Alumni News, Spring 2012

Hearty thanks to all of the Art History, Urban Design, and Historical and Sustainable Architecture alumni who responded to our recent call for news.  It is wonderful to hear from you and to learn about your activities and achievements. We hope to hear from more of you for our next “alumni news” round-up, which will occur in Fall 2012. Please send your news, links, photos, videos and podcasts to Professor Kathryn Smith (kathryn.smith@nyu.edu) with a copy to Peggy Coon (peggy@nyu.edu), and thank you.

 Gabriel P. Weisberg (Art History, Fine Arts Department, Washington Square College, ’63), was named the recipient of the 2012 Distinguished Teaching of Art History Award by the College Art Association.  The Distinguished Teaching of Art History Award, established in 1977, is presented to an individual who has been actively engaged in teaching art history for most of his or her career. Among the range of criteria that may be applied in evaluating candidates are: inspiration to a broad range of students in the pursuit of humanistic studies; rigorous intellectual standards and outstanding success in both scholarly and class presentation; contribution to the advancement of knowledge and methodology in the discipline, including integration of art-historical knowledge with other disciplines; and aid to students in the development of their careers. In being honored in this way, Professor Weisberg joins a distinguished list of past winners of this award, including Horst W. Janson (1979) — former chair of the Department of Fine Arts, New York University — Meyer Shapiro (1981), Oleg Grabar (1983), Marvin Eisenberg (1987), James Ackerman (1991), Egbert Haverkamp-Begemann (1992), Jules Prown (1996), Cecilia F. Klein (2000), current Department of Art History professor Carol Krinsky (2004), and Wu Hung (2008).  For more information about Professor Weisberg and the award, go to http://www.collegeart.org/awards/2012awards.

Erin Donnelly (Art History, ’94; M. A. Gallatin, and Certificate in Museum Studies, GSAS, ‘03) is Internships and Grants Administrator, Department of Art & Art Professions, Steinhardt School of Culture, Education, and Human Development at NYU and brings her wealth of experience working with artists in the non-profit arts sector to working with faculty and students.  From 2001, she worked for Lower Manhattan Cultural Council (LMCC) in a variety of positions, including Director, Artist Residencies.  She recently served as adjunct faculty and administrator in the Department of Photography & Imaging, Tisch School of the Arts.  Her specialization in artist services and professional development has led to her participation with The Cue Art Foundation, New York Foundation for the Arts, and the New York Public Library and lectures at universities including Bennington College, Cleveland Art Institute, and Columbia University, among others.  She has a curatorial background as well, and has organized exhibitions and public art in New York City, Peekskill, NY and Vienna, Austria over the past ten years.  Her publications include “Art in Odd Places: Sign” and “Site Matters.”  She is a mentor for the Richard and Mica Hadar Foundation and serves on the board of free103point9, a new media arts organization. Erin was a Helena Rubinstein Curatorial Fellow at the Whitney Museum of American Art’s Independent Study Program in 2001. She was the recipient of the Volunteer Lawyers for the Arts David Alfaro Siqueiros Award for professional excellence.

Kathryn Gettles-Atwa (B.A. Art History, ‘94; M.A. Institute of Fine Arts, ‘97) was promoted to counsel in the Corporate Department at Wachtell, Lipton, Rosen & Katz, among the most prestigious law firms in the United States. Her practice focuses on the securities law aspects of corporate finance, and she has advised a wide range of clients on their initial public offerings, public and private debt and equity offerings, exchange offers, tender offers, ongoing reporting requirements, and other issues related to securities law matters, including those pertaining to mergers and acquisitions and other corporate takeovers.  Ms. Gettles-Atwa has a particular concentration in private equity firms and their portfolio companies.

Baylor Lancaster (B.A. Art History, ’96; M.B.A. Stern, ’00) Baylor Lancaster announces with joy the birth of her first child, a daughter, with Larry Samuel. Freya Pierce Samuel was born on January 26th, 2012, weighing 8 lbs 13 oz, at Baptist Hospital in Miami, Florida. Baby, mom, and dad are all doing great! Baylor is currently enjoying her maternity leave before returning to work as a research analyst covering the banking industry at CreditSights. In her spare time, Baylor is pursuing an M.A. in Liberal Studies at the University of Miami, with a focus on art history/visual studies.

