ALUMNI NEWS

JESUS CORONA DE NIZ (2017)

i an Account Manager at Cadogan Tate Fine Art, an international fine art logistics company that originated in London. Jesus discovered the fine art logistics industry a year after graduating and has since enjoyed learning about its key function in the art world. Beginning as a fine art coordinator at Cooke’s Crating, one of LA’s oldest art handling companies, Jesus was able to combine experience gained from working in his family’s trucking company with his work at Cal Poly Pomona’s Kellogg Gallery. His main responsibilities as an account manager are developing and maintaining client relationships, project management, and selling services. The writing, attention to detail, and critical thinking skills of an Art Historian have come in handy just as much as the collections management policies and art handling skills learned at the Kellogg Art Gallery. In this position Jesus has had the opportunity to connect with gallery and museum directors in Los Angeles and around the country. Jesus notes that this industry is a great way to gain experience and connections that can segue into other positions in well-known art galleries and museums as well private collections.

MARINA MEGALLA (2018) is a new Right of Way Agent for Caltrans, District 8, Right of Way Division in San Bernardino. For this position, Marina sells excess land previously acquired by the Department of Transportation for road expansions and other projects no longer viable to the public or other government agencies. In her new job Marina also coordinates public auctions. She shares that her writing skills developed in the Art History program have been essential in confidently composing memos to colleagues and external customers, and especially writing advertisements and data sheets for public auctions.

ATINEH MOVESSIAN (2019)

is currently a Master’s student at Tufts University, where she is specializing in Armenian Art and Architectue under the direction of Dr. Christina Maranci. This July she will present her first qualifying paper, “The Forgotten Women of the Monastery of Gandzasar (ca. 1260): A Reexamination of the Sculptural and Epigraphic Program,” at the Beyond Exceptionalism II conference held at the John Rylands Library in Manchester, UK. Atineh will present a second paper “Amenap’rkich’ Armenian Monastery of Trebizond,” at the 57th International Congress on Medieval Studies this May. She has also recently written an article about the monuments of Artsakh (Nagorno-Karabakh) for the April issue of Medieval World: Culture and Conflict magazine.

Atineh has been accepted to the UC Berkeley Ph.D. program for Art History. She is interested in studying the interactions between the Armenian, Byzantine, and Islamic cultural spheres and bringing Armenian art into broader art historical conversations.

CHEYENNE GALLEGOS (2020)

worked as a gallery assistant at the Walt Girdner Photography Studio and Gallery in Pasadena, where she assisted with art sales, framing, and photography restoration. The photos she helped restore from Walt Girdner’s collection will be used in the Gallery’s forthcoming book, Chlochard Cheyenne has since become a Literacy Assistant for LAUSD, a career move influenced by her desire to study Museum Education. She is currently working on her Multiple Subject Teaching Credential program at Cal State LA and she plans to teach general education at an elementary level.

COURTNEY D'ANNA (2019) was accepted into the Cal State San Bernardino Teaching Credential and Master's of Education program and will begin her studies in Fall 2023. Her aim is to earn credentials in Art to become an art teacher at the high school level. Ultimately Courtney wants to pursue a Ph.D. in Art History so she can teach at the college level.

KEVIN TORRES SPICER (2017)

began his first year as a Ph.D. student at the University of California Los Angeles (UCLA) last fall. He is currently working on the coursework required to complete his Master’s in Art History by 2023. Kevin’s research explores the interaction between Indigenous American and Ibero-Mediterranean traditions in sixteenth-century Andean architecture. This summer he will conduct fieldwork in his home country of Ecuador to survey and identify possible architectural case studies for his Master’s thesis in cities such as Quito, Esmeraldas, Guayaquil, and the Chota Valley.

We’re very proud to announce Kevin also published his undergraduate thesis, “The Indigenous Capilla de Cantuña: the Catholic Temple of the Sun,” Tulane Undergraduate Research Journal 3 (2021): 36-55, written under the direction of Dr. Griffith. Additionally, the University of California awarded him with the prestigious Eugene V. Cota-Robles fellowship. He also obtained two fellowships to attend the National Trust for Historic Preservation and the Society of Architectural Historians conferences. Currently, Kevin awaits the results of his application for a Foreign Language and Area Studies fellowship (FLAS) provided by the U.S. Department of Education to study Quechua, an Indigenous tongue of the Andes. This fellowship will allow him to conduct his research and fulfill a language requirement for his Ph.D.