ALONG THE ARNO RIVER IN FLORENCE ITALY
BYU ART HISTORY & CURATORIAL STUDIES YEAR IN REVIEW 2013
BYU ART HISTORY YEAR IN REVIEW 2013
Note from our Program Coordinator The Art History & Curatorial Studies program had a full and productive 2013. Students were involved in a number of engaging local projects, including curating the campus Faith in Works show and working on a children’s book on Churchowned art. Some traveled to NYC for a program-sponsored field trip that involved attending the College Art Association conference and visiting numerous museums and galleries. We had an unprecedented number of students participate in our senior thesis capstone course, which showcased impressive critical thinking, research, writing, and presentation skills. We were thrilled to have one of our majors, Keri Erdmann Rowe, speak at the August convocation. In addition, we hosted Dr. Berthold Kress from the Warburg Institute, who led a highly successful workshop on early modern prints for our students. Students were involved in important off-campus experiences, including internships at the Museum of Modern Art in New York City and at the American Embassy in Rome. Our students continue to be invited to present at important professional conferences and to accrue honors such as ORCA grants and FLAS and Graduate Studies fellowships. This year’s recipients traveled to India, England, Russia, and the East Coast to conduct research and present their work. Our faculty also traveled widely to pursue their various scholarship projects. This included research and conference trips to Italy, France, Ireland, Norway, the Netherlands, and the western United States. In addition to continuing their commitment to excellence in teaching and student mentoring, the faculty is anxiously engaged in research and professional development. Our program has benefited greatly from our two visiting professors, Dr. David Amott and Dr. Travis Clark, who have brought news areas of expertise and energy to our program. Among the many book projects, exhibitions, and other professional development in progress, we must note the 2013 publication of Mark Johnson’s book The Byzantine Churches of Sardinia. Also, we recognize the invaluable service provided by Martha Peacock as she functioned in the capacity of acting director of the Center for the Study of Europe and oversaw numerous events and lectures that were of benefit to our program, including her MOA exhibit and public lecture, “Rembrandt’s Amsterdam”. We are also terrifically pleased that Dr. Peacock was honored for her teaching excellence by being awarded Honors Professor of the Year. Our European study abroad program, led by Professors Heather Belnap Jensen and James Swensen, was a grand success, and we took the major museums, monuments, and sites in Greece, Italy, Austria, Germany, France, and England by storm. We are grateful for our associations with students past, present, and future, as well as other friends of the Art History & Curatorial Studies program. We take great pleasure in hearing about your accomplishments and urge you to send us your good news. And we hope that the love of art history continues to burn bright for all. With well wishes, Heather Belnap Jensen
Honors Professor of the Year:
Martha Moffitt Peacock
Tribute written by Dean of Honors, Dr. Parry Martha Peacock shows up on our "favorite Honors professor" list every time she teaches an Honors class, and so we finally threw up our hands and acceded to student demand. In all seriousness, Martha was an easy, self-evident choice. She has been one of our most effective and loved scholar-teachers, and it's not hard to see why. She teaches a rigorous class with a killer smile. She is approachable, encouraging, and demanding in her individual and small group interactions with her students. Martha has been one of the best examples of what women can do and be as scholar-teachers that Honors has been able to provide for our students. She brings impressive credentials to her work—she has produced important scholarship steadily throughout her career and has become someone, for example, to whom respected journals will turn for peer review of submitted articles. And finally, I was able to able to observe the profound impact she has had on her students, especially her graduate students well before I joined Honors about two years ago. That achievement, after all, is or should be the most sought after of anyone in our profession.
BYU ART HISTORY YEAR IN REVIEW 2013
Faculty Updates & News
David Amott After completing his first year of teaching in the BYU Department of Art History (2012-2013 fall, winter, and spring semesters), David was able to break away and take a productive research trip to Rio de Janeiro, Brazil where he dove into the archives and libraries of dozens of nineteenth-century churches to find material to develop into a series of articles he looks forward to completing over the 2014 summer break. Wish David luck in the effort to get these publications to press! This coming summer, David looks forward to a short research trip to Italy in preparation to teach Renaissance and Baroque art and architecture during the 2014-2015 school year (please send David any suggestions of must-see places in Rome, Florence, Venice, or Milan) and an additional trip to Bogotá, Colombia, to present research at a conference on Latin American art at the Universidad de los Andes. Time and funds willing, David also hopes to go back to Rio de Janeiro to launch some new research projects and perhaps catch a World Cup game in the process. Over the course of this 2013-2014 school year, David completed a project he started in graduate school by publishing an article on the history of North Philadelphia neighborhoods in the Encyclopedia of Greater Philadelphia, taught his first graduate level class on the “Art of the Conquest,” and worked very closely with students involved with BYU’s Art History Association to develop brown bags, field trips, and other art history events for the benefit of BYU’s art history majors. David would like to especially thank the AHA student council members for the time and effort they put into making this past school year a more enriching experience for their fellow art history students.
