Faculty, graduate students and alumni of UA art and art history made their mark at this year’s SECAC (Southeastern College Art Conference), where they presented their current research at the annual meeting of one of the largest art conferences of its kind in the US. This year’s meeting was held in Baltimore, Maryland, Oct. 26-29, 2022.
In the session, Art, Ecology, and Environmental Catastrophe in the Americas, Allison Grant and Teresa Cribelli (UA history) presented about their recent exhibition and public art project, Dangerous Landscapes: Legacies of Nineteenth-Century Progress in the Age of Climate Change.
Instructor and graduate student Tom Wegrzynowski presented “Portraits of a Chair: The Russell Brothers Studio,” and Dr. Lucy Curzon presented “Portraiture as Subversion: Defining Heroism in the Second World War,” both in the session (Re)Framing the Subject: Unexpected Revelations in Portraiture.
Dr. Rachel Stephens presented “Visualizing Confederate ‘Heroes’ and ‘Loyal Slaves’ in the Aftermath of the Civil War.” Stephens also chaired the American Art Open Session – Session I (Navigating Race and Representation in American Art).
Assistant Professor Melissa Yes presented “Finches: American Hero Myths” in the session Recent Representations: Self, Memory, and Race.
Assistant Professor Jonathan Cumberland presented “Connecting the Dots: Visual Metaphors in Illustration,” in the session, The Current State and Future Directions of Illustration.
Assistant Professor Dr. Doris Sung presented, “A Chinese Woman in Paris: The Self-Orientalized Images in Pan Yuliang’s Works,” in the session, Marginalized in Paris? Race, Gender and Intermedia Art Practice in Transnational Paris, c. 1900.
Associate Professor Sarah Marshall chaired the session Cut, Paste, Stitch, and Seam: Exploring Contemporary Collage.
Grad Students & New Alumni
Graduate students and new alumni in art history also presented original research at SECAC.
Art history graduate student Olivia Sims presented “Bound to Bodichon: Prominent Female Networks Found in Effects of Tight Lacing” in the session, Revisioning and Revisionism in Current Art Historical Scholarship.
Art history graduate student Riley Balzer presented “Connoisseurs vs. Forgers: A Conversation on the Intersections of Art Forgery, Patronage, and Methodology,” in the session Graduate Research in the Field of Arts.
New art history alumna Rebecca Lowery (MA 2022), now in the PhD program in the history of art and architecture at the University of Pittsburgh, presented “A Display of Race: Portrait Types of the 1893 World’s Columbian Exposition,” in Dark Amusements: Turn-of-the-Century American Spectacles and Race – Session I.
Alumna and former foundry assistant Ringo Lisko (BFA 2020, sculpture), who is pursuing an MFA at the Rinehart School of Sculpture at MICA (Maryland Institute College of Art), has three artworks in the SECAC 2022 Juried Exhibition, juried by artist and curator Jeffrey Kent. The exhibit will be on display October 21-28, 2022.
For more information about The University of Alabama’s programs in studio art and art history, visit our Degree Programs page.