Freya Pierce Samuel -- asleep at home

Ross Finocchio (B.A. Art History / English, ’01; M.A. Institute of Fine Arts, ’06; Ph.D. candidate, Institute of Fine Arts) was awarded the prize for best paper for his talk, “Frick Buys a Freak,” presented at the annual Graduate Student Symposium of the Association of Historians of Nineteenth-Century Art, held at the CUNY Graduate Center on March 16^th, 2012.  The award, funded by the Dahesh Museum, comes with the option to publish the paper in the journal Nineteenth-Century Art Worldwide.  As Finocchio notes, the title of his talk is actually a headline from the Chicago Tribune from 1898.  Mr. Finocchio is writing his dissertation, “Henry Clay Frick:  The Making of an American Collector,” with the support of an Erwin Panofsky Fellowship from the IFA.  He has held research appointments and served as an exhibition assistant in the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s Department of European Paintings and Robert Lehman Collection; and, since 2000, he has been a lecturer at The Cloisters Museum.  From 2007-10, he was a researcher for the Fulton Street Art Advisory (New York).  In addition, he has been an Adjunct Professor or Adjunct Instructor for several Department of Art History courses, including “Painting and Sculpture in New York:  Field Study” and “Architecture in New York:  Field Study” – two perennially popular MAP courses in the Expressive Cultures:  Images category – and “Art and Architecture in the Age of Giotto, c. 1200-1400.”  He served as a Graduate Assistant in the College of Arts & Science’s Freshman Scholars program for three years (2007-9).  Mr. Finocchio is the recipient of numerous honors and awards, including the Department of Art History’s H. W. Janson Prize, awarded to the most promising junior major.  Elected to Phi Beta Kappa, Mr. Finocchio graduated summa cum laude and was named Class Valedictorian.  More recently, he was a recipient of a Henry M. McCracken Teaching Fellowship from NYU (2008-9) and a Pre-Doctoral Fellowship from The Center for the History of Collecting in America at The Frick Collection (2009).  His article, “Saving Face:  Henry Clay Frick’s Pursuit of Holbein’s Portraits,” was published in The Burlington Magazine (vol. 150, February 2008).

Catherine McNeur (Urban Design, ’03) earned her Ph.D. from Yale University in Urban History, writing a doctoral dissertation on “The ‘Swinish Multitude’ and Fashionable Promenades: Battles over Public Space in New York City, 1815-1865.”  As McNeur puts it, her dissertation “traces the fluid boundaries between city and country by studying the social and political battles that helped to establish those distinctions. Nineteenth-century New York City suffered from a paradox of progress. The reforms that helped to make the city more “urban” and livable led to a diminishment in the poor’s power to use public spaces as they needed to make ends meet.  Progress, in short, entailed the decline of the urban commons.  I focus on how the city’s parks and streets served as a battleground for economic classes, ethnic and racial groups, and a growing city government.  Through stories about free-roaming animals, the development of parks, the recycling of urban food waste and manure, public health crises, and the growth of shantytowns, I show how changes to environmental systems affected the lives and livelihoods of many New Yorkers.” Dr. McNeur has published an article that grows out of her dissertation, titled “The ‘Swinish Multitude”:  Controversies over Hogs in Antebellum New York City,” in the Journal of Urban History (September 2011).  She is the author of entries in the second edition of The Encyclopedia of New York City and reviews in Common-Place, Enterprise and Society, and Louisiana History.  She has presented her work at the annual conferences of the Organization of American Historians and the American Society of Environmental History, as well as the Conference on Environmental History at Yale University and the Draper Graduate Student Conference on Early American Studies.

