibition. Keener, who received her MFA in painting and drawing, and her BA in comparative studies/religious studies from The Ohio State University, said that she learned the term “pattern thinking” while listening to a talk by the influential Aboriginal elder David Mowaljarlai. Pattern thinking embodies the interconnectedness of all life that the indigenous people of Australia see in the world around them. Mowaljarlai said, “Indigenous elders from all over Australia, from the top end down to the cold country, believe that culture is the lifeblood of the people – the source of inner strength in an individual.” Pattern thinking, an integral part of indigenous Australian culture, according to Mowaljarlai and other Aboriginal leaders, contributes to a balanced life and good mental health and creates and encourages cross cultural dialogue. Join us for an afternoon discussion of Pattern Thinking as a preview to the opening. The exhibition runs October 11 – November 16, and there will be a reception on Thursday, October 11, 5-7 pm, in Garland Hall 103. Image credit left: Johnny Possum Tjapaltjarri, Possum Dreaming, 2005, acrylic on canvas, 24.4 x 23.6 inches. Image credit right: Clifford Possum Tjapaltjarri, Snake and Kangaroo Dreaming, 1992, acrylic on canvas, 32 x 51.9 inches The Sarah Moody Gallery of Art is supported by the College of Arts and Sciences and the Department of Art and Art History. For more information, contact the gallery at (205) 348-1891. Garland Hall is a five-minute walk from the Campus Drive Parking Deck and Bus Hub on Hackberry Lane. Gold 1, Crimson, Blue and Bronze CrimsonRide buses stop between Garland Hall and Gorgas Library. Information about visitor parking is available here: http://bamaparking.ua.edu/visitor-information/.
UA Professor Researches Medieval Cathedral Sculpture
In medieval art, it is rare to know the name of an artist, but the names of the clergy who managed payment for construction projects are often in the records. Thanks to a UA College Academy of Research, Scholarship, and Creative Activity (CARSCA) grant, this past June, Assistant Professor Dr. Jennifer Feltman traveled to Paris and Amiens, France, to study the books read and written by the clergy of the Cathedral of Amiens for a new project that proposes a way to understand how sculptural programs were designed. “I primarily consulted twelfth- and early-thirteenth century biblical manuscripts, but also some sermons and commentary—all of these manuscripts are unillustrated, which may seem a strange source for an art historian. But I was studying them not only for their textual context, but also for the layout of text and commentary on each folio. Bibles of the twelfth century were often organized into columns with a main text and commentary in the margins. It is my supposition that the façade of Amiens preserves a pattern of thought, shaped by the layout of texts; it also brings together a variety of texts available in the cathedral library. So, while sculptures certainly aren’t the same as a manuscript of the Bible, they might be called a stone Biblia, using the original sense of the word for Bible—a collection of texts.” Dr. Feltman is currently completing a book manuscript, Moral Theology and the Cathedral: Sculptures of the Last Judgment in Thirteenth-Century France. The book illuminates the ways in which Parisian moral theology was disseminated through clerical networks across the dioceses of France and made visible in sculptural programs at the cathedrals of Chartres, Paris, Reims and Amiens. With the support of the NEH, she has developed a companion website: Portals of the Last Judgment - Chartres, Paris, Reims, Amiens. Dr. Feltman teaches courses in medieval, Early Christian, Byzantine, and ancient art history. For more information about UA Department of Art and Art History programs, go here: https://art.ua.edu/academics/.
