Fighting Fascism: Visual Culture of the Spanish Civil War (1936-1939) From New York University Special Collections, Tamiment-Wagner Collections, Abraham Lincoln Brigade Archives exhibition opening at Kimmel Windows March 3rd

Fighting Fascism: Visual Culture of the Spanish Civil War (1936-1939) From New York University Special Collections, Tamiment-Wagner Collections, Abraham Lincoln Brigade Archives will be on view from March 3- September 15, 2023 at NYU’s Kimmel Windows, a 13-window exhibition space spanning LaGuardia Place and West 3rd Street. The Abraham Lincoln Brigade Archives (ALBA) preserves the histories of the U.S. volunteers who fought alongside the Spanish Republic in the Spanish Civil War (1936-1939) and those who provided humanitarian assistance with the Medical Bureau. Among the 2,800 volunteers were 22 NYU students. It is comprised of 10,000 photographs, 200 full color posters, postcards, oral history interviews, biographical materials, radio scripts, and artifacts.

On April 14, 1931, the Second Spanish Republic was declared, ending the reign of King Alfonso XIII. Progressive politicians sought to bring about agrarian reform, improvements in education and literacy, women’s suffrage, and separation of church and state. A Popular Front coalition of moderate left-leaning parties, as well as Communists, Socialists, and Anarchists won the February 1936 elections. Sectors of the military, aristocrats, landowners, the Catholic Church, and monarchists conspired to overthrow the democratically elected government. On July 18, a group of military officers rose up in arms, receiving military aid from Hitler and Mussolini and international corporations. The Republic’s military position was undermined by a US embargo and a Non-Intervention Pact signed by 27 countries whose leaders feared provoking Hitler. General Francisco Franco became the leader of the rebels, unleashing a war of attrition designed to obliterate his ideological enemies, he declared victory in 1939, and his brutal dictatorship ended with his death in 1975.

Throughout the war, posters, postcards, pamphlets, and other visual materials circulated widely. They were issued by the Spanish Republican government, political groups, trade unions, and humanitarian organizations that recognized the extraordinary power of images to create cohesion, aid morale, educate, and solicit international support. The Spanish Civil War was viewed by many as a precursor for World War II, which began in 1939 less than six months after the civil war ended. The exhibition originated from a Fall 2019 undergraduate art history seminar, Art and Propaganda: The Case of the Spanish Civil War. Assistant University Archivist Danielle Nista was an integral part of the process, teaching the students about the history of the collection and archival research methods. As the team worked to select materials and themes for each window, they reflected on the historical context of the 1930s and the resonances with current events. Prof. Basilio was inspired to teach the class drawing from her book Visual Propaganda, Exhibitions, and the Spanish Civil War (2013) which analyzes the Popular Front Republic’s propaganda and developments in areas controlled by Franco, as well as recent debates about the memorialization of the war. Her grandfather and other family members fought against Franco which inspires her to draw attention to the dangers of efforts to overturn democratic elections, and the rise of fascism and dictatorships today.

The student curators are Alexia Arrizurieta (Gallatin School of Individualized Study Class of 2022), Rachel Gamson (Tisch School of the Arts Class of 2020), Gabriella Matos (College of Arts and Sciences), Julia Sipowicz (Tisch School of the Arts Class of 2020)), and Malaika Shuck (Gallatin School of Individualized Study, Class of 2020). The archival materials were digitized by Danielle Nista, Michael Stasiak and Lia Warner, with support from the Barbara Goldsmith Preservation & Conservation Department and Digital Library Technology Services. The exhibition was sponsored by the Office of the Provost along with NYU’s Art in Public Places. Special thanks to the Department of Art History, NYU for their generous academic and institutional support.

Here is more information on the New York University Special Collections, Tamiment-Wagner Collections, Abraham Lincoln Brigade Archives.

Josep Renau, “Victoria. Hoy más que nunca” (Victory: Now More than Ever) 1938

Prof. Basilio during a class session at the New York University Special Collections, Tamiment-Wagner Collections, Abraham Lincoln Brigade Archives 2019

Meredith Sydnor “Syd” Graham, from a sketchbook of drawings by Abraham Lincoln Brigade member of posters he saw while traveling to the front [1937]

Major/Minor Info Session – TONIGHT!