3
Travis Clark Professor Clark was thrilled to join the Art History Department in 2013 as a Visiting Professor. He arrived in Utah after finishing up at a position at a small state school in far west Texas where he taught Contemporary Art, while enjoying access to the impressive collections and research opportunities of the famed Chinati Foundation in Marfa, Texas. Dr. Clark’s areas of interest are diverse. In addition to teaching Contemporary Art at BYU, he has expanded the non-western subjects available to Art History students by teaching courses in Islamic Visual Culture and the formation of Buddhist Art. On the research front, Professor Clark is currently working on the intersections between Contemporary Art, New Media and Information Theory. This will hopefully lead to the presentation of his work in the upcoming year, in a paper tentatively titled Novelty & Technology: The Aesthetics of Curiosity. The paper will discuss the incipient arrival of video games and social media as full-fledged artistic mediums. Much of this material will be explored in a graduate seminar he is developing for the Fall of 2014, “Beyond the Gallery”, that will focus on Contemporary Art outside of the traditional gallery environment. Professor Clark will also be teaching a course in Early Christian and Byzantine Art. This is not a departure for him as he is still developing research based on his doctoral dissertation on the sixth-century illuminated manuscript The Christian Topography, which looked at the development of early Christian scientific illustration and representations of the cosmos and how these images and ideas impacted art after the Byzantine Iconoclasm. However, he is most excited to be working with art history students and the Center of Teaching and Learning at BYU to develop online material that will compliment the art history curriculum and traditional lectures with dynamic content.
Heather Belnap Jensen Heather Belnap Jensen split her time evenly at home and abroad in 2013, between directing two European study abroad programs (European Art History in the spring and the London Centre in the fall) and her research trips. Teaching art history to majors and non-majors alike in museums throughout Europe, including those in Greece, Italy, Austria, Germany, France, England, and Scotland, was an extraordinary experience. In terms of her scholarship for the year, Professor Jensen was invited to present at the First Nordic conference for Eighteenth-Century Studies in Oslo, which included material related to her book-length manuscript, Art, Fashion, and the Emergence of the Modern Woman in Post-Revolutionary France. Closer to home was her participation in the MOA’s Heroes symposium, where she discussed contemporary French artist JR’s Women are Heroes project. She has started a couple of new projects related to Mormonism, including a joint project concerning literary and visual representations of Mormonism in nineteenth-century France, as well as a monograph tentatively Artistic Frontiers: Mormon Women Artists Abroad, 1880-1945 (she was recently awarded a BYU Women's Research Initiative grant for the latter project, and is looking forward to poking around local archives and museums this summer). Publications on women two women art critics c. 1800 that were long in the works finally came out in 2013—essays in the book Vanishing Acts: Women Art Critics in Nineteenth-Century France and entries in the Dictionnaire universel des femmes créatrices, and her co-edited manuscript on women in public space was delivered to the publisher. Jensen continues to serve on the executive committee of BYU’s Women’s Studies program, where she oversees its student journal and faculty teaching and research group. She also continues to serve as the Art History & Curatorial Studies program coordinator. In May, she was advanced to the rank of Associate Professor—BYU’s equivalent to tenure.
BYU ART HISTORY YEAR IN REVIEW 2013
Mark Johnson Professor Johnson’s book, The Byzantine Churches of Sardinia (Wiesbaden: Reichert Verlag) came out in April. In June he went on a research trip to Italy spending several days in Ravenna and two weeks working in the Bibliotheca Hertziana in Rome, an art history research library run by the Max Planck Institute, which had just reopened after a 13-year long restoration. All this was for a chapter he is writing on “Art and Architecture” for the Brill Companion to Ostrogothic Italy, which he completed and submitted at the end of the year. Johnson also presented a paper, “Santa Maria de Mesumundu at Siligo (Sardinia) and Domed Rotundas in Cemeteries in Late Antiquity” at the Byzantine Studies Conference held at Yale University in November. At the moment, he is working on a paper on Constantine’s Church of the Holy Apostles in Constantinople and contemplating his next book project.
Martha Moffitt Peacock Martha Moffitt Peacock published an article “Paper as Power: Carving a Niche for the Female Artist in the Work of Joanna Koerten,” in the Nederlands Kunsthistorisch Jaarboek (Brill, 2013). She also continued her work as consultant for the BBC documentary, “The World That Women Made.” Last spring she presented a paper on the women artists of the Protestant sect known as Labadism: Anna Maria van Schurman and Maria Sybilla Merian. Currently, she is focusing on the textual and visual self-fashioning of Van Schurman in relation to Labadism, and she will be presenting this research at the College Art Association’s annual meeting in February. She has also had a paper accepted for presentation at the Historians of Netherlandish Art Conference in Boston this summer. The paper is entitled, “Visual Culture and the Various Imaginings of The Maid of Holland.” Closer to home, Martha curated an exhibition called “Rembrandt’s Amsterdam” for the Museum of Art at BYU. In addition, this past year she was in charge of a multitude of events celebrating the 10-year anniversary of the Center for the Study of Europe. Last year she was acting director of the Center, and this year she is serving as associate director. And finally, she was awarded recognition as Honors Professor of the Year for 2013.
James Swensen It has been another good and busy year for Dr. James Swensen. After years of work his manuscript on the connections between John Steinbeck’s The Grapes of Wrath and photography is completed and has been accepted for publication by the University of Oklahoma Press. A second manuscript, which explores Ansel Adams and Dorothea Lange’s Three Mormon Towns, has also been accepted for publication by a university press. More details will be forthcoming. In addition to these publications, Swensen was involved in curatorial pursuits including the annual Faith in Works exhibition as well as the exhibition Reflections on the Sublime, and Resonance an ongoing curatorial project with the Escalante Canyons Arts Festival. He is currently in the process of curating the work of Dorothea Lange in Ireland, which will be on display at various venues in Ireland come 2015-2016. Swensen also presented papers at several scholarly conferences including the Nineteenth Century Studies Association, the Southeastern College Arts Conference, and the Center for Historic American Visual Culture, sponsored by the American Antiquarian Society. On the teaching front Swensen continued to work with wonderful and dedicated students and had the opportunity, along with Dr. Heather Jensen, of leading a study abroad to six European countries. It was a truly wonderful experience. 2014 looks to be another good year.
