Rosenblum Lecture on Thursday, March 29

The Department of Art History at New York University cordially invites you to the 2018 Rosenblum Lecture, delivered by Professor Simon Gikandi of Princeton University. We hope to see many of you there!

On Art and Suffering
Simon Gikandi – Robert Schirmer Professor of English, Princeton University
Thursday, March 29, 6:30 PM
Room 300, Silver Center

Recent debates and disputes about the practice of art have come to be defined by anxieties about ownership, appropriation, and identification, often at odds with the universal claims made for the aesthetic experience for most of the modern period. In the age of technological reproduction, we no longer seem to value art as either a conduit for freedom, universal sensibility, or as a mode for dealing with the suffering of others. We are no longer sure that there can be an aesthetic ideology that might enable us to cope with experience that are not part of the orbit of our own affliction. This lecture is motivated by the following questions: Can there be an adequate aesthetic response to the problem of suffering? What exactly is the human condition that the aesthetic is asked to respond to? Do works of art help us understand the tragic experiences of others, or are they always complicitous with the afflictions that they seek to represent? I draw my examples from the archive of Atlantic slavery and the debates surrounding it. 

Alumni News, Spring 2018

Many, many thanks to all of the Art History and Urban Design & Architecture Studies 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 Fall 2018. Hearty thanks, too, to Professors Mosette Broderick and Carol H. Krinsky, who provided news about some of our distinguished alumni with whom they keep in touch.

Rosemarie Garipoli (B.A. Fine Arts ca. ’66/’67) earned her M.A. at the Institute of Fine Arts and later became a prominent specialist in development for cultural institutions including the New York Botanic Garden (where she worked with fellow department alumnus Gregory Long; for news about Gregory see our Fall 2017 blog post ) and Lincoln Center.  She has retired from most of her development work, although she continues to serve the Theater for a New Audience (TFANA) for which downtown Brooklyn’s Polonsky Theater was built.  Her latest occupation was training the family dog as a therapy dog, for which it is now certified.

Check out the recent, excellent review in CAAReviews of the catalogue for the exhibition, Ancient Egypt Transformed: The Middle Kingdom (Metropolitan Museum of Art, 2015) co-edited by Adela Oppenheim (B.A. Fine Arts ’86; M.A. University of Pennsylvania; Ph.D. Institute of Fine Arts ’08), with Dorothea Arnold, Dieter Arnold, and Kei Yamamoto. As the reviewer, Patrick Salland, concludes, “…this volume, with its well-written essays and catalogue entries and stunning visuals, finally gives the Middle Kingdom the recognition it so rightly deserves.”  Dr. Oppenheim is Curator of Egyptian Art at the Met.

And, check out Julia Perratore’s (B.A. Fine Arts ’03; Ph.D. History of Art, University of Pennsylvania ’12) thoughtful review of Elina Gertsman’s Worlds Within: Opening the Medieval Shrine Madonna, published in volume 6, issue 2 of the journal Peregrinations: Journal of Medieval Art and Architecture.

Chris Rawson (B.A. Fine Arts ’05) will be running with his team in this year’s New York Half Marathon to support critical cancer research at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center (MSK).  Chris writes, “I ran with the team in the full New York City marathon in 2016 and I am raising funds again this year for this important cause.” Here’s a link to his fundraising page and more about the team.  And please continue to follow news from Chris’s gallery, Rawson Projects on our blog.