Art History Writing Tutor Available Mondays-Fridays from 12:30 pm – 2:00 pm

Although the Arts and Science College Learning Center has offered subject-specific assistance in the past and continues to do so in biology, chemistry, math, languages and the like, in recent years our own Department has taken the lead in providing art history-specific tutoring to its undergraduates. The program kicked off in October 2008 and, according to our students’ feedback, has proven to be a great success.

A tutor is available via Zoom on Mondays through Fridays 12:30 pm to 2:00 pm. In-person tutoring can also be arranged. Contact op422@nyu.edu to schedule an appointment.

Laura Bergemann is a M.A./M.S. student at the Institute of Fine Arts, focusing on the conservation of objects. Originally from Boston, MA, Laura completed her BS in Chemistry at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 2019. Prior to starting her studies, Laura worked at The Museum of Fine Arts Boston and The Rijksmuseum among other institutions. Laura is available on Mondays through Fridays from 12:30 pm – 2:00 pm. 

EMERGENCY URBANISM

“EMERGENCY URBANISM”

Dr. Ananya Roy, University of California, Los Angeles

Thursday, February 23rd, 6:30pm EST
Zoom Webinar

he Department of Art History & Urban Design and Architecture Studies invites you to attend our upcoming lecture by Dr. Ananya Roy. Dr. Roy’s talk “Emergency Urbanism” is concerned with struggles for spatial justice that contest processes of displacement and dispossession wrought by the unending emergency that is global racial capitalism. Thinking from the postcolonial city of Los Angeles, it attends to new formations of liberal urbanism that enact racial banishment and foregrounds the movements that challenge such expulsion and disappearance. In particular, Roy highlights the emancipatory possibilities of housing and land, showing how property has become the insurgent ground of emergency urbanism. Ananya Roy is Professor of Urban Planning, Social Welfare, and Geography and The Meyer and Renee Luskin Chair in Inequality and Democracy at the University of California, Los Angeles. She is the founding Director of the UCLA Luskin Institute on Inequality and Democracy at UCLA, which advances research and scholarship concerned with displacement and dispossession in Los Angeles and elsewhere in the world.

Spread of Bounties: Culinary Knowledge and Cuisine In Mughal South Asia

“SPREAD OF BOUNTIES: CULINARY KNOWLEDGE AND CUISINE IN MUGHAL SOUTH ASIA” Dr. Neha Vermani, University of Sheffield Thursday, February 23rd, 5:00 – 6:30pm EST 20 Cooper Square, Room 222 New York, NY 10003

A feast for Babur hosted by his half-brother Jahangir Mirza in Ghazni in May 1505, from a Baburnama manuscript (Memoirs of Babur), c. 1589. The Cleveland Museum of Art.

This talk will offer a nuanced account of Mughal elite cuisine by examining the fragmented and understudied archive of Persian language culinary manuals produced in South Asia between the sixteenth and the eighteenth centuries. It centers on three empirical loci: the definition of food as it was conceptualized during the period under study; the impetus for textualization and standardization of culinary knowledge; and processes, techniques, regional, ethnic, and non-elite influences, and ingredients that coalesced to form this cuisine. Drawing attention to the reception of hitherto unknown trans-Atlantic commodities like pineapples, chilies, and potatoes that traveled to South Asia’s dynamic global trade networks, the talk will address the role of these fruits and vegetables in shaping the cuisine of the Mughal elite and reflect on the afterlife of Mughal culinary manuals during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. This intersection between consumption practices and self-fashioning as the critical site of analysis situates culinary texts as constitutive and symbolic elements of the Mughal food connoisseurship discourse. Neha Vermani is a cultural historian of early modern South Asia with particular interests in consumption practices, body, and affect. She joined the Department of History at the University of Sheffield in April 2022 to begin a two-year British Academy-funded Newton International Postdoctoral Research fellowship. She was a postdoctoral researcher on the “Before Farm to Table: Early modern foodways and culture” project at the Folger Shakespeare Library, Washington D.C (2021-22), and received her Ph.D. at Royal Holloway University of London (2019). Addressing the themes of food practices and preparation in South Asia, her projects explore culinary knowledge production in Persian, English, and vernacular languages from the 16th to the 19th century.Date: Thursday, February 23rd Time: 5:00 – 6:30 PM Location: Online and In Person This event will take place as a live Webinar at 5:00pm EST (New York time). To register as an attendee, please use the following link:https://nyu.zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_ETNUs9lPTcSICmg6rtOgWgThis event will also be held in person at NYU in room 222, 20 Cooper Square, NY 10003. In accordance with university regulations, visitors must show a valid government-issued photo ID (children under 18 can provide non-government identification). This talk is co-sponsored by   Center for Material Histories; Hagop Kevorkian Center for Near Eastern Studies; Department of Art History; Department of Nutrition and Food Studies—NYU Steinhardt; NYU Gallatin

Ink & Image #14

Ink and Image, New York University’s journal of original undergraduate research from the Department of Art History recently released its 14^th edition. The journal publishes research in the history of art, architecture, and urban design. The articles published in each issue of the journal develop out of term papers and other research conducted by students in advanced Art History and Urban Design & Architecture Studies courses, independent studies, and senior honors theses.