Renowned Scholar To Speak on Apocalyptic Images
Tuscaloosa. — Explore the visionary landscape of the medieval Book of Revelation with one of its eminent scholars, Dr. Richard K. Emmerson. Dr. Emmerson will deliver a public lecture, “Apocalypse Illuminated,” on Tuesday, September 11, 2018 at 6:30 pm in Smith Hall 205 on UA campus. Richard K. Emmerson is Dean Emeritus of the School of Liberal Arts at Manhattan College, former Professor and Chair of Art History at Florida State University, and currently Visiting Distinguished Professor at FSU. He has served as Deputy Director of Fellowships at the National Endowment for the Humanities and as Executive Director of the Medieval Academy of America, and has edited Speculum, Studies in Iconography, and Traditio. A Fellow of the Medieval Academy, he received the Medieval Academy Award for Excellence in Teaching Medieval Studies in 2009. Dr. Emmerson’s research focuses on medieval apocalypticism and its representation in art, drama, and visionary poetry. He has published seven books, including Antichrist in the Middle Ages: A Study of Medieval Apocalypticism, Art, and Literature (1981), The Apocalyptic Imagination in Medieval Literature (1992, with Ronald B. Herzman), and The Apocalypse in the Middle Ages (1993, with Bernard McGinn). His most recent book, studying the seven-hundred year history of medieval Apocalypse manuscripts, is Apocalypse Illuminated: The Visual Exegesis of Revelation in Medieval Manuscripts, published by Pennsylvania State University Press in 2018. He has authored more than fifty articles, many studying word-image relationships in medieval illustrated manuscripts. Recent essays include “On the Threshold of the Last Days: Negotiating Image and Word in the Apocalypse of Jean de Berry,” in Exploring the Threshold of Medieval Visual Culture (2012); “Visualizing the Visionary: John in his Apocalypse,” in Looking Beyond: Visions, Dreams and Insights in Medieval Art and Thought (2010); “Framing the Apocalypse: The Performance of John’s Life in the Trinity Apocalypse,” in Visualizing Medieval Performance (2008); “Visualizing the Vernacular: Middle English in Early Fourteenth-Century Bilingual and Trilingual Manuscript Illustrations,” in Studies in Manuscript Illumination: A Tribute to Lucy Freeman Sandler (2008); “A ‘Large Order of the Whole’: Intertextuality and Interpictoriality in the Hours of Isabella Stuart,” Studies in Iconography (2007); and “The Representation of Antichrist in Hildegard of Bingen’s Scivias: Image, Word, Commentary, and Visionary Experience,” Gesta (2002). Image credit: Silos Apocalypse: Northern Spain, c.1100, British Library Add. MS 11695, ff.147v-148. Richard K. Emmerson's lecture is part of the Visiting Artist and Scholar Lecture Series, sponsored by the Department of Art and Art History, the College of Arts and Sciences and the College of Continuing Studies at The University of Alabama. To see our past and future visiting artists and scholars, go here: https://art.ua.edu/resources/visiting-artists/. Smith Hall, 427 Sixth Avenue, Tuscaloosa, is a four-minute walk from the Campus Drive Parking Deck and Bus Hub on Hackberry Lane. Information about visitor parking is available here: http://bamaparking.ua.edu/visitor-information/. For more information on this or the other speakers in our upcoming Visiting Artist and Scholar Series, contact Rachel Dobson (rachel.dobson@ua.edu) or Pete Schulte (pschulte@ua.edu).
Senior Art History Major Receives Randall Research Award
Senior art history major Nadia DelMedico received the Randall Outstanding Undergraduate Research Award from President Bell during ceremonies April 4, 2018, on UA campus. DelMedico received the award as the result of her work, mentored by Dr. Rachel Stephens, on the history of slavery on the UA campus. In the spring of 2017, DelMedico, who is enrolled in UA’s Randall Research Scholars Program, presented her preliminary research on slave dwellings on the antebellum campus of The University of Alabama at the undergraduate poster session during the 22nd Annual Graduate Student Symposium in Art History and at the Undergraduate Research and Creative Activity Conference (URCA) at UA. In October 2017, Dr. Stephens, and DelMedico presented their research during a symposium, “Universities, Slavery, Public Memory, and the Built Landscape,” sponsored by the University of Virginia and the Slave Dwelling Project. DelMedico’s and Stephens’ paper, “Slavery and its Built Environment at The University of Alabama as Revealed in the Basil Manly Diaries,” discusses typical activities of the University administrators, faculty and students as seen through the daily writings of the second president of UA. For more about the research findings, go here.
