News from the Art History and Museum Professions Program

We are so very grateful to the entire staff and team at The Museum at FIT (MFIT), who supported three AHMP seniors to curate an entire exhibition for Gallery FIT at The Museum at FIT in April 2023. Claire McCardell: Practicality, Liberation, Innovation, curated by Nico Frederick, Christina Pene, and Emma Sosebee (all AHMP ‘23), delved deep into the museum’s Study Collections as the curators researched, designed and organized a powerful display highlighting the work and legacy of influential fashion designer Claire McCardell (1905–1958). This is the first time that students from our AHMP program had the privilege to curate an exhibition at Gallery FIT in the museum, and we are so grateful for this opportunity, and to Nico, Christina and Emma for doing the hard work [figs. 1–3] (see p. 11) the field. Thank you to everyone who supports AHMP students, for giving us opportunities to engage with them, and for providing inspiration.

The exhibition received great reviews and was featured in Women’s Wear Daily. For her work as Museum Facilitator at the Museum at FIT, Emma was awarded a prestigious student award from the FIT Couture Council in September 2022, and Nico was awarded this year’s Departmental Medal for their academic achievements, leadership, and overall contributions to our community.

Over the 2022–2023 academic year, students succeeded in many other prestigious institutions and projects in New York City. In Fall 2022, Mackenzie Lindsay (AHMP ‘23) interned with the Collections Registrar’s office at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, and Nico Frederick interned at the New-York Historical Society. Joi Berry (AHMP ‘23), who also won FIT's prestigious Student Government Association Marion K. Brandiss Extracurricular Service Award [fig. 5], interned at the Whitney Museum of American Art. Aida Perovic (AHMP ‘24) worked at The Broken Kilometer, an

The Museum at FIT also hosted some fantastic programs over the academic year, in which students from AHMP participated and a great number of AHMP junior students worked as museum facilitators. Our continued partnership with MFIT enables us to collaborate on other programs and courses, too. Using the museum’s Study Collections for a section on textile conservation in HA 319: Art History and Conservation, for example, museum staff allowed us to learn more about the crafting of condition reports by engaging with the collections [fig. 4]. Access to such materials is important as it helps students on our campus receive an introduction to art installation created by Walter De Maria (1935–2013) inside a street-level storefront in SoHo, and Tsaia Dawson (AHMP ‘24) worked at Patchogue Arts Council MoCA. In Summer 2023 Stella Hobart (AHMP ‘24) will hold a prestigious internship in Berlin in Germany thanks to the ArtBound program. Nicholas Florido (AHMP '24) received a prestigious 10-week Museum Education and Employment Program (MEEP) internship in the American Museum of Natural History for this summer.

Alumni of our program continue to thrive in the museum world: Natalie DeJesus (AHMP ‘19), the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s Research Assistant for the Michael C. Rockefeller Wing, Art of the Ancient Americas, assisted in the preparation for the fantastic exhibition Lives of the Gods: Divinity in Maya Art, which opened at the Metropolitan Museum in November 2022. This exhibition featured impressive monuments and objects from ancient sites in Guatemala and Mexico. Natalie was kind enough to organize a tour behind the scenes with current AHMP juniors in February 2023 [figs. 6-7]

In 2023, Darnell-Jamal Lisby (AHMP ‘16), who is Assistant Curator of Fashion at the Cleveland Museum of Art, curated an exhibition on Egyptomania fashion and a virtual exhibition project that featured sixty looks across six decades of the Council of Fashion Designers of America. Liana Arkay (AHMP ‘22) is about to finish the University of Glasgow’s Art History: Collecting & Provenance in an International Context MSc program. Katherine Prior (AHMP ‘22) is now a Screen Studies MA student at the Feirstein Graduate School of Cinema in Brooklyn. Chrysa Tasioula (AHMP ‘22) is now working at Phillips Auction House, Joyce Cruz (AHMP ‘21) is working at Poster House, and Ava Ferguson (AHMP ‘21) is a full-time Gallery Assistant at James Fuentes Gallery. John Paul Jang (AHMP ‘22), who founded the AHMP Association (AHMPA), received not one but two (!) awards from the Student Government Association and is now working at the Brooklyn Museum [fig. 8]. In Fall 2022, the AHMP senior students tan Museum of Art’s Asian Art Department [figs. 10–11]. Not only did we visit the offices and storage rooms, but we also were able to learn about Japanese painting conservation. Daira Eden took us behind the scenes to introduce us to the work that goes into managing a new long-term installation. AHMP students also met with many other museum professionals. These include Joelle Seligson and Katrina Dumas (AHMP ‘11) of the Brooklyn Museum, Nicole Leist and Elizabeth Abbarno of the Morgan Museum and Library, Shameekia Shantel Johnson (AHMP ‘21) of Harper’s Art Gallery, Angelica Pomar (AHMP ‘21) of the Bronx Museum, and Sally Morgan Lehman, owner of the Morgan-Lehman gallery in Chelsea [fig. 12]. Behind the scenes of the American Museum of Natural History, we also met with Mai Reitmeyer.

In HA 319: Art History and Conservation, we met with Carolyn Ricciardelli, Object Conservator at the Metropolitan Museum of Art who introduced students in the class to the fascinating repair of a fallen sculpture from the Museum’s collection [fig. 13]. Devon received praise for their contributions in co-hosting events at the annual College Night at the Morgan Library and Museum (see a special contribution by Nicole Leist, Manager of Educational Programs, Morgan Library and Museum, p. 12).

As always, all our courses feature many visits and guest speakers from New York’