Christian J. Zaino, MD (Urban Design and Architecture Studies ’06, MED ’10) sends this news:  “I just joined the Orthopedic Institute of New Jersey as their newest orthopedic surgeon. I specialize in hand, upper extremity, and microscopic surgery.  I see patients at Cedar Knolls, NJ, which is located just outside of Morristown, NJ and west of Short Hills, NJ.  Prior to that I did a fellowship in hand surgery in New Zealand for about 5 months.  I traveled extensively while there.  Interesting buildings I saw were the “Beehive” (1977) executive wing of the houses of parliament, a unique brutalist structure, as well as the original Houses of Parliament and Library (1920s) in Wellington.  The older buildings were recently retrofitted to withstand earthquakes by replacing the building’s foundation with seismic base isolation drums made from rubber and lead.  Very interesting and pioneered in New Zealand.  The free tour (easy to book) gets you into the basement for a close inspection.  Impressive!  The City of Napier in the southeast part of the north island is next to the world famous Hawkes Bay wine region but is itself famous for being a remarkably intact Art Deco city. bIn 1932 there was a massive earthquake and subsequent fire that destroyed the city, which was rebuilt completely in the Art Deco style.  In February of every year there is a week long Art Deco Festival.  But all year long it is a trip back in time, especially with antique roadsters touring the city.  My favorite trip was to Kaikoura where I went whale watching and spent the weekend in a PurePod – an off-the-grid glass house in the isolated New Zealand wilderness. Certainly an exceptional experience.  Lastly, for New Year’s Eve I saw the opera at the famous Sydney Opera House — an incredible experience.  The buildings contain 1,056,006 ceramic tiles, which is a frequent trivia question.  Book your opera ticket early, or do a tour.”

Close-up of the world famous Sydney Opera House. The shells of reinforced concrete symbolize sails of a ship. They are lined with over 1 million tiles made by the company that made them for the space shuttle.

Deep in the middle of the south island of New Zealand is this PurePod, a glass-house in the middle of the New Zealand wilderness. The Kahutara River is in front with southern alps in the background. New Zealand is known for its green sustainable echo tourism.

Downtown Napier, New Zealand. There are many Art Deco buildings throughout the city with architecture and wine tours given by antique roadsters.

The Executive Wing of the New Zealand Parliament Buildings”The Beehive” (left, 1969 – 1981) and the  Parliament House (1922) with the Parliamentary Library (1899) right. The older two buildings underwent the installation of seismic base isolation drums in 1992.

Double congratulations go to Maeve O’Donnell-Morales (B.A. Fine Arts ’07; M.A. Hunter; Ph.D. Courtauld Institute of Art ’18):  Maeve is now Dr. O’Donnell- Morales, as she earned her Ph.D. from the Courtauld Institute of Art and passed her VIVA earlier this year!  And, just as wonderful, in 2017 she was married!  The fortunate man is Steve Owen.

Catherine (Cat) Lukaszewski (B.A. Art History ’08) sends this news: “I have settled in to the rhythm of life on the West Coast after moving to Los Angeles in May of 2016.  The move West posed some new challenges — including the need to master driving at age 31!  I recently assumed a newly created position, Laboratory Coordinator, at the Getty Conservation Institute, and am thrilled to be returning to the conservation world after managing the laboratories and Study Collection at New York University’s Institute of Fine Arts Conservation Center for the six years prior to my departure for L.A.  I spend most of my spare time exploring the multitude of magical neighborhoods that form this sprawling city and its environs and have become particularly enamored of the historic buildings in the Los Angeles area, especially all that Deco!  I have enjoyed keeping in touch with NYU faculty from my student and employee days, as well as many fellow graduates.”

Sarah Colacino (B.A. Urban Design and Architecture Studies ’09) earned her M.Arch from CCNY in 2012 and moved to the D.C. area in 2013.  As Sarah writes, “I work at Eric Colbert & Associates, and last year I finished the process of becoming a licensed architect in D.C.  I recently attended the topping out ceremony for the Highline at Union Market, an apartment building with retail and the first project in which I had a major role (schematic design through the end of construction documents).  I am currently doing construction administration for a mixed-use project called West Half Street (designed by ODA Architecture in NYC).”