Lydia Mattice Brandt (Art History, ’04) earned a Ph.D. in art and architectural history from the University of Virginia in May 2011.  She began an Assistant Professor position at the University of South Carolina in the fall of 2011, teaching architectural history and American art.  Her research focuses on the Colonial Revival in American architecture and material culture.  “If you see a building modeled after George Washington’s Mount Vernon, pass it along!”, urges Lydia.

After graduating from NYU, Emily Leonardo (Art History, ’07) worked for four years for Agnes Gund, President Emerita of the Museum of Modern Art.  She is currently an Administrative Assistant in the Department of Drawing and Prints at the Morgan Library & Museum, where she has worked since September 2011.  She is also completing her M.A. in Art History at Hunter College.  Formerly a Renaissance specialist as an undergraduate, Emily now focuses on religious art of twentieth-century Europe, and specifically, church decoration of postwar France.  Her thesis, entitled “‘The Vulgar Symbol’: Bonnard, Léger and Matisse at Assy,” examines the iconography of three works commissioned for the Dominican church of Notre Dame de Toute Grâce, Assy.  She will speak about the Dominican revival of sacred art with regard to Fernand Léger’s mosaic of The Virgin of the Litany at an upcoming conference on Icons at SUNY Binghamton next month.

 Shannon Vittoria (Art History / French, ‘07) is currently pursuing her Ph.D. in Art History at the City University of New York’s Graduate Center under the supervision of Patricia Mainardi.  She specializes in nineteenth-century European painting and sculpture, with a focus on issues of gender in Impressionist and Post-Impressionist art.  She has given several papers at graduate and professional conferences, including a recent symposium at the Brooklyn Museum of Art (May 2011), as well as at the CUNY Graduate Center, SUNY Binghamton, and the 2010 and 2011 Mid-Atlantic/Popular American Culture Association’s annual conferences.  After graduating from NYU, she worked for a number of museums and galleries, including the Guggenheim and the Pace Gallery.  She is currently a curatorial research assistant at the Frick Collection and an Adjunct Professor at Kingsborough Community College, where she is teaching an introductory art history course.

Sara Allain-Botsford (Art History, ’09) is currently living in Paris and teaching English with the Teaching Assistant Program in France (TAPIF).  She is interested in European languages and is improving her proficiency in French.  After graduating from NYU she attended University of California, Berkeley, where she completed a certificate to Teach English to Speakers of Other Languages (TESOL). While completing her coursework, she worked as an intern with the Museum Ambassador Program at the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco (FAMSF) and also as a substitute teacher.  Before moving to Paris in October 2010, she worked at the Zentner Collection, managing the listing and cataloguing of the collection online.  In 2010, she contributed to the re-starting of the NYU San Francisco Bay Area alumni club.

 Perrin Lathrop (Art History, ‘09) earned an M.A. in the History of Art at London’s Courtauld Institute of Art in 2011. Focusing on political issues surrounding the presentation and reception of global contemporary art with Dr. Julian Stallabrass, Perrin took a particular interest in contemporary African artistic production and the development of cultural institutions on the African continent over the course of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. She will present her distinction-awarded dissertation, “Localizing the Global Biennial? The Encounters of Bamako, African Biennial of Photography, 1994-2011,” at the 2012 Rutgers University Art History Graduate Symposium entitled The Art of Travel. Perrin continues to pursue her study of African art, both historical and contemporary, in the professional realm with her appointment as Research Assistant to Christa Clarke, Curator of the Arts of Africa at the Newark Museum. Perrin also recently became a contributing writer to the New York-based website Art Observed.

In 2011, Elliot Richman (Art History, ’09) curated his first exhibition, Picasso: Important Works on Paper at LewAllen Galleries in Santa Fe, New Mexico.  He also wrote and designed the exhibition catalog.  At present, he is living in Jerusalem and working for an Israel Education and Advocacy Organization called Stand With Us.  As Elliot reports, “I live with a family that abides by the Tanach and follows the Ten Commandments, so you can imagine the interesting conversations we’ve had about images and image-making, which is forbidden.”