5
Art History Study Abroad to Europe Professors Heather Belnap Jensen and James Swensen enjoyed a successful Europe Art History study abroad program last spring term. Their group of 31 students, along with their families, visited numerous museums, monuments, and art sites throughout Greece, Italy, Austria, Germany, France, and England. All returned exhilarated & exhausted.
GRAND CANAL VENICE, ITALY
ALTE PINAKOTHEK MUNICH, GERMANY
GROUP PHOTO IN ATHENS, GREECE
KUNSTHISTORISCHES MUSEUM
ALONG THE ARNO RIVER IN FLORENCE, ITALY
Cassandra Belliston
TREVI FOUNTAIN IN ROME
Almost a year ago, I embarked on my greatest adventure, departing from the Salt Lake City airport, and arriving in Athens, Greece, three plane rides and many hours later. The European Art History Study Abroad was a pivotal turning point in my life. As I traveled through the countries of Greece, Italy, Austria, Germany, France, and England, something incredible happened: I found myself. I made friendships that I will have forever. I looked at a Paris transportation map and got myself from Point A to Point B without trouble. I was standing in front of paintings and sculptures, in famous museums, in important sites, and in cities and countries I had only ever dreamed about seeing in person. I formed constructive and enlightening relationships with my
inspiring program directors/professors. I experienced and appreciated new cultures. I did the previously unthinkable: I ate an entire pizza by myself in one sitting and was still hungry from all the walking I did. I more fully understood the subject of Art History, which I am studying. I became physically, mentally, emotionally, and spiritually stronger. And in doing all of these things, I found who I was, and who I wanted to become. To anyone and everyone I say, “Go on study abroad! The money is not an expense—it is an investment in yourself.” When you step onto that first plane, you might be pale from a long winter and unsure of yourself. But when you disembark from your last, you will have a flush to your skin and confidence in your step.
7
THE LOUVRE IN PARIS AT “THE MONA LISA”
THE PIAZZA DELLA SIGNORIA
Melanie Allred The 2013 European Art History study abroad was the experience of a lifetime! I still cannot completely wrap my mind around everything I was able to see, experience, and truly learn. No book can show how absolutely moving a Rubens painting is, with its sheer size and they way he crosses the boundary between canvas and viewer. No picture can do justice to the sheer majesty of the Notre Dame and Chartres cathedrals. We talk in class about how cathedrals were built to create a specific feeling for the patron, but no discussion can replace the personal experience of the extensive vaults and brilliant stained glass. No digital reproduction can capture the 360° spiraling motion of Bernini’s Rape of Persephone or the masterful way he creates the most realistic
flesh from the hardest marble. I was able to visit more than 31 museums, in addition to several cathedrals, palaces, and gardens. I was able to experience the historical context of art in Greece, Italy, Austria, Germany, France, and the United Kingdom. From its most ancient cradle to the most contemporary gallery, I was given the gift of an irreplaceable and unforgettable education in Western art, Western art history, and curatorial exhibition. Upon returning home, I continue to ponder and pursue questions and exhibit ideas that were born from this experience, and I expect this to be an abundant resource for both critical thinking and action throughout my life. I will forever be a better mother, student, and educator because I participated in this program.
NATIONAL ARCHAEOLOGICAL MUSEUM OF ATHENS
JAMES AT THE ETRUSCAN COLLECTION AT THE VATICAN WITH THE “MARS OF TODI”
BYU ART HISTORY YEAR IN REVIEW 2013
Graduate and Undergraduate Updates and News
Breezy Diether Taggart Graduate student Breezy Diether Taggart (MA, 2013) had a paper accepted for presentation at the 2014 annual meeting of the College Art Association in Chicago, Illinois. She presented her thesis research on Esther Bubley’s photography of the Disan House, a home established for Jewish working-class women during WWII in Washington D.C. The CAA conference is the most prestigious professional venue for presentation in the country and it is highly unusual for a masters student to be invited to participate. (photo right)
Trenton Olsen The heartiest of congratulations to current MA student Trenton Olsen, presented his research at two prestigious venues last fall. In late October, Trent presented his thesis research on the fallen woman in late nineteenth-century Russian culture at the annual Southeastern College Art Association with a talk titled, "Anna, Sonya, and the Unknown Woman: Navigating Spaces of (Fallen) Womanhood 1863-1883." In December, he travelled to England to speak on this topic at the symposium “Cultural Exchange: Russia and the West II, hosted by the University of Cambridge.”
Kev Nemelka This past fall, a brightly painted tree stump was planted on the Harold B. Lee Library’s fifth floor. The stump was just one part of the art exhibit Age of Godz: Transcendentalism Technicolored by art history and curatorial studies major Kevin W. Nemelka (’14). Nemelka created a simple but colorful realm of nature, complete with a nostalgic 8mm film projection of water and other natural landscapes, Pacific-hued painted wood panels with sparkly metallic strips, and outer space paintings—one of which popped out with provided 3-D glasses. The concept for the colorful tree trunk came to Nemelka after researching different color theories. While some scientists claim that color is merely a reflection of light, others believe that all objects innately contain color; Nemelka chose to embody the latter theory in his tree stump, with its rainbow-colored loops manifest only on the inner rings. He says, “I wanted to represent this idea of people having divine qualities that aren’t very visible here on this planet but that will become visible later.” (photo right)
Camille Jacobsen Congratulations to AH Master’s student Camille Jacobsen presented her paper: “The Matriarchal Nimbus” at Georgia State’s Visual Culture Symposium.
