Hearty thanks to all of the Art History, Urban Design and Architecture Studies, and Historical and Sustainable Architecture alumni who responded to our recent call for news, and congratulations on your splendid achievements! It is wonderful to hear from you and to learn about your activities. We hope to hear from more of you for our next Alumni News round-up, which we’ll post sometime in Spring 2014. And thanks to all of the Department of Art History faculty who contributed to this post.
Alumni: please send your news, links, photos, videos and podcasts (and corrections) to Professor Kathryn Smith (kathryn.smith@nyu.edu) with a copy to Peggy Coon (peggy@nyu.edu). Thank you again, and best wishes for happiness, fulfillment, and success to all!
It was a pleasure to welcome back to NYU Charlotte Daudon Lacaze (B.A. Art History, ‘67; IFA Ph.D., ‘78), Professor Emerita and former Dean at the American University of Paris. On October 10th, Professor Lacaze delivered a lecture on “St. Denis, the ‘most glorious patron’ of France and its Kings” at NYU’s Maison Française. The lecture was co-sponsored by the Department of Art History and Medieval and Renaissance Studies Program. Department of Art History Professors Carol H. Krinsky and Kathryn A. Smith and Professor Emerita Lucy Freeman Sandler had the pleasure of attending both Professor Lacaze’s excellent talk and the dinner afterward. Professor Lacaze-Daudon began her undergraduate career at NYU as a French major; she credits Professor Krinsky’s lectures in the Department of Art History (then, the Department of Fine Arts) with kindling her interest in art history. Professor Lacaze offers art history tours of Paris and vicinity in three languages via an agency called Context Travel. There is more information about Professor Lacaze and her current work here. (This post was contributed by Professors Krinsky and Smith).
Lisa Hostetler (B.A. Art History, ‘92) has been appointed Curator-in-Charge of Photography at George Eastman House International Museum of Photography and Film in Rochester, NY. Previously she was the McEvoy Family Curator for Photography at the Smithsonian American Art Museum in Washington, DC. Before that, she was curator of photographs at the Milwaukee Art Museum (from 2005-2012), and, from 2001-2005, a research associate in the Department of Photographs at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Hostetler earned her Ph.D. from Princeton, where she wrote her dissertation on Louis Faurer under the supervision of Peter Bunnell. There is more information here.
Michele (Felicetta) Saliola (B.A. Art History, ’01) continued at NYU’s Institute of Fine Arts to earn an M.A. in Art History and Archaeology in 2003. Since that time she has been an active member of the arts non-profit community in New York, focusing on connecting audiences to the city’s great art collections. Over the past ten years she has worked with institutions such as the Brooklyn Museum, Brooklyn Botanic Garden, Brooklyn Public Library, Battery Dance Company, Manhattan Children’s Theater, SoHo Photo Gallery, CCS Bard/Hessel Museum, and the National Trust for Historic Preservation. Currently Michele is Director of Programs at the Donald Judd Foundation, working with the Board of Directors on strategic planning, collections stewardship and public programming in Marfa, TX, and in New York City. Most recently, she was project manager for the $23 million restoration of Judd’s SoHo home and studio, 101 Spring Street, a landmark cast iron building, and oversaw a $25 million capital campaign to restore its historic facade and transition the building from a private collection into a public museum. She works with the NYC Arts & Business Council, the American Alliance of Museums, and directors of non-profits to advise on community engagement, historic preservation, fundraising, collections management, and programming.
Sarah Laursen (B.A. Art History/East Asian Studies, ’02) moved to Vermont in January to teach Chinese art and museum studies in the History of Art and Architecture Department at Middlebury College. She also holds an appointment as Curator of Asian Art at the Middlebury College Museum of Art, where she is in the process of reinstalling the Asian gallery and planning upcoming shows on Chinese landscape photography and graphic reinterpretations of classic Asian literature. Some lucky NYU students and alumni benefited from Sarah’s expertise: she taught East Asian Art I, the first half of the Department of Art History’s two-part survey of East Asian art, in spring 2012, while she was a postdoctoral fellow at NYU’s Institute for the Study of the Ancient World (ISAW). Sarah writes that she is “enjoying the fresh country air with her fiancé, comic book writer Jeremy Holt, and their Miniature Pinscher Otto.”