Elliot Richman at Picasso Opening

Ksenia Yachmetz (Art History, ’09) is a first-year doctoral student in the Department of Art History at Rutgers University in New Brunswick, New Jersey.  There, she is a Dodge Fellow, holding a Graduate Curatorial Assistantship in the Nancy and Norton Dodge Collection of Nonconformist Art from the Soviet Union at the Jane Voorhees Zimmerli Art Museum. Last fall, she was appointed Administrator of The Malevich Society, an academic organization established for the pursuit and promotion of scholarship on the Russian avant-garde artist Kazimir Malevich.  On January 14, 2012, Ksenia was married to her fiancé Bruno Nouril in a ceremony at St. George’s Ukrainian Catholic Church in the East Village, which was followed by a reception at The University Club.

Recently, Elinor Rubin (B.A. Urban Design, ’10; M.A. Historical and Sustainable Architecture ’11) took up a full-time position as gallery manager at The Skyscraper Museum in Battery Park City, New York.  She will oversee all aspects of the Museum’s day-to-day operations, including its important fundraisers.  As Eli puts it, the position “will be a really great way to really learn and understand how non-profits function and operate–especially those involved in the arts.”

Emily Moore (Urban Design ’12) writes, “I landed a great job at an architecture firm. After I graduated in January I began working here full time, but I had been interning since August. I wanted to share with my fellow Urban Design and Architecture Studies classmates because I know how discouraging it can be to come out of NYU with an art history background, an interest in architecture, and nowhere to go.”  In addition to her Urban Design coursework, Emily took advantage of the NYUSCPS AutoCAD course and studied at Parsons this past summer, where she learned “a little about design and a little about computer programs.” She is now working at SPaN, an award-winning firm that uses Vectorworks.  As Emily puts it, “All of those things put me in a great position to be successful here, and now I am drawing construction documents as well as designing small elements within the projects.”

Alumni News, Fall 2011

Hearty thanks to all of the Art History and Urban Design alumni who responded to our recent call for news.  It is wonderful to hear from you and to learn about your activities and achievements since graduation.  We hope to hear from more of you for our next “alumni news” round-up, which will be in winter or spring 2012.  Please send your news, links, photos, videos and podcasts to Professor Kathryn Smith (kathryn.smith@nyu.edu) with a copy to Peggy Coon (peggy@nyu.edu), and thank you.

Gabriel P. Weisberg, (Art History, Fine Arts Department, Washington Square College, ‘63) continues to teach as Professor of Art History at the University of Minnesota. He organized two recent exhibitions.  The first is Illusions of Reality: Naturalist Painting, Photography, Theatre and Cinema, 1875-1918 for the Van Gogh Museum (2010-11) and the Ateneum, Helsinki, Finland (2011); the second is The Orient Expressed: Japan’s Influence on Western Art, 1854-1918 for The Mississippi Museum of Art and The Koogler McNay Museum, San Antonio (2011). Both shows had extensive publications, with Illusions distributed by DAP in New York City and The Orient Expressed published through the University of Washington Press, Seattle. Professor Weisberg is now serving as Guest Curator for the Snite Museum of Art (University of Notre Dame) on Breaking the Mold: The Legacy of Noah and Muriel Butkin, an exhibition of nineteenth-century paintings and drawings drawn from the donations the Butkins made to the Snite and The Cleveland Museum of Art. This exhibition, with catalogue, opens in September 2012.

David Penny (Art History, Fine Arts Department, Washington Square College, ’78) was appointed Associate Director for Museum Scholarship at the Museum of the American Indian in Washington, DC.  Penney is also an adjunct professor of art history at Wayne State University.

Jennifer Garrett (Art History, ’93) began a new position as Associate Producer of Lectures and Special Programs at The Museum of Science, Boston in July of this year. The Museum of Science annually hosts dozens of cutting-edge special events for adult audiences featuring everything from astronauts to artists.  Her first project, Dinner in Pompeii, supported the recently opened temporary exhibit, A Day in Pompeii, on view through February 12, 2012.  Held at Le Cordon Bleu College of Culinary Arts in Cambridge, and part of the Museum’s “Discussions Over Dinner Series,” Dinner at Pompeii featured a six-course Pompeian tasting menu developed by chef and art historian Maite Gomez-Rejón, founder of Artbites. For more information about the museum and its programs, see http://www.mos.org/.