Art Historian to Talk on Black Arts Movement
Tuscaloosa. — Dr. Rebecca Zorach will deliver a public lecture, “‘The Time is Now!’ The Black Arts Movement in Chicago, circa 1968,” on Wednesday, March 21 at 6:30 p.m., in 205 Gorgas Library. Please join us for a pre-lecture reception at 5:30 p.m. in 205 Gorgas Library sponsored by the College of Arts & Sciences Diversity Committee. Rebecca Zorach (Ph.D., Univ. of Chicago) is the Mary Jane Crowe Professor in Art and Art History at Northwestern University where she teaches and writes on early modern European art (15th-17th century), contemporary activist art and art of the 1960s and 1970s. Particular interests include print media, feminist and queer theory, theory of representation and the multiple intersections of art and politics. Included among her many publications is the award-winning book, Blood, Milk, Ink, Gold: Abundance and Excess in the French Renaissance (University of Chicago Press, 2005). Before joining the faculty at Northwestern she taught at the University of Chicago for fourteen years. She has been a visiting faculty member at Yale University, the École des Hautes Études in Sciences Sociales and Williams College, where she was Robert Sterling Clark Visiting Professor in 2013-14. Her books include The Passionate Triangle (University of Chicago Press, 2011); the edited volumes Embodied Utopias: Gender, Social Change, and the Modern Metropolis (with Amy Bingaman and Lisa Shapiro Sanders, Routledge, 2002); The Idol in the Age of Art (with Michael Cole, Routledge, 2009) and Art Against the Law (School of the Art Institute of Chicago, 2014). Recent articles have addressed AfriCOBRA's gender and family politics; Claes Oldenburg's lawsuit challenging the copyright of the Chicago Picasso and the experimental art center Art & Soul, founded on the west side of Chicago in 1968 by the Museum of Contemporary Art and the Conservative Vice Lords, a former street gang. She is currently completing a book on Art & Soul and the landscape of the Black Arts Movement in Chicago (late 1960s-1970s), and undertaking a new project that will consider the relationship of artistic and political agency to natural and social ecologies. She is a member of Feel Tank Chicago, is on the board of the South Side Community Art Center and South Side Projections and co-organizes the archive and oral history project Never The Same with Daniel Tucker. Image credit: Darryl Cowherd, Be Black, Schomberg Center for Research in Black Culture, New York Public Library. Dr. Zorach's lecture is part of the Visiting Artist and Scholar Lecture Series, sponsored by the Department of Art and Art History, the Visiting Artist and Scholar Committee, the College of Arts and Sciences and the College of Continuing Studies at The University of Alabama. To see our past and future visiting artists and scholars, go here: https://art.ua.edu/resources/visiting-artists/. Gorgas Library, 711, Capstone Drive, Tuscaloosa, is a four-minute walk from the Campus Drive Parking Deck and Bus Hub on Hackberry Lane. Information about visitor parking is available here: http://bamaparking.ua.edu/visitor-information/. Parking is free on campus in a legal space after business hours. For more information on this or the other speakers in our upcoming Visiting Artist and Scholar Series, contact Rachel Dobson (rachel.dobson@ua.edu) or Pete Schulte (pschulte@ua.edu).
Art History Professor Wins Book Award
Associate Professor of Art History Lucy Curzon's new book, Mass-Observation and Visual Culture: Depicting Everyday Lives in Britain, has been awarded the Historians of British Artist Book Award for Exemplary Scholarship on the Period after 1800. The prize committee found Curzon's book, published by Routledge in 2017, "theoretically sophisticated and convincingly argued, a timely and important volume on the anthropological research group Mass-Observation and its attitudes towards visual culture." It is the first full-length study of the art produced under the auspices of the group. The committee praised Curzon for her in-depth research in an "understudied" area of British art and culture. "The social research organization known as Mass-Observation was founded in 1937 to document everyday life. Due to the diverse nature of interests and projects undertaken by the group, they remain under-studied in an art historical context. Lucy Curzon corrects this oversight, providing an account of the movement in relation to visual culture, a timely and important theme. She brings an art historian’s interpretive skill to the sociological and visual culture project of Mass-Observation, examining the use of painting, collage, photography, and visual media within their word, providing an account of the important role of these visual elements in Mass-Observations project to understand national identity in the 1930s. In so doing, Curzon provides an important model of compatibility of art history and visual culture as related, fields of inquiry." Curzon's research focuses on issues of identity politics as they concern the production of visual culture in twentieth-century Britain. She has previously published work on LGBTQ+ portraiture, as well as articles or chapters on the Ashington Group and Humphrey Spender’s photographs of Blackpool in the 1930s. She regularly presents her work at national and international conferences. To read more about Dr. Curzon and her new book, go here. Since 1997, Historians of British Art (HBA) has awarded three prizes each year for books on British art in the following categories: pre-1800, post-1800 and multi-authored book. HBA is an affiliate society of the College Art Association and was formed to promote scholarship and other professional endeavors related to British art and architecture. For more information about The University of Alabama’s Department of Art and Art History degree programs, go to our website.