Caitlin Perkins Bahr, Breezy Diether Taggart, Kelsey Gee & Rachel Ann Wise Several students in the ARTHC program contributed to the inaugural edition of AWE: A Woman’s Experience, BYU’s journal for Women’s Studies. Caitlin Perkins Bahr (MA, 2013) served as its Artistic Director), Breezy Diether Taggart (MA, 2013) worked on the Artistic Direction and Submissions committees, and Kelsey Gee (BA. 2012) worked on the Artistic Direction committee as well. Rachel Ann Wise (MA, 2013) authored one of the journal’s essays, “Gilda’s Gowns: Fashioning the Femme Fatale in Film Noir.”
9
TAKEN FROM THE DVA WEBSITE SEE MORE AT KEVNEMELKA.COM
A Note from the DVA Student Council Here at the Department of Visual Arts Student Council we strive to serve the students and faculty. At the beginning of the semester we have a student meeting that informs students of upcoming events and opportunities to enhance their learning. We put together the Vending Machine Show, giving students the opportunity to buy great art and donate to a charitable cause! We also coordinate the Reverb Grant, a funding opportunity for students that encourages interaction between the arts and the community.
If you have any comments or suggestions as to how we could better meet your needs, please contact your student representative for the art history area, Emaline Maxfield (ermaxfield@gmail.com), or the student council’s faculty adviser Justin Kunz (mail@justinkunz.com). We appreciate your feedback and welcome your suggestions!
BYU ART HISTORY YEAR IN REVIEW 2013
ORCA Grants
Nicole Vance November 2013, undergraduate Nicole Vance traveled to Mumbai, India, to further her research of British-Indian artistic exchange, thanks to an ORCA grant and the George & Geraldine Swenson Watkins Scholarship. Nicole began researching the Chhatrapati Shivaji Terminus for a graduate seminar on European Primitivism, and discovered that the structure’s decorative elements had been overlooked by art historians. Her previous experience in India--an individual anthropological fieldstudy documenting the role of images in Hindu worship--aided her with a sound knowledge of Indian customs and the Hindi language. In Mumbai, she found valuable primary sources in the archives and collections of the Dr. Bhau Daji Lad and Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj Vastu Sangrahalaya museums. In addition, she found correct locations of British Raj era sculptures and enjoyed lots of delicious curry and papayas. Nicole plans to continue her research of the ramifications of British rule on the art and architecture of the Indian subcontinent. She will start her Master’s in Art History and Curatorial Studies at BYU Fall 2014. NICOLE DURING HER TRAVELS IN INDIA
11
Postcard from Turkey: The Archaelogical Museum at Uşak, The Lydian Hoard and Two Hippocampuses Written by Aaron Haines I rubbed my sleep-deprived eyes and stared across the abandoned parking lot at the rusty minivan that was supposedly my “shuttle” into town. It was six in the morning and the sun was just beginning to peek over the horizon of Uşak, a small city in the center of western Turkey. Most bus companies don’t travel to Uşak and the few that do only offer one or two bus rides from Istanbul each day. I had left Istanbul the previous night at eight and spent the next ten hours on a bus in order to see Uşak’s most famous possession: the Lydian Hoard. I walked up to the minivan, squeezed onto the front bench, and told the driver I needed to go the archaeology museum. The rest of the passengers stared me as if wondering what a young American backpacker was doing so far from any of Turkey’s usual tourist destinations. We soon reached the city center and the driver told me in Turkish that the museum was just down the street. The museum did not open for another couple of hours so I took my time observing the building’s exterior. It was a small building situated on an awkward triangular corner plot of land where two streets merged. It was surrounded by a low wrought iron fence that was about three to four feet in height. The building’s small yard was littered with archaeological artifacts from various civilizations and time periods; Byzantine, Hittite, Roman, and others. The
placement of these objects was haphazard, but it was clear every square inch of the yard could be surveyed by the small army of security cameras that pointed in every direction. Also, none of the objects were small enough to be lifted by hand and would have required either machinery or several people to move them. There was an abundance of exterior lighting indicating that the museum and archaeological artifacts could be sufficiently monitored at night. The museum was an older building, but fulfilled its intended purpose. The windows were single paned and old, but all well protected by the iron bars covering them. Despite the early hour, I noticed a man standing inside the museum watching me, indicating that a security guard was present at the museum both day and night. At eight when the museum opened, I stepped inside and was greeted by the security guard. I pulled out my wallet to purchase a ticket, but the guard was already leaving his desk and leading me into the museum’s only gallery. I expected him to then return to his desk while I toured the small collection, but instead he simply followed me around. I got the feeling that not many people came into the museum. The lighting and presentation of the museum’s collection were excellent and there were many text panels explaining the significance of the objects as well as where they had been found in the surrounding countryside.
A CLOSE UP OF THE LOCK
I was eager to see the Lydian Hoard and quickly found it in a room in the very back of the gallery. The pieces of the collection were displayed on simple but elegant cloth with good lighting. The hippocampus still occupied its own display case, but the text panel gave no indication that the original had been stolen or that the current piece on display was a copy of the original. I noticed that the previous simple lock had been replaced by a lock, seal, and slip of paper. On this slip of paper were the signatures of four different archaeologists indicating that each had verified that the work was the legitimate original.