Edmund Ryder (Art History, ’98) earned his M.A. and Ph.D. from NYU’s Institute of Fine Arts.  His research at the IFA was funded by a Dumbarton Oaks Summer Fellowship in Byzantine Studies, a Jane and Morgan Whitney Fellowship at the Metropolitan Museum, an A.G. Leventis Foundation Award, as well as by internal IFA fellowships.  Since receiving his Ph.D. in 2007, he has taught as a visiting assistant professor at Binghamton University, Connecticut College, and currently at Yale University.  He has published a number of on-line essays on the Metropolitan Museum’s Timeline of Art, and, recently, “An Epigram in honor of Saint Anastasia Pharmakolitria Commissioned by the Panhypersebaste Eirene Palaiologina,” in Anathemata Eortika: Early Christian, Byzantine and Armenian Studies In Honor of Thomas F. Mathews (2009), and “The Despoina of the Mongols and Her Patronage at The Church of the Theotokos tōn Magouliōn,” in The Journal of Modern Hellenism (2010).

After graduation, Edith Taichman (Art History, ’99) went on to work in the fashion industry, beginning with an editorial position at French Vogue.  She then moved to the field of fashion public relations, working for companies such as Valentino, Oscar de la Renta, and Brian Reyes.  She took a slightly different track about a year ago to indulge a long-standing interest in architecture while remaining connected to the fashion world, and is now Director of Communications for Peter Marino Architect, a 125-person, New York-based firm whose principal, Peter Marino, has designed high-end luxury stores worldwide for the likes of Chanel, Dior, Louis Vuitton, Zegna, Celine, Fendi, and Barneys New York, among others (www.petermarinoarchitect.com).  Edith recently traveled to Marfa, Texas, where she participated in a Design Build Adventure camp, a week-long program led by Austin-based Jack Sanders. The fifteen participants in the camp identified a community need and built a playground for the children of Marfa.  As Edith herself put it, this was accomplished “while enjoying the art, fantastic food, and charm of the West Texas town, with its amazingly inspiring background of everything Donald Judd, who famously put the sleepy town on the map when he settled there in the 1970′s.”

Alisa Welch (Art History ’00) is in her second year of an MFA in fiction at Portland State University in Portland, Oregon. She is also a teaching assistant in an undergraduate Art History course and helps students communicate ideas using the language and analytical skills particular to the study of art. Before graduate school, Alisa worked as an editorial assistant at Sports Illustrated and as an assistant for the French art book publisher, Assouline. For the past four years, she has been a freelance magazine writer and completed several monographs for the Oregon Arts Commission on the state of arts and arts education in Oregon.

On her honeymoon in Paris, 2007, Alisa visits her inspiration for studying art history: Manet's "Olympia", at the Musée d'Orsay

Cathy Origlieri (Art History, ’02) graduated with a major in Fine Arts and double minor in Chemistry and Studio Art. Hoping to fuel her passion for both science and art, she worked briefly in art conservation before deciding to apply to medical school. It was at that time that she realized her true professional calling to become a surgeon. She earned her M.D. degree from University of Medicine and Dentistry of NewJersey in 2008, and after a year-long internship in internal medicine at Georgetown University, she is currently a resident in ophthalmology at UMDNJ.  To this day, “whether I’m examining patients with fine instruments or performing surgery under a microscope, my foundation in art is never far away,” Cathy writes. “In fact I think it’s one of the reasons I ended up in a field that’s as hands-on and visual as ophthalmology.”

