Our warmest greetings go to all of our alumni. We hope that you and your loved ones are staying safe and well during this extraordinarily difficult time. We are extremely grateful to those alumni who responded to our call for news: hearty congratulations on all of your achievements and activities. We hope to hear from more of you for our next Alumni News round-up, which we’ll post sometime in fall 2020. Many thanks go to Department of Art History and Program for Urban Design and Architecture Studies faculty Mosette Broderick, Carol Krinsky, Michele Matteini, and Jon Ritter, all of whom contributed news to this post.
Johannes Nathan (B.A. Art History, ’87; M.A. Courtauld Institute of Art, Ph.D. Courtauld Institute of Art, University of London, ’95) published an article in the March 2020 (volume 162, no. 1404) issue of the Burlington Magazine on “Observing the artist at work: a drawing by Verrocchio in Palermo.” Johannes is an art dealer, and his firm, Nathan Fine Art, is part of a family tradition of dealing in works of art created between the sixteenth and mid-twentieth centuries. Nathan Fine Arts has offices in Potsdam and Zurich.
Sarah Laursen (B.A. Art History/East Asian Studies ’02; Ph.D. Chinese Art History/East Asian Languages & Civilizations, University of Pennsylvania ’11) has been appointed the new Alan J. Dworsky Associate Curator of Chinese Art at the Harvard Art Museums, effective June 15, 2020. Sarah is currently the Robert P. Youngman ’64 Curator of Asian Art at the Middlebury College Museum of Art and Assistant Professor in the Department of History of Art and Architecture at Middlebury.
Caroline Fowler (B.A. Art History ’05, Ph.D. Princeton University, Art and Archaeology ’13) was recently named Director of the Clark Art Institute’s Research and Academic Program.
Ashley Tan (B.A. Urban Design and Architecture Studies ’12/ J.D. Boston University School of Law ’15) is a Commercial Real Estate Attorney at Prince Lobel Tye LLP in Boston, Massachusetts. Her practice consists of leasing, real estate development, zoning, and permitting. She loves that her day-to-day work still involves analyzing and reading a lot of zoning codes, floor plans, site plans, and traffic studies, all of which she thoroughly enjoyed during her undergraduate days. In her free time, Ashley keeps a blog on urban history, urban planning, and recent real estate development trends in Boston and elsewhere.
Rachel High (B.A. Art History ’13) hopes everyone is safe and healthy during these difficult times. Rachel is currently working from home as Manager of Editorial Marketing and Rights at The Metropolitan Museum of Art. As part of her work at The Met, Rachel helps manage and maintain the MetPublications portion of the museum’s website, which has many titles available for free download and is a great resource for at-home research.
Rachel was one of four co-editors of Art=Discovering Infinite Connections in Art History, which will be published in late June of this year by Phaidon in cooperation with The Metropolitan Museum of Art. She received her M.A in Art History from Hunter College at the end of the Fall 2019 semester and recently presented her research on art book publisher Harry Abrams at a live-streamed digital symposium hosted by the Norman Rockwell Museum and Hunter College.
Liz Meshel (B.A. Urban Design and Architecture Studies ‘15) will begin the M.A. program in Archaeology at the University of British Columbia this fall.
Reshma Persaud (B.A. Art History ’16) is in her final semester of the M.A. program in Visual Arts Administration at NYU Steinhardt. In December, she completed an internship at CUE Art Foundation in Chelsea where she worked on their annual auction benefit, exceeding their previous year’s revenue and helped build long-term development initiatives.
In December, Reshma began a new position as Manager, Principal Giving at the International Rescue Committee. In her new role, she supports the portfolios of the Vice President and Senior Directors of the East and West Coast regions tasked with securing funding to enable refugee programs around the world.
Robin Smith (B.A. Urban Design and Architecture Studies ‘16) will begin the M.Arch. program at Pratt Institute this fall.
Maria Stojanovich (B.A. Urban Design and Architecture Studies ‘16) will pursue her J.D at NYU Law School beginning this coming fall.