BYU ART HISTORY YEAR IN REVIEW 2013
THE MUSEUM’S SURROUNDINGS
The museum guard was still shadowing me so I decided to strike up a conversation with him. He did not speak much English so we conversed in Turkish. He explained to me that a guard was at the museum twenty four hours a day and that there was video surveillance of the entire building and the surrounding yard of antiquities. When I asked him how many patrons visited the museum, he told me that during the summer, they averaged about one hundred every day. This surprised since Uşak is a smaller city and quite far from any major tourist attractions. I asked again about the museum attendance and he repeated that they indeed averaged around one hundred patrons a day during the summer time. He explained that during the winter, attendance drops due to the decrease in tourism. He went on to explain that the city was currently constructing a new museum that is supposed to be completed next year. The new three story building will have much more storage
and administration space as well as an upgraded security system. We returned to the subject of the Lydian Hoard and after I asked a couple of questions about the hippocampus, he stopped and stared at me for a couple of seconds. He then asked if I wanted to know something and leaned in to quietly tell me that the original work had been stolen. I feigned surprise and he motioned for me to walk back over to the display case. He then told me the story about the hippocampus and confided in me that the brooch in the case was actually a fake. Thanks to Sharon Waxman’s 2008 book Loot: The Battle Over the Stolen Treasures of the Ancient World (Times Books), I already knew this, but I doubted that most patrons to the museum did. There was no explanation of it in the text panels or in any of the other materials on display. Most patrons assumed that they were viewing the original. Imagine my surprise when I arrived in Ankara, the capital of Turkey, just a
A COPY OF HIPPOCAMPUS FOUND IN THE MUSEUM
couple of days later and saw the same hippocampus on display in the Museum of Anatolian Civilizations. My immediate thought was that I had now seen two copies of the same stolen work. I approached two security guards chatting nearby and explained to them that I had just seen this same work in Uşak. They replied that I had seen a copy in Uşak and that the object in Ankara was the original brooch. I asked them how this could be since the work had been stolen and they explained that it had been recently recovered. Supposedly it was only on temporary display in Ankara and will be moved to Uşak next year when the new Uşak museum is complete.
PHOTOS BY AARON HAINES SUMMARY TAKEN FROM
http://art-crime.blogspot.com/2013/12/postcard-from-turkey-archaeological.html
13
IVAN KRAMSKOI, THE UNKNOWN WOMAN, 1883
Foreign Language Acquisition Scholarship & Graduate Studies Fellowship
Trenton Olsen Awarded FLAS scholarship for the French language. I was awarded the FLAS scholarship for the French language and over the last year I have greatly benefited both educationally and financially from it. As I have begun to narrow my focus to studying French art, the classes that I have taken for the FLAS requirements have served as incredible supplements to my education. I have been able to take classes in French language and grammar, film, and literature. Not only have these increased my cultural understanding of the Francophone world, but they have helped to contextualize my knowledge of art in the periods that I am studying. Furthermore, as I anticipate travelling to do research in French archives for my dissertation and future career scholarship, this ability to study the language at greater depth will be crucial in order to communicate and access necessary research documents and materials. Not only will the FLAS language training assist with my future career, but the funds I received aided in being able to present thesis research at a conference at the University of Cambridge, and then to travel to Moscow to do further archival research for my thesis. In my thesis I am examining Ivan Kramskoi's painting Unknown Woman (1883) painted in St Petersburg. I am interested in the way that the image serves and an indicator of modernity in the Russian Empire, as well as the work's polemical contemporary reception. The research I was able to do allowed me to access primary source information and investigate my Kramskoi's work, as well as other critical paintings, firsthand. The experiences and training the the FLAS has allowed me has been a critical component of my M.A. studies. Katie Fellows White was awarded the Graduate Studies fellowship to support her Civil War postmortem photography research
ART HISTORY YEAR IN REVIEW 2013
Student Internships
Keri Erdmann Rowe Interned for the Curator of fashion at the Phoenix Art Museum This past summer, Art History and Curatorial Studies masters student, Keri Erdmann Rowe (far right), interned for the curator of fashion at the Phoenix Art Museum. She had the unique opportunity to participate in the development, research, advertising and installation of an exhibition featuring digitally printed fashions by contemporary designers. Some of Rowe’s particular projects included developing a time line of printing technologies for the gallery and mounting textiles for display. Becoming familiar with the museum’s fashion collection she was able to handle, examine, and research specific pieces for collections files. She also became deeply involved in preliminary research and paperwork for a major exhibition traveling to Phoenix from the Victoria and Albert Museum in London in March 2014. The curator allowed Rowe to sit in on a variety of meetings and projects so that I experienced every aspect of museum work, from accessioning to fundraising. Throughout her experience she had the opportunity to meet and talk with several noteworthy individuals including designer Lisa Perry, Wall Street Journal fashion journalist Christina Binkley, and Belgian artist Isabelle de Borchgrave.