The journal’s Editors-in-Chief for the 2021-2022 academic year were Emilie Meyer (Gallatin/Art History ‘22) and Niall Lowrie (Art History; Studio Art minor ‘22). Caroline Cook (Art History; Hebrew & Judaic Studies minor ‘23), Ainsley Dean (Urban Design & Architecture Studies/Sociology/Italian Studies ‘24), and Hannah Javens (Gallatin ‘22) served as Co-Editors, and Elizabeth Baltusnik (Urban Design & Architecture Studies/Spanish ‘24) was Design Editor and created the striking cover. One again, Professor Carol Krinsky provided invaluable guidance as both faculty advisor and editor.

Five compelling articles by NYU undergraduates appear in the fourteenth issue. The authors and their essays are as follows:

Elizabeth Baltusnik, “From Gay Liberation to Guerilla Art: LGBTQ Monumentalization in New York City”

Joey Chen, “Creating an Open Stage: Media and Post-Studio Practices in the Work of Cao Fei”

Caroline Cook, “Photographing Egypt: Opposing the Expression of a Colonialist Lens”

Anushka Maqbool, “The Continuous Struggle for Washington Square Park”

Ink and Image was founded in 2008–09 by department alumni Malcolm St. Clair (Urban Design & Architecture Studies ‘09) and Alexis Wang (Art History ‘09) with the goal of expanding the community of scholars at NYU by publishing original undergraduate research in the history and theory of art and architecture. College of Arts & Science Dean Matthew Santirocco and Dean Sally Sanderlin provided crucial support toward the launch of Ink & Image; the journal enjoys the sustained support of the CAS dean and administration and the Department of Art History. You may read about previous issues of the journal in our earlier posts.

Ink & Image is collected by NYPL, Art Institute of Chicago, and the Library of Congress. It is also distributed to the Getty Research Institute, the Technical University in Dresden, Germany, and the Bibliothèque Nationale in Paris, France.

As Meyer and Lowrie put it in their co-authored “Letter from the Editors” in this most recent issue, “Central to the mission of Ink and Image are the ideas of inspiring new research, encouraging creativity, and furthering connections. We hope that as you read this journal, you are inspired by these ideas and learn a thing or two.”

Hearty congratulations to the authors and editors on their splendid achievements. Please take the opportunity to read Ink and Image 14.

MASTERING A WORLD BY CONSUMING A BOOK, CIRCA 1495-1505, Yael Rice, Amherst College

             Wednesday, February 22nd, 6:30pm EST 
                             
  Silsila Spring 2023 Program

Ghiyath al-Din Shah Khalji consuming tanbūl (betel) in the company of female servants and slaves of his court. Illustration from the Ni‘matnāma (Book of delights), completed circa 1495–1505 in Mandu, India. 
British Library, London, IO Islamic 149, f. 101v.

Focusing on the Ni‘matnāma (Book of delights), a unique illustrated recipe book created around 1500 for the Khalji sultans of Malwa in west-central India, this talk addresses the intersection of food and manuscript cultures in the production of the ethical male subject. It contributes to recent debates about globality and globalization by considering how the Ni‘matnāma maps, embodies, and consumes a very particular kind of world. At the heart of this world (as well as the manuscript) are the sultans, who harmonize the kingdom and the cosmos through their sensorial mastery of distant and near forms. 

Yael Rice is an associate professor of art history and Asian languages and civilizations at Amherst College. She specializes in the art and architecture of South Asia, Central Asia, and Iran, with a particular focus on manuscripts and other portable arts of the fifteenth through eighteenth centuries. She is the author of the forthcoming The Brush of Insight: Artists and Agency at the Mughal Court (University of Washington Press, 2023).