West Half Street: rendering

West Half Street: construction progress

Highline at Union Market: rendering

Highline at Union Market: construction progress

 

 

Alexander Kauffman (B.A. Art History ’10) completed his Ph.D. at the University of Pennsylvania with a dissertation entitled “‘Faire un Cinéma’: Marcel Duchamp and the Moving Image.” In recent months, he has delivered conference papers in Stuttgart and Toronto and contributed catalogue essays for upcoming exhibitions in Philadelphia, St. Louis, Vienna, and Rouen. He is currently lecturer in the history of art at the University of Pennsylvania and Anne d’Harnoncourt – Andrew W. Mellon Foundation Postdoctoral Curatorial Fellow at the Philadelphia Museum of Art.

Emma Gagnon (B.A. Art History ’13; M.A. Courtauld Institute of Art) was admitted to the Ph.D. program in Art History at the University of California, Santa Barbara.

Sarah Bigler (B.A. Art History ’16) sends this news: “I will be finishing my Master’s in Art History at Columbia in May.  For my Master’s, I focused on nineteenth-century France and the history of collecting.  I am currently writing my M.A. thesis on the art dealer Frederick Keppel, who sold late nineteenth-century French etchings in Gilded Age New York.”  Sarah also works at the Frick Art Reference Library in the Photoarchive as a Photoarchive Assistant.

Zoe Priest (B.A. Urban Design and Architecture Studies ’16) has been accepted to the MFA program in Communication Design at Pratt Institute and will begin her studies this fall.

Maria Stojanovic (B.A. Urban Design and Architecture Studies/Romance Languages ’16) is working as a real estate appraiser, which she says is a lot of fun!  She often has to read zoning codes, and the courses she took in Urban Design and Architecture Studies have turned out to be very useful.

Emma Holter (B. A. Art History ’17) recently began working as the Administrative Assistant to the Chief Curator at The Frick Collection.  “I will be working closely with Xavier Salomon as he plans upcoming special exhibitions for the museum.  I am absolutely thrilled at the opportunity and my first weeks have been spectacular thus far,” reports Emma.  

 

Mengyue Wu (B.A. Art History ’17) graduated from NYU magna cum laude with honors in December 2017.  She completed an honors thesis titled “Resist, reform, and return: Pan Tianshou’s painting’s in 1950s.”  Mengyue plans to attend graduate school and has received offers of admission from Stanford University’s M.A. in East Asian Studies and the University of Toronto’s M.A. in Art History; she is on the waitlist for Harvard’s M.A. in Regional Studies, East Asia.  She is happy about the results and looks forward to continuing her studies.

Celebrating Publications Devoted to Spanish and Latin American Art

Register for NYU Summer Study Abroad URDS in London!

https://www.nyu.edu/academics/studying-abroad/summer-abroad/programs/urban-design-in-london.html

New York University’s Tamiment Library round table on issues relating to early West African manuscripts.

Please join us at New York University’s Tamiment Library (10th floor, Elmer Holmes Bobst Library, 70 Washington Sq. South) on Wednesday, April 11, 6:30-8:00PM (doors open at 6pm) for a round table on issues relating to early West African manuscripts.

A fundamental source for the history of West Africa lies in rich archival collections, most famously the manuscript libraries of Timbuktu. Documents from the Mali and Songhai Empires and the centuries before European colonial rule offer a vital window into the region’s complex ties to the wider Muslim world, and to cultures and polities in Africa, Europe, and the Middle East.

Ousmane Kane (Harvard) and Michael Gomez (NYU) will discuss their recent work reassessing the religious and political history of West Africa, research which relied heavily on the documentary evidence to be found in such collections. Alexandra Huddleston is a photojournalist who spent part of her childhood in Mali, returning there in 2007 to document the traditional custodianship of manuscript collections in Timbuktu, before they were dramatically spirited out of the city for safekeeping in Bamako ahead of advancing insurgents in 2013.

The participants will discuss their experiences with West African documents, as well as the challenges of consulting and protecting these renowned archives of human history. Geared toward a general audience, the event welcomes those interested in African, Islamic, and medieval history, as well as librarians and archivists concerned about the preservation of threatened cultural heritage collections.