KERI ERDMANN ROWE, FAR RIGHT
15
Hadley Mae Beacham Interned at the Museum of Modern Art in the publications department This summer I had the opportunity to intern at the Museum of Modern Art in the publications department. My main tasks revolved around the publication of two books, Giorgio de Chirico Song of Love and Robert Rauschenberg Canyon. Both were part of a MoMA series entitled One on One. For each of these books I was responsible for conducting image research, obtaining the imaging rights, and then creating credit lines. Another unique publication I was tasked with was Girls Standing on Lawns. This book contains old photographs of girls standing on lawns, paintings by Maira Kalman, and text by Lemony Snicket. For this book, each photo had to be measured and catalogued for the museums collection, and prepared for the book layout. During this process I was able to handle the original photographs. It’s not everyday you get to handle such artworks that belong to the MoMa collection. While not all of my work was glamorous, most assignments did hove some kind of pay off. One day the associate editor handed me a hand written essay--almost completely illegible--and asked me to re-transcribe it. I later learned it was written by Bell Hooks, a famous feminist author who addresses issues such as race, class and gender. While I enjoyed the assignments I was given during my internship, my favorite part was being in the MoMA everyday.
Some mornings, before the museum opened to the public, I would visit the galleries and enjoy the art free of crowds. I even found myself in front of Starry Night completely alone. I was also invited to a press conference for American Modern: Hopper to O’Keeffe, a show currently on view at the MoMA, and was able to see the show two weeks before it opened to the public. Apart from the art and the sneak peaks, I can’t forget my lunches in the museum’s sculpture garden; this quickly became my favorite hour of each day. I would strongly recommend that those interested in further art education apply for an internship at the MoMA. The internship program in general is very well organized. I learned a lot from publications but I was also able to learn from other departments. Once a week we had activities with all the museum interns, where we visited other departments. One activity I remember in particular was a visit to the framing room. (Yes, the MoMA has a full time framer in charge of designing frames for most of the museum’s collection.) Midway through his talk he lifted up
a piece of paper and lying on the table, waiting to be framed was Andrew Wyeth’s Christina’s World. It was incredible to see it that close and without the glass on it. My internship taught me so much about how a large museum functions and helped me to discover facets of the art business. Perhaps most importantly, my internship helped me connect with MoMA employees Networking opportunities are essential to success in any field. On MoMA’s website you can find information about deadlines, the application process and the different departments available. If you also have any more questions for me and want to know more about interning at the MoMA please feel free to contact me. I will try and help you in any way I can. Good luck.
BYU ART HISTORY YEAR IN REVIEW 2013
Self Portrait in Blue Convocation address by student, Keri Erdmann
I was a straight A student who graduated from high school at the top of my class and yet, never before was there a more unenthusiastic student on her first day of college. I grew up just up the hill from this campus and I wanted to go anywhere but BYU. However, when college application deadlines began speedily approaching and I had no other realistic plans for school, I decided I would bide my time here for a year or so until I could figure things out and then move on. Little did I realize how my first year at BYU would change my mind. Not only was I handed my answer to that great and mysterious question, “What am I going to do with my life?” but I was blessed with resources and opportunities that I could not have received at any other institution. My name is Keri Erdmann Rowe and I am a student of Art History and Curatorial Studies. I have always loved art. I enrolled in an art history class my first semester at BYU deciding that it was the least of all the evils for a specific general credit. That class turned out to be my favorite. Halfway through the second section the following semester, I was actually considering staying in Provo and declaring myself an art history major. I began talking with various
professors about the program. Each offered more than just counsel, but a genuine excitement and desire for me to join the major. They encouraged my interest in textiles and fashion as art forms and went out of their way to provide me with the help and opportunities I needed, tailoring my education specifically to me. As unenthusiastic as I had been a few short months before, I was finally excited about school. The following years were two of the richest of my life. My classes fascinated me and I had never felt so motivated to study. I fell in love with ideas and the way that art, history, and culture intertwine. I participated in the execution of the inspiring Carl Bloch exhibition at the BYU Museum of Art, volunteering in the gallery to answer questions for visitors. I was able to see and experience firsthand how art can deeply touch individuals in so many ways. I spent three months on study abroad with a whole group of art history students. We traveled through Italy, Greece, France, and eight other western European countries to study the masterpieces we had only studied in our books. I stood where great artists painted and marveled at ancient architectural wonders. This was an incredible experience for me – one that I look
back on with great awe and reverence – which would not have been possible were it not for the resources and the dedication of its professors. Following my European tour I completed my studies, as all majors in the program do, by writing my senior thesis. As a freshman I had attended the senior thesis presentations and been overwhelmed by the complexity of each paper presented. As a senior I was surprised to discover that I could not only understand but also contribute to my fellow students’ discussions. Still, the project was a considerable challenge for me. Yet with the support of my professors I was able to produce a paper I was proud of, which explored the effects of one of the first fashion photographs to be published in Vogue magazine, Adolph de Meyer’s Portrait of Gertrude Vanderbilt Whitney, printed in 1913. The day before I presented my thesis I received an internship assisting the curator of fashion at the Phoenix Art Museum. I spent the next four months in Phoenix exploring different aspects of museum work. I had the opportunity to work on several large exhibitions, including a contemporary show featuring digitally printed fashions, as well as a special ex-
17
“I fell in love with ideas and the way that art, history, and culture intertwine.”