 Date: Wednesday, February 15th
    Time: 6:30pm-8:30pm 
     Location: Online and In Person Room 222, 20 Cooper Square,NY,10003

_{This event will take place as a live webinar at 6:30pm EST (New York time).  Only registered attendees will be able to access this event via zoom. To register as an online attendee, please use the following link:} https://nyu.zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_PDteFaRETfK_tEVYCCvzag

_{This event will also be held in person at NYU in room 222, 20 Cooper Square, NY 10003. In accordance with university regulations, visitors must show a valid government-issued photo ID (children under 18 can provide non-government identification).} 
Please use the following link to rsvp as an in-person attendee: https://forms.glem7ne11nzKKVqEarB7

Professor Emilie Boone Receives 2023 ART JOURNAL AWARD from CAA

CAA 2023 Awards for Distinction

When Images in Haiti Fail: The Photograph of Charlemagne Péralte

Obituary: Sarah Bradford Landau (1935-2023)

Beloved and esteemed Sarah Bradford Landau was a faculty member in the DAH from September, 1976 until her retirement in September, 2007 (earning tenure in 1984) when she became Professor Emerita.

I share an article written by Sarah and published in The Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians in March, 1975 and an obituary from The Society of Architectural Historians which includes a remembrance from our own Professor Mosette Broderick:

by SAH News | Feb 07, 2023

Sarah Bradford Landau died February 4, 2023 at a skilled nursing facility in Leeds, Massachusetts, near Northampton, at the age of 87. She suffered from loss of memory and cognitive ability, and died rather suddenly after a brief illness. Sarah was a professor of art history at New York University for many years. She earned a Ph.D. from the Institute of Fine Arts of NYU as a student of Henry-Russell Hitchcock, the noted architectural historian. Her dissertation chronicled the work of the architects Henry Tuckerman Potter and William Appleton Potter, subsequently published. Other published works include Rise of the New York Skyscraper 1865-1913 (1996), with Carl W. Condit, George B. Post, Architect (1998), and many journal articles including the pioneering study, The Row Houses of New York’s West Side (March 1975), which appeared in the Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians. For nine years she served as a member of the New York City Landmarks Preservation Commission. She is survived by her husband Sidney, her children Paul and Amy, Paul’s wife Emily and their two children Zoe and Penelope, and her brother Alan, and his wife Mary.

Sarah Landau initially joined SAH in 1973. She served on the Sally Kress Tompkins HABS committee in 2007-2008. 

Personal Remembrance from SAH member and NYU colleague  Mosette Broderick:

NYU Department of Art History ‘s beloved faculty member, Sarah Landau, grew up in Raleigh, North Carolina and studied painting and art history.  She came to the Institute of Fine Arts for her MA and PhD degrees writing a dissertation that her advisor, Henry-Russell Hitchcock said was the best dissertation he had ever supervised on Edward T. and William A. Potter, American Victorian Architects, in 1977. Although a confirmed student of the 19^th century, her work with Carl Condit in 1996, THE RISE OF THE NEW YORK SKYSCRAPER, changed the story of our view on what had been a Chicago only tale.  Sarah also wrote on George B. Post, the father of the New York skyscrapers at the turn of the 20^th century and was working on a book on Victorian Memorials.  Sarah Landau was the first architectural historian to take an active role in building preservation.  Landau walked the streets to set up the boundaries on the current district of the Upper West Side.   She spent a month on Sixth Avenue posting notices on poles to attempt to save the first New York Racquet Club on 26^th Street. She worked briefly for the New York City Landmarks Preservation Commission before serving as a Commissioner from 1987 to 1996.

 Professor Landau taught in the Art History Department at NYU from 1976-2007.  A superb teacher, a class in the end of the term presented her with a full bouquet of flowers rather as one would a great opera star.

NYU Department of Art History, Urban Design and Architecture Studies Spring 2023 Major/Minor Information Session — NEW DATE: Tuesday, February 21

NYU Department of Art History, Urban Design and Architecture Studies

Spring 2023 Major/Minor Information Session

Spotlight on Art History and Urban Design and Architecture Studies

Tuesday, February 21, 5 PM
Silver 302 (in-person) & zoom

https://nyu.zoom.us/j/93379625638

Meeting ID: 933 7962 5638

Are you Interested in majoring or minoring in Art History or Urban Design? Join Professor Martin (Director of Undergraduate Studies) and Professor Ritter (Urban Design program co-director) to learn more! Topics will include requirements; class options; areas of focus; cultural resources in New York City and elsewhere; study abroad opportunities; writing a senior thesis; career paths, and more.

Refreshments will be served!