Catherine McNeur (B.A. Urban Design and Architecture Studies, ‘02)received the best dissertation award from the Urban History Association for her Ph.D. thesis, “The ‘Swinish Multitude’ and Fashionable Promenades: Battles over Public Space in New York City, 1815-1865.” Dr. McNeur, who earned her Ph.D. from Yale in 2012, also was awarded the American Society for Environmental History’s Rachel Carson Prize for best dissertation (see our April 18th, 2013 blogpost). Recent Urban Design graduates benefitted from Dr. McNeur’s expertise last academic year, when she led a tutorial for honors thesis students.
Stephanie Swinton (B.A. Art History/Urban Design and Architecture Studies ’02); French (minor); Steinhardt, Visual Culture: Costume Studies ’06) graduated in 2012 with Honors with her MBA in International Luxury Brand Management from ESSEC Business School, in Paris, France, where she was the L’Oreal Luxe scholarship recipient. “I am now a member of the Beta Gamma Sigma International Honor Society, recognizing business excellence,” Stephanie writes. “After spending the summer in France and Switzerland, I am currently working as a consultant between NYC and LA for companies in Luxury and the Arts. I published a book of my Paris black & white photographs and exhibited several of my France ‘Doorway Details’ series color photographs in a group show in California.” Additionally, as a result of the appreciation for wine that she developed during her undergraduate studies abroad in Paris, Stephanie was able to participate in the picking and bottling of wine for a local Californian winery this fall. Stephanie invites NYU students and alumni to follow her adventures on her blog, How to be Fabulous.
Katherine E. Kasdorf (B.A. Art History, ‘03) earned her Ph.D. in South Asian Art History from Columbia University in February 2013. She recently began a position as Curator and Head of Collections Management at the Shraman Foundation in Dallas, a new, dynamic foundation for research on South Asian Art and culture with a particular focus on the art so the Jains, one of the most interesting and neglected of the South Asian traditions; details of the foundation can be found here. Some lucky NYU students and alumni had the opportunity of benefiting from Katherine’s knowledge, as she taught South Asian Art I in the Department of Art History in fall 2012. Katherine also taught at Columbia. (Portions of this post were contributed by Professors Flood and Smith).
Lydia Mattice Brandt (B.A. Art History, ‘04), an Assistant Professor of Art and Architectural History at the University of South Carolina, was recently awarded one of seven inaugural fellowships at the new Fred W. Smith National Library of the Study of George Washington at Mount Vernon. Her fellowship will allow her to complete her book manuscript, which chronicles the memory of George Washington’s plantation house in popular American architecture.
Shauna Young Breatore (B.A. Art History, ’04) recently graduated from NYU’s Institute of Fine Arts Conservation Center with an M.A. in the History of Art and Archaeology and an Advanced Certificate in the Conservation of Historic and Artistic Works. Shauna’s interest in the challenges presented by the conservation of modern and contemporary art led her to complete her graduate training with an internship in the Paintings Conservation Department at the Museum of Modern Art. She has recently accepted a position as Assistant Conservator at Modern Art Conservation, a private studio in Chelsea.
Caroline Fowler (B.A. Art History, ‘05) earned her Ph.D. in Art History from Princeton University. After spending some years in the Netherlands, she has been awarded a fellowship to CASVA, the Center for Advanced Study in the Visual Arts, based at the National Gallery of Art in Washington, DC.
Maya Dean (B.A. Art History, ‘07) began her third year of teaching in a high school in Queretaro, Mexico, and is contemplating her next move. Many departmental alumni will recall Maya not only from her years as a student in our department but also from her four years as our Administrative Secretary (from 2007-2011). Maya earned an M.A. in Social Studies Education from NYU in 2011. During graduate school, she served as a student teacher at iSchool High and CASTLE Middle School.
Maeve O’Donnell-Morales (B.A. Art History, ‘07) completed an M.A. degree in Art History at the City University of New York, where she studied with medievalist Cynthia Hahn. Maeve is now enrolled in the Ph.D. program at the Courtauld Institute, London.