Marie Nobematsu LeGassic (B.A. Urban Design and Architecture Studies ‘17) was awarded a Postgraduate Study Scholarship in the Field of Fine Art by the Deutscher Akademischer Austauschdienst e.V. (DAAD).
Julia Wiktoria Pacewicz (B.A. Art History ’17) is currently pursuing a Master’s degree in Heritage & Memory Studies at the University of Amsterdam. Prior to beginning her graduate studies, Julia worked as a cataloguer at Paddle8 and Sotheby’s in New York.
Her current study program examines the processes of heritage and memory-making in the context of museological and educational studies, also referring to identity politics and commercialization. The electives, however, were fascinating on another level. She took a class called The Eye and The Object, taught by the wonderful Abbie Vandivere, a paintings conservator at the Mauritshuis in The Hague. The class opened our eyes and taught us how to analyze art objects solely through visual observation — an important skill to have while working in the art field. Whether one is conducting provenance research or curating an exhibition, understanding the object from its core may open new pathways in research or offer other perspectives and appreciations. If you are interested in heritage studies and/or studying in The Netherlands, feel free to reach out to Julia at jwp319@nyu.edu.
Lastly, Julia recently contributed to the Provenance Series on the website of Amineddoleh & Associates. The article retraces the history of Raphael’s long-lost masterpiece, Portrait of a Youth. It was a pleasure to collaborate with a former instructor, Leila Amineddoleh, who teaches Art Law in the Department of Art History. To read about the history of one of the most valuable paintings lost during WWII, follow this link.
Alexa Pearce (B.A. Art History/French ’17) joined the staff of the National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C. in February 2020 as a Museum Technician in the museum’s Objects Conservation Lab. Among the most interesting tasks she has performed in her new position have been helping to assess the monumental mobile by Alexander Calder in the mezzanine (Untitled, 1976) before the upcoming de-installation, and maintaining the early American furniture of the Kaufman collection. Before joining the National Gallery, Alexa was a Conservation Technician at Evergreene Architectural Arts (District Heights, MD), where she worked closely with conservators to document, stabilize, and treat architectural elements and cultural artifacts. Projects on which she worked while at Evergreene include restoring victory ship artifacts from the Virginia Maritime Administration; masonry in-painting at the Environmental Protection Agency building in Washington, D.C.; cleaning and waxing bronze sculpture at the Ulysses S. Grant Memorial; laser cleaning and consolidating marble at the U.S. Capitol Building; and laser cleaning of bio-growth on the Jefferson Memorial dome. Previously Alexa was a Preservation Science Intern at the Library of Congress in Washington, D.C.
Yoonhye Jackie Kong (B.A. Steinhardt, Studio Art/Art History ’18) is in her final semester of the Masters program in Art History at Tufts University. In addition to writing an M.A. thesis on drawings from the 1960s in relation to choreography and dance notation, Jackie has served as a teaching assistant for several Tufts art history courses and thoroughly enjoyed the experience.
Danny Carpentier-Balough (B.A. Urban Design and Architecture Studies ‘19) will begin the University of Oxford’s Master of Studies program in History of Art and Visual Culture this fall.
Paul Henkel (B.A. Urban Design and Architecture Studies ‘19) has been admitted to the M. A. programs in Art History at both NYU’s Institute of Fine Arts and Hunter College. We look forward to learning where he decides to go this fall.
Harry Hooper (B.A. Urban Design and Architecture Studies ’19) will begin the M.Arch. program at the Yale School of Architecture this coming fall.
Nile Johnson (B.A. Urban Design and Architecture Studies ‘19) will begin the Master of Science program in Urban Planning at Columbia University’s Graduate School of Architecture, Planning and Preservation this fall.
Kelly Ryser (B.A. Art History/Urban Design and Architecture Studies ’19; Sustainable Urban Environments minor, NYU Tandon School of Engineering) will begin the Masters program at NYU’s Institute of Fine Arts this coming fall.
P. Scanlon (B.A. Urban Design and Architecture Studies ‘19) will begin the M.A. program in Historical and Sustainable Architecture at NYU this fall.
Jordan Trager (B.A. Urban Design and Architecture Studies ‘19) will begin the M.Arch program at Cornell University this fall.
Fields of Vision 