Stephanie Swinton (Art History/Urban Design and Architecture Studies, ’02) also minored in French.  Stephanie earned an M.A. in Visual Culture:  Costume Studies from NYU (Steinhardt, ’06), the classes for which were offered in conjunction with the Costume Institute at the Metropolitan Museum of Art.  Stephanie is currently studying as part of the 2012 class for the M.B.A. in International Luxury Brand Management at ESSEC Business School in France and was awarded the prestigious L’Oreal Luxury Division scholarship for the program.  Previously, she worked for NYC apparel company Carole Hochman Design Group.  Stephanie encourages any alumni currently living in Paris to be in touch at s.swinton.1@alumni.nyu.edu or (www.stephanieswinton.blogspot.com)

Taylor (Stirek) Pineiro (Art History, ’04) continued at NYU to earn an M.A. in Media Ecology from Steinhardt in 2007. Taylor focuses her extra-curricular energy on several non-profit organizations whose mission she cares deeply about.  She sits on the Junior Board of StreetWise Partners mentoring program and the Advisory Board of the New Leaders Council in NYC. Additionally, Taylor was the President of the Manhattan Young Democrats in 2010. That same year, Taylor and several other friends launched a non-profit, The White Roof Project  http://www.whiteroofproject.com/, which aims to curb climate change by painting city roofs a reflective white. Taylor serves on the board as the Social Media Director (http://twitter.com/#!/roofproject). Since its launch, The White Roof Project has coated thousands of square feet of New York City roof with white paint. Most recently, the organization painted 35,000 square feet in the Lower East Side. This “Model Block” site is home to several non-profits and artist studios as well as low-income housing. The current mission is to spread the word to other New York City neighborhoods’ superintendents and building owners that two coats of white paint can lower the temperature in the building and save money on energy consumption. The goal for 2012 is to create an easy-to-follow “how-to” guide that can be shared with cities and organizations around the world.  On April 30^th, Taylor married fellow NYU Graduate Juan Carlos Pineiro (Tisch ’03), whom she met at NYU in Florence in 2002, in a super-secret elopement in front of the Statue of Liberty!

Roni Sivan (Art History, ‘05) has been working in the cultural exchange industry since 2008 and recently started working with customized and faculty-led programs at a study abroad provider in Austin, TX.  So, although she appears to have veered from the art history track, she maintains a soft spot for the art history-based programs that she works to plan.  Prior to beginning her new job, Roni took a few months to travel around Southeast Asia. She fell in love with Cambodia and, as a result of the time spent volunteering there, founded Austin2Angkor–a volunteer-based project dedicated to raising money to build community centers for villages in need near Siem Reap. “When the volunteer group reaches its goal, I will take them to Cambodia to see the direct impact they made,” Roni writes.

Austin2Angkor: Building Futures in Cambodia
www.austin2angkor.com
www.facebook.com/austin2angkor
roni@austin2angkor.com
To make a quick & safe donation, visit www.crowdrise.com/austin2angkor

Malcolm St. Clair (Urban Design and Architecture Studies, ’09) is living in Brooklyn.  From September, 2010 to August, 2011, he worked at the Archives of the New York Stock Exchange processing the Staff Photographer Collection and assisting in the creation of an internal exhibit on the history of the Exchange.  He has recently begun working at St. Bernard’s School, an independent boys’ school on the Upper East Side, as Database Manager and Development Associate.  He’s spending his off-hours enjoying novels, poetry, art and walks in the park.

Alumni News, Spring 2011

Great thanks to all of the alumni who responded to our call for news.  It is terrific to hear from you and to learn about your activities and achievements since graduation.  We hope to hear from more of you in the weeks and months to come; please send your news, links, photos, videos, and podcasts to Professor Kathryn Smith (Kathryn.smith@nyu.edu), with a copy to Peggy Coon (peggy@nyu.edu).

Nina Wishnok, ’89 lives in Boston, where she works as an artist and a designer (see www.ninawishnok.com).  Recently, she began a new job as Designer at the MIT Media Lab (www.media.mit.edu).  Two of her prints will be included in the 1st International Mokuhanga conference in Japan this June (see http://www.mokuhanga.jp/en/).