Art History Scholar to Talk on 1930s Cartoon
UPDATE! Professor Gregory Clark's lecture is Thursday, January 25, at 5:00 p.m. in 205 Smith Hall. Tuscaloosa.–Professor of art history Gregory Clark will give a public lecture on Thursday, January 25, at 5:00 p.m. in 205 Smith Hall on UA campus. Dr. Clark will present a highly engaging and multimedia presentation, "Max and Dave Fleischer's Betty Boop: A 20s Flapper Marooned in the Depression-Era 30s." Gregory Clark is Professor of Art History at Sewanee where he has taught since 1989. Dr. Clark holds a Ph.D. in art history from Princeton University. He is a scholar of early American animation, and he is a dynamic lecturer on this topic. Professor Clark's published scholarship has centered on manuscript illumination in northern France and the southern Netherlands in the fifteenth century. In addition to numerous articles, he has published four books since 1997. The first was a commentary on a Book of Hours made in Bruges, Belgium, around 1455. Three years later, Clark published a monograph on the Ghent Privileges Master, a book painter active in the southern Netherlands from around 1440 to 1460. His study on the Spitz Hours, a manuscript made in Paris around 1420, was published in 2003 by the J. Paul Getty Trust. In 2010, Clark saw to press a commentary volume to accompany the complete facsimile produced by ADEVA of Graz, Austria, of the Da Costa Hours, a masterpiece of about 1515 by the celebrated book painter Simon Bening of Ghent and Bruges. Dr. Clark's lecture is part of the Visiting Artist and Scholar Lecture Series, sponsored by the Department of Art and Art History, the Visiting Artist and Scholar Committee, the College of Arts and Sciences and the College of Continuing Studies at The University of Alabama. To see our past and future visiting artists and scholars, click here. Smith Hall, 427 6th Ave, Tuscaloosa, is a four minute walk from the Campus Drive Parking Deck and Bus Hub on Hackberry Lane. Information about visitor parking is available here: http://bamaparking.ua.edu/visitor-information/. Parking is free on campus in a legal space after business hours.
Professor and Student Present Research on Slavery at UA
A UA professor and a junior art history major have teamed up to break ground on the history of slavery at The University of Alabama. UPDATE: In April 2018, Nadia DelMedico received the Randall Outstanding Undergraduate Research Award from President Bell during ceremonies April 4 on UA campus. DelMedico received the award as the result of her work mentored by Dr. Rachel Stephens, on the history of slavery on the UA campus. In October, assistant professor of art history, Dr. Rachel Stephens, and junior art history major Nadia DelMedico presented new research on slavery at The University of Alabama during a symposium, “Universities, Slavery, Public Memory, and the Built Landscape,” sponsored by the University of Virginia and the Slave Dwelling Project. DelMedico’s and Stephens’ paper, “Slavery and its Built Environment at The University of Alabama as Revealed in the Basil Manly Diaries,” discusses typical activities of the University administrators, faculty and students as seen through the daily writings of the second president of UA. Most of the campus, with a few exceptions, was built by the time Manly arrived. Only a few of the early buildings now exist: the Gorgas Home; the observatory or Maxwell Hall; the guardhouse now known as “Little Round House” and the President’s mansion and its adjacent slave quarters. Basil Manly, who served as UA president from 1837 to 1855, was also a Baptist evangelist and fervent supporter of slavery and secession. Serving the longest of any president in UA history, Manly had a significant influence on the school’s development during his 18-year term. According to DelMedico and Stephens, Manly actively promoted slavery as a positive good. His diaries reveal that he lent his personal slaves to other faculty on campus, he oversaw the University's purchase of slaves, as well as the renting of slaves from their owners in the town of Tuscaloosa. Many of those slaves were used to construct buildings on the campus. DelMedico and Stephens said that the diaries show that enslaved people were “integral” to the University’s growth in this period. “It was so intriguing to learn, from a powerful insider’s perspective, about the daily management and operation of UA in its earliest days,” said Dr. Stephens. Stephens’ and DelMedico’s paper is the culmination of many months of research. In the spring of 2017, DelMedico, who is enrolled in UA’s Randall Research Scholars Program, presented her preliminary research, overseen by Dr. Stephens, on slave dwellings on the antebellum UA campus at the undergraduate poster session during the 22nd Annual Graduate Student Symposium in Art History and at the Undergraduate Research and Creative Activity Conference (URCA), both held at UA. DelMedico’s poster titled, “Too Close to Home: The History of Slavery on the University of Alabama Campus,” was selected as the second place poster winner in the Harrison Awards at the art history symposium. She won third place in the Arts and Humanities category of