Kaitlin Booher (B.A. Art History, ’08) recalls with pleasure the courses she took with Professors Shelley Rice and Barry Flood in particular. After graduating, Kaitlin interned at the Corcoran, where she has been ever since. After her internship she was hired as a curatorial assistant, and last January she was promoted to Assistant Curator of Photography and Media Arts. Her first major exhibition, organized with the artist Alex Prager, opened this month.
Alexandra Higgins (B.A. Art History, ‘09) has been accepted into the Museum Studies Masters program at John F. Kennedy University. She will begin her studies next fall.
In addition to curating exhibitions in Santa Fe, NM, and Los Angeles (see our March 20th, 2012 and March 25th, 2013 posts), Elliot Richman (B.A. Art History, ‘09) has embarked on a new venture: designing and making jewelry. This activity, which started out as a hobby, quickly grew into something quite a bit more, and now Elliot’s designs are being carried by one of his favorite stores in Los Angeles, Jenni Kayne. Recently, Elliot put together a website for his jewelry. As Elliot writes, “One of the pieces on the site, Diebenkorn’s Balloons, is from a series inspired by great artists, and specifically, by what I imagine their ephemera and somewhat less serious belongings to look like…balloons, beach umbrellas, etc.” Elliot is also working on Franz Kline’s Socks and Van Gogh’s Beach Umbrellas. The next series of pieces may be related to different composers, or perhaps to keys. Elliot has provided a coupon on the site for 30% off: just type in the code word “NYU” (all caps).
Christina Smith (M.A. Historical and Sustainable Architecture, ’10) accepted a position as Director of Central Grants, City of Bridgeport, Connecticut.
Laura McKenzie (B.A. Art History ’11) was admitted to Vanderbilt Law School and began her classes this fall.
Amanda Sroka (B.A. Art History ‘11) began the Courtauld Institute’s MA History of Art Program this fall. There, she will be studying under art historian and curator Sarah Wilson in her special options course, Global Conceptualism: The Last Avant-Garde or a New Beginning.
Alicia Caticha (B.A. Art History ’12) is in the thick of her first semester of classes at the University of Virginia, where she is pursuing a Ph.D. in Art History. She will be working with Douglas Fordham and Sarah Betzer. As Alicia writes, “They [Rodham and Betzer] are both very young and just received tenure last year. One other incoming student and I are, in fact, their first Ph.D. students, so there is so much excitement and energy surrounding all our work.”
Lindsey Davis (B.A. Art History, ’12) is building a public art database, photographing and researching works in San Francisco with the aim of making public art and street art easy to find. A developer in Indiana is helping Lindsey to create a platform and app called WanderArt. Users who wish to comment on works have to ‘check-in’ to the location of the work of art. Lindsey and her partner in this venture are hoping to build an anthropological database that will track people’s reactions to works of art as they experience them. They are currently working with San Francisco General Hospital to document the ‘Hearts in San Francisco’ sculptures commissioned from artists every year, and will launch the app in conjunction with their tenth-anniversary auction event in February. As Lindsey writes, “Any suggestions or feedback from the NYU community would be greatly appreciated!” See more at WanderArt.org.
Nicole Pesce (B.A. Art History/History, ‘12) is working in development at the Center for Architecture, the headquarters of the American Institute of Architects chapter in New York City. Some students and alumni already may have visited; it’s on LaGuardia Place near Bleecker, and its exhibitions are free and open to the public.
Michael Vanger (B.A. Art History ‘12) has been accepted to the M.A. program in Analytics at Northwestern University.
During her senior year, Vivian Chen (B.A. Art History ’13; Psychology minor) worked as an intern at Christie’s Chinese Paintings department and as an image cataloguer in connection with the research and photography of the H.W. Janson archive, directed by Dr. Thomaï Serdari. Vivian recently joined Richard Meier & Partners Architects LLP as the administrative assistant in their New York office.
Harrison Jackson (B.A. Art History ’13) began her M.A. in Art History at the IFA this fall.
Karen Zabarsky (B.A. Urban Design and Architecture Studies, ‘13) is employed at Studio V Architects, where she worked while an undergraduate.
Fields of Vision 