Sarah Laursen, ’02 graduated from NYU with a double major in Art History and East Asian Studies.  After completing undergraduate internships in the Asian departments of the Brooklyn Museum and Metropolitan Museum of Art, Sarah joined a two-year inventory project in the Arthur M. Sackler Museum at Harvard University.  In 2004, she began her doctoral studies in Chinese art history at the University of Pennsylvania, where she was elected to the Louis J. Kolb Society of Fellows at the Penn Museum and participated in public outreach programming in connection with the 2011 Secrets of the Silk Road exhibition.  In Philadelphia, she also taught courses at Temple University, Moore College of Art & Design, and the Philadelphia Museum of Art.  It has been almost ten years since Sarah left New York, and in that time she has traveled the globe, visiting Silk Road sites from Iran to Japan.  In May 2011, she will receive her Ph.D., and in fall she will return to her alma mater to join NYU’s Institute for the Study of the Ancient World as a two-year postdoctoral fellow.

 Ryann Pointon, ’03 earned her M.A. in Visual Arts Administration from NYU’s Steinhardt School in 2008.  Her master’s thesis explored African-American philanthropy in the arts.  She is currently the Director of Annual Giving at LREI (Little Red School House and Elisabeth Irwin High School) in Greenwich Village.   Ryann is also a member of NYU’s Young Alumni Leadership Circle and serves on the Visual Arts Administration Alumni Council.

 Tamara Eaton, ’06 launched her own interior design firm, Tamara Eaton Design, about a year and a half ago.  She recently completed a major project – the renovation of a historic Montrose Morris townhouse on Prospect Park that was the former residence of actress Jennifer Connolly.  For more information about the project and the design process, see the article published by the Park Slope Patch at http://parkslope.patch.com/articles/inside-17-prospect-park-west-modernizing-a-victorian-masterpiece#photo-4751306.  More photos of the project are available on Tamara’s website, www.tamaratoday.com.

Carly Jane Steinborn, ’06 is currently working on her Ph.D. at Rutgers University. For the past year, she has been living in Italy as a Rome Prize recipient.  She will be at the American Academy in Rome from 2010-2012 on a two-year fellowship to conduct research on her doctoral dissertation, “Transforming Sacred Space:  Image and Materiality in the Orthodox Baptistery of Ravenna.”

Ksenia Yachmetz, ’09 will begin her doctoral studies in Central and Eastern European art this fall as a Dodge Fellow at Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey.  Over the summer, she will be a research intern in the Department of Photography at the Museum of Modern Art.  Please also read Ksenia’s recent article, “Outside the White Cube, Inside the Art Fair,” posted on our blog last month (18 April).

Adrian Marshall, ’10 is currently working at Alexander and Bonin Gallery in Chelsea.  She also has been working at a new art journal, 491, which recently posted her review of the exhibition, Objects of Devotion and Desire:  Medieval Relic to Contemporary Art at Hunter College’s Leubsdorf Gallery (see (www.fourninetyone.com).  Submissions to 491 from current and former Department of Art History students are welcome.  This fall, Adrian will be heading to Syracuse University to begin an M.A. in Renaissance Art.  The three-semester program at Syracuse includes one year at Syracuse’s center in Florence.

Alexandra Wellington, ’10 will begin the M.A./Ph.D. program in Art History at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill this fall, pursuing research on eighteenth- and nineteenth-century French and British art under the supervision of Professor Mary Sheriff.  A double major in Political Science and Art History at NYU, she is interested in art and politics in European art of the period, Orientalism, and the artists who accompanied Captain James Cook on his explorations of the Pacific, including Sydney Parkinson, William Hodges, and John Webber.  For the past year, Alexandra has been a curatorial intern at the Dallas Museum of Art, working in the Department of European and American art under curators Heather MacDonald and Olivier Meslay.  Her responsibilities include researching art in the permanent collection as well as works that the museum is considering selling or buying.  She also co-curated two exhibitions:  the first examines Impressionist print-making in France, and the second is a comprehensive exhibition about one of the museum’s most cherished holdings, Henri Matisse’s Ivy in Flower, a paper cut-out from 1953.  Currently she is planning a future exhibition on Chanel and the artists with whom she collaborated during her time at La Pausa, her private villa in the South of France.  Alexandra also has written wall labels as well as several entries for the museum’s publications.