Event is open to the public. RSVP not required but would be appreciated; register here:

https://events.nyu.edu/#!view/event/event_id/202442

(Co-sponsored by New York University’s Elmer Holmes Bobst Library, Middle Eastern & Islamic Studies Department, History Department, Africana Studies Program, and Medieval & Renaissance Center, with support from Long Island University’s Palmer School of Library and Information Science.)

Simon Gikandi to give Rosenblum Lecture

The Department of Art History at New York University cordially invites you to the 2018 Rosenblum Lecture, delivered by Professor Simon Gikandi of Princeton University. We hope to see many of you there!

On Art and Suffering
Simon Gikandi – Robert Schirmer Professor of English, Princeton University
Thursday, March 29, 6:30 PM
Room 300, Silver Center

Recent debates and disputes about the practice of art have come to be defined by anxieties about ownership, appropriation, and identification, often at odds with the universal claims made for the aesthetic experience for most of the modern period. In the age of technological reproduction, we no longer seem to value art as either a conduit for freedom, universal sensibility, or as a mode for dealing with the suffering of others. We are no longer sure that there can be an aesthetic ideology that might enable us to cope with experience that are not part of the orbit of our own affliction. This lecture is motivated by the following questions: Can there be an adequate aesthetic response to the problem of suffering? What exactly is the human condition that the aesthetic is asked to respond to? Do works of art help us understand the tragic experiences of others, or are they always complicitous with the afflictions that they seek to represent? I draw my examples from the archive of Atlantic slavery and the debates surrounding it.

Dennis Geronimus will be presenting a talk at the Black Portraiture[s] IV conference, hosted by the Hutchins Center for African and African-American Research at Harvard University

This Saturday (March 24), Prof. Dennis Geronimus will be presenting a talk at the Black Portraiture[s] IV conference, hosted by the Hutchins Center for African and African-American Research at Harvard University. His talk is titled “Invisible Girl: Absent Presence in the Afterlife of the Black Duke’s Daughter.” The moderator of the three-person morning panel (“The Record and the Archive”) is another NYU colleague: Prof. Sandrine Colard, Assistant Professor/Faculty Fellow in Tisch’s Photography & Imaging Department.

Introducing Professor Barry Flood’s new center at NYU: Silsila

Please join us in congratulating Professor Flood on the opening of Silsila.

Silsila was founded to connect two recent developments in the humanities: a burgeoning interest in histories of transcultural and transregional contacts and an increased attention to the historical value of material culture. Both foreground the mobility of artifacts, images, materials, and techniques and their often complex interrelationships with the migrations and movements of human consumers and producers.

This mission is implied in the Center’s name, Silsila, an Arabic word that denotes connection, chain or link. Silsila connotes the Center’s concern with the intersection between micro- and macro-histories: the individual links and the connected whole to which they contribute. As a term with cognates in many Islamicate languages, Silsila reflects the Center’s focus on Islamicate cultural geographies in regions including Africa, Arabia, the Indian Ocean, Mediterranean, Middle East, Red Sea, South and South-east Asia. This also includes the material culture of minority communities within the Islamic world and material connections that extended beyond its political boundaries.

Silsila fosters interdisciplinary conversations around material histories, with particular emphasis on the pre- and early modern periods. It promotes research on transcultural and transregional phenomena that contributes to a reimagining of current disciplinary boundaries, chronologies, and epistemic paradigms. A related aim is to bring the study of past precedents into dialogue with the uncertainties and instabilities of our own rapidly globalizing world.

Miriam Basilio in Barcelona!

Professor Miriam Basilio will be participating in a program at the MACBA in Barcelona April 7. It will be a talk with artist Francesc Torres on the occasion of his exhibition La campana hermetica.

https://www.macba.cat/es/parlem-de-francesc-torres-la-campana-hermetica

Not too late to register for Urban Design in London Summer Abroad!

https://www.nyu.edu/academics/studying-abroad/summer-abroad/programs/urban-design-in-london.html