KERI ERDMANN AT THE LOUVRE IN PARIS NEXT TO “THE WINGED VICTORY OF SAMOTHRACE”
hibition featuring famous Hollywood costumes on loan from the Victoria and Albert Museum in London, which will open next March. I participated in every aspect of exhibition creation, from research to photo shoots, and installation to public relations. I met with fashion designers, artists, and the even the Wall Street Journal’s fashion journalist. I had the opportunity to study in comprehensive archives of ladies’ fashion magazines like Godey’s, Harper’s Bazaar, and of course, Vogue, where I had the luck of discovering an original of the photograph I researched for my thesis. Now here I stand at graduation. No longer am I faced with that horrible question, “What am I going to do with my life?” I was recently admitted to BYU’s graduate program to pursue my masters in art history. This time I am excitedly anticipating my first day of school. I am grateful for this university, for the dedicated and passionate educators and students I have been able to work with, and for my friends and family who have supported me. I am grateful for the education I have received, for the values of hard work and discipline I have learned, and most of all, for the experiences I am taking away and those ahead. I hope I can speak for us all when I say, “Thank you for the opportunity.”
Friday, April 12th at 9:00 AM A light luncheon will be served in the LIED GALLERY following the presentations BRITTANY CARPENTER, “Géricault’s Raft of the Medusa:
Collapsing Class Boundaries under the Bourbon Restoration”
BROOKLYN DOUGHERTY, “Symphony in White no. 1: Whistler's Complex Psyche” MELINDA MOON, “Lilly Martin Spencer: The Woman Artist in Nineteenth-Century America”
NICOLE VANCE, “Sculpting Bombay Under the British Raj : Decorative Sculpture and the Chhatrapati Shivaji Terminus” EMILY MCKINNEY, “Utopianism and the Family in Wassily Kandinsky’s Motley Life” MEI KOHLER, “Art is Exorcism: Metropolis by Otto Dix” NATALIE VAIELAND, “Meat, Death, Soutine” ASHLEY ALLEY, "Exposing Yoko Ono's Cut Piece: Considering Influences Upon the Modern Art Canon" MORGAN THOMAS, "The Clout of a Ceiling: The Power of the Restoration of the Sistine Chapel Ceiling Frescoes" MARIE WIGHT, “’Watch the Throne’: The Study of Modern Hip-Hop Monarchy” CARLYLE SCHMOLLINGER, “Zig Jackson: Redefining the Reservation”
Friday, April 12th at 9:00 AM A light luncheon will be served in the LIED GALLERY following the presentations !! ! ! !
2013 SENIOR THESIS PRESENTATIONS
Directed by Martha Peacock 260 MOA Wed, Dec 11th at 2:30 AM Light refreshments will be served in A-410 in the HFAC following the presentations.
ALEX PEACOCK-Buddha’s Stupas: The Influential Role of Stupa Architecture on Figurative Images of the Buddha JENNA CASON-The Crouching Nude: Taking Back Ownership ALISSA FRESE-The Stumbling Steed: A Depiction of the French/Byzantine Relationship in Early Renaissance France NATALIE HARRIS-An Alchemical Spin on Durer’s Melancolia I LAUREN ORTON-The Art of Humor in The Farnese Gallery BRIANA OSTLER-Peeling Onions: Fortifying Scientific Domesticity KELSEY GRIERSON LONG-Un-caging Femininity: Reforming Dante Gabriel Rossetti’s Image of Women COLLIN CARNAHAN-The Fountain Ignored: Marcel Duchamp’s Fountain and Feminism JACLYN KENNEDY-The Unknown Soldier Speaks: A Nation’s Repressed Collective Memory BLAIR WILLIAMS-Home and Healing: Marc Chagall’s Stained Glass Windows at Notre Dame de Reims KEV NEMELKA-Nostalia: Faux-Naivete, and the Revolution in the Art or Bela Kondor ABBY LAZAREV-Burning on the Page: Irving Penn’s Photographs from Morocco MEGAN CLEGG-The Battle of Generations: The Response to Homosexuality in the Art Work of Trevor Southey
BYU ART HISTORY YEAR IN REVIEW 2013
Art History Association & Brown Bag Lectures
Dr. Berthold Kress Lecture
Written by Martha Moffitt Peacock Recently, Dr. Berthold Kress, an art historian and Mayers Fellow at the Huntington Library, was brought to campus with funding from the Center for the Study of Europe, the Museum of Art, and the Department of Visual Arts. On Thursday, November 21, he delivered a public lecture to a student/ faculty audience of around 180 people on iconographical research. His experience at the Warburg Institute in London, the premiere library for iconographic study in art history, contributed to an extremely beneficial tutorial for students and faculty alike on how the internet is changing our methodological practice. The next day, Dr. Kress conducted a workshop on
prints using sixteenth-century works from the Museum of Art. His expertise in this field led to a lively and fascinating discussion on a variety of aspects from the historical method of paper-making to the processes of woodblock carving and metal engraving. It was a rare opportunity for students to gain insight into the practice of examining actual art objects. Dr. Kress discussed his own experiences in examining watermarks and engraving technique while engaging the students in an examination of the MOA prints. The workshop and question-and-answer lunch afterwards generated a great deal of enthusiasm among all of our students.
21
AHA Brown Bag Lecture: Jenny Diersen
Jenny Diersen, the Kimball Arts Center director of education was able to join the Art History department for an AHA Brown Bag lecture. Her lecture included experience and advice for students interested in taking their AH degrees into the arena of museum work and specificially, museum education.
CSE 10th Anniversary Celebration
MARTHA GIVING HER TALK ON “REMBRANDT’S AMSTERDAM”
Students and faculty were heavily involved in the Center for the Study of Europe’s 10-year anniversary celebrations. Dr. Martha Moffitt Peacock curated an exhibition of prints for the BYU Museum of Art, “Rembrandt’s Amsterdam” and delivered a highly-attended public lecture on this subject. Professors Peacock and Heather Belnap Jensen participated in a session on women and European stereotypes, “Why European Women Don’t . . . ,“ for the Café CSE series. Students Aaron Haines (BA, 2014) and Rachel Wise (MA, 2013) were involved in the preparation of a number of events, including folk dancers, opera, a Eurovision song contest, lectures, foreign-language choirs, and so on. We are grateful for the participation in the anniversary celebration.