Outside the White Cube, Inside the Art Fair

Are you looking for a job in the arts that involves working directly with galleries, artists, museums, and collectors? Do you like to travel? Are you quick on your feet to overcome unforeseen obstacles? Are you interested in the mechanics of the art market? If you have answered “yes” to all of these questions, you might want to think about working for an art fair. Positions at art fairs, especially those that are satellite or niche, are a great way to jumpstart your career in the arts. From my experience as the Exhibitor Relations Associate at ART ASIA Fair, I have seen all sectors of the art world converge at fairs. They are much-anticipated annual events that allow access to all levels of art professionals from museum directors and scholars to top collectors and key critics. An invaluable opportunity to expand your network, art fairs are also places where you can learn about the business of art and how to make a sale, things not usually taught in an art history classroom.

In her Artforum article “Emerging Market: The Birth of the Contemporary Art Fair”, art historian Christine Mehring traces the history of art fairs to KUNSTMARKT 67, the first modern art fair, which hosted eighteen galleries in Cologne, Germany for a five-day period beginning on September 13, 1967. The brainchild of art dealers Hein Stunke and Rudolf Zwirner (father of gallerist David Zwirner), KUNSTMARKT 67 was an effort to revitalize the flagging West German art economy post-Berlin Wall. Not interested in educating the public or promoting community among art dealers, Stunke and Zwirner were up front about the fair’s unabashed mercantile aim, commercial transparency, and race to sell at affordable yet profitable prices. In many ways, KUNSTMARKT was not an exhibition of artworks but of the art market, making it a model for successors like Art Basel in Switzerland (1970), FIAC in Paris (1974), Art Chicago (1979), The Armory Show in New York (1998), and Frieze in London (2003).

Walking the floor of an art fair can be like walking the floor of the New York Stock Exchange. This is especially true on the vernissage night, where VIPs try to scoop up the most desirable works before the general public descends on the convention center halls the following morning. Unlike in the usually celebratory and relaxed atmosphere of gallery openings, gallerists mean business on the first night of an art fair, fielding questions and price quotes while in a constant stream of conversation. Strong sales the first day can project a good run for a superstitious gallerist or provide a source of consolation to another if the remaining days prove lackluster. The most important aspect of the art fair sale is the here and now. To let a buyer walk away, usually means that she will not return, and the sale is lost. However, gallerists also work hard on developing client relationships, taking a gamble on future interactions and sales.

Sarah Douglas looks at art fairs from a different perspective in her article “The Power of Fairs” for Art+Auction. Deemphasizing gallerists and emphasizing the marketing and structuring of an art fair as a luxury product, Douglas highlights the pivotal role of the trade show company in the making of a successful art fair. Running an art fair like any other business-to-consumer show, these companies see potential in the culture-and-leisure market and can help an art fair refine its image through corporate backing, special projects, and high profile events. The success of these campaigns can be seen in the increased buzz around art fairs as the biggest social events of the season.

While I have sometimes found the lack of “art” in art fairs ironic, being part of the show organization team has been a very rewarding experience. While many of the skills I learned as an art history undergraduate and intern at various museums and galleries did come in handy, I was surprised by how much I learned that could never be taught. As a result, I have continued to shape my perception of the art world straight from the belly of the beast!

Ksenia Yachmetz, CAS ’09, will take leave of the commercial art world this fall to pursue her doctoral studies in Central and Eastern European art as a Dodge Fellow at Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey. She can be contacted at ksenia.yachmetz@gmail.com.

Works Cited:

Douglas, Sarah. “The Power of Fairs.” Art+Auction. March, 2011.

Mehring, Christine. “Emerging Market: The Birth of the Contemporary Art Fair. Artforum. April, 2008.

Ksenia Yachmetz, CAS ’09