the URCA poster sessions. Dr. Stephens, who has taught at UA since 2013, is author of the forthcoming book, Selling Andrew Jackson: Ralph E. W. Earl and the Politics of Portraiture. DelMedico, who is enrolled in UA’s Computer Based Honors program, was the only undergraduate to present at the conference. Researchers from 61 different schools including University of Texas at Austin, University of Virginia, University of North Carolina, University of Massachusetts-Amherst, University of Mississippi, George Washington University, University of South Carolina, Clemson University, Rutgers University and Johns Hopkins University, also presented their findings at the conference on UVA’s campus. These and other schools across the South are looking into their history of slavery. The University of South Carolina and the University of Virginia have established research commissions and provided funding to faculty to further this research. Dr. Stephens noted that there are similarities among the histories of several of these campuses, as well as research approaches. “We found that our research as well as the history of slavery at UA dovetailed pretty closely with researchers at, and the history of other universities. Although UVA has much more documentation than we have, for example, their history very closely parallels that of our campus. In addition, their researchers undertook the same things that Nadia and I hope to undertake, which includes reading and analysis of a range of documents that reflect the full inclusive antebellum history of UA.” Although there are several ongoing research projects on the history of slavery at The University of Alabama, UA has not yet publicly supported this research or backed a commission. The University of Alabama Faculty Senate formally apologized for slavery on the pre-Civil War campus in 2004, and erected a marker near the graves of two slaves on campus. Since then, faculty and students have increasingly been researching different aspects of UA's history of slavery. DelMedico commented on what she discovered while reading the diaries: “The young men on this campus were a rowdy, rebellious group, and this is evident in their interactions with the faculty, administration and enslaved individuals working at the university. We found a number of stories in which students would pull pranks on the faculty; while these were funny to read about, they often implicated the university slaves, who were the ones to face the harshest punishments for the students’ actions.” On her experience at the conference, DelMedico said, “I learned so much at the conference. Dr. Stephens and I were able to hear from researchers at a number of different schools and learn about what kinds of research they’re doing, how they’re publicizing this information, and how they’re handling the challenges of researching slavery. Now that I’m back in Tuscaloosa, I have so many different ideas about where I want to take this research.” For more information about The University of Alabama’s Department of Art and Art History degree programs, go to our website. Further Reading A. James Fuller, "Basil Manly," Encyclopedia of Alabama
UA Professor Emeritus to Talk on APT Bicentennial Special
During a special Bicentennial episode of the Emmy-winning series, Discovering Alabama, UA associate professor emeritus Dr. Robert O. Mellown will talk about the historic capital in Tuscaloosa. Discovering Alabama: State Capitals will be broadcast on October 8 and October 12 on Alabama Public Television. The episode will explore the histories and the mysteries of the state’s five capitals as told through archaeology and ghost stories, facts and folklore, and through written records and off-the-record legends. Mellown, who specializes in the historical architecture of Tuscaloosa and The University of Alabama, was a major source for the section on Tuscaloosa, which was Alabama's state capital from 1826 until 1846. Mellown is the author of numerous books and articles on architecture in Tuscaloosa including The University of Alabama – A Guide to the Campus and Its Architecture (University of Alabama Press); and Historic Structures Reports for the Jemison-Van de Graaff Mansion, Drish House, Marmaduke Williams House and Bryce Hospital. His most recent project is ten articles on the historic architecture of The University of Alabama and Tuscaloosa for SAH Archipedia. Mellown received his undergraduate degree in studio art from The University of Alabama. After receiving the PhD in art history from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, he returned to UA and taught nineteenth-century art and architecture for forty-one years. He is a lifetime member of the Tuscaloosa Preservation Society, a founding board member of the Jemison-Van de Graaff Mansion Foundation and a member of the Bryce Hospital Historical Committee. He is a member of the Tuscaloosa Bicentennial Committee and a consultant for the Alabama Bicentennial Commission. Discovering Alabama: State Capitals Alabama Public Television Premiering Sunday, October 8 at 6:00 p.m. Left: Dr. Robert Mellown during an interview for Discovering Alabama's Bicentennial special on our state capitals.