We Could Be Heroes Dr. Heather Belnap Jensen and Dr. James Swensen, two of the AH faculty, presented papers at the Museum of Art’s Heroes symposium. Dr. Jensen presented her paper, “On the Dignity of Woman: JR’s Women Are Heroes”. Dr. Swensen presented, “Super Heroes and Super Villains:” Pueblo Identity and Artist Jason Garcia’s Tales of Tewa Suspense”. The symposium was a success and we are happy to have had the department represented.
BYU ART HISTORY YEAR IN REVIEW 2013
Student Alumni Updates
Catherine C. Taylor Catherine received her Bachelor’s and Master’s Degrees in Art History (Early Christian and Byzantine art and architecture) at Brigham Young University. She recently completed her PhD at the University of Manchester, UK in December 2012. She specializes in late antique Christian iconography with emphasis on Annunciation imagery in the earliest centuries of Christianity, a study of which will be published by Brill, forthcoming. Other recent publications include a chapter in Interdisciplinary Studies in Textiles and Dress in Antiquity (Oxford: Oxbow, forthcoming 2014) and “Painted Veneration: The Priscilla Catacomb Annunciation and the Protoevangelion of James as Precedents for Late Antique Annunciation Iconography” in Peeters’ Studia Patristica. Catherine’s research interests include: the memorialization of the dead and the iconography of Christian sarcophagi; the interdisciplinary use of art and text, especially Patristic texts, in late antiquity; and the study of small, domestic-type objects like textiles, jewelry and pilgrimage tokens with Christian imagery as sources for iconographic reception. Catherine has recently started teaching New Testament classes in the Ancient Scripture Department. She will be traveling to Egypt this spring with the BYU Egypt Excavation Project where she will be analyzing some of the early Coptic textile samples from the cemetery at Fag el-Gamous in the Fayoum in
CATHERINE AT PIGNATTA SARCOPHAGUS IN RAVENNA
preparation for future publication. In addition to her Egypt trip, she spent time this past summer in Oxford at the Ashmolean Museum researching Coptic comparanda and in Antwerp at the Textiles of the Nile Valley conference. She presented two papers this past year at the Society of Biblical Literature conference and is slated to present a paper for the Sperry Symposium in 2014. She has taught at the Corcoran College of Art and Design, Washington, D.C. and in the BYU Art History Department for a combined 15 years.
23
As a stay-at-home mom, I didn't want to completely lose touch with the art history and museum world so I began volunteering at the Freer Gallery about once a month. It has proven a wonderful way to get an occasional break from the dishes and diapers, to learn from a talented curator, and to view inspiring works of art. I've done a variety of work at the Freer, including editing information for their Explore + Learn page, testing their iPad app for the Peacock Room, and creating an inventory of portraits of James McNeill Whistler. I love staying at home with my children, and volunteering allows me to do that and still exercise my art history brain muscles as our schedule permits. PAST: My thesis centered around the works of 18th-century Venetian artist Antonio Canaletto. With the help of Professor Magleby I secured a FLAS grant to study Italian inVenice and a department grant to conduct research in London. I can't describe how meaningful these trips were to me. It made the research poignantly personal to learn Canaletto's language, pore over his sketches, track down his home, and stand before his paintings as I formed and supported my thesis. It also added a new level of appreciation for his life and his work which I never could have fully attained otherwise. The opportunities I had researching Canaletto were among my greatest experiences as a student at BYU and will always be near to my heart.
Angie Chong I now have a new job, a two year contract as an operations manager for a design college (one that I worked for some years back). Back in 2005, this college was bought over by a local education group, INTI (who is now owned by the Laureate Education Group, USA). While I manage operations, I am also involved in the integration of the college staff, students and all records and property into its newly established design faculty on a newly built campus. It's been a lot of technical work and a lot of problems to solve. Nonetheless, I have to ensure the entire integration is smooth. Next year, I have one added task that is, to teach an Art Appreciation module for Northwood University in INTI's American University Program. I am looking forward to it. The more exciting work (side job) I have done this year was for the Swedish Culinary Festival in Kuala Lumpur. Organized by the Embassy of Sweden in KL. Together with my designers, we worked mostly on the promotional collaterals and publication materials. Yes, I keep myself busy with design jobs so as to keep that artistic part of me alive and kicking!
Rachel Grover Congratulations to former graduate student, Rachel Grover, who has published an article based on her master's thesis, "Placed in Paradise: The Messianic Age Imagery of a Lion Facing a Bull in the Byzantine Church Floor Mosaics of Jordan," Liber Annuus 62 (2012): 455-93. The Liber Annuus (an annual of about 500 pages) publishes biblical, linguistic and archaeological studies. It also includes preliminary reports on the excavations conducted by the professors of the Studium Biblicum Franciscanum in Jerusalem and their coworkers from Israeli and other scholarly institutions. The Studium Biblicum Franciscanum is the Faculty of Biblical Sciences and Archaeology of the Pontificia Universitas Antonianum in Rome. They led many of the excavations that uncovered the mosaics in her thesis.
IL CANALE GRANDE A SAN VIO BY CANELETTO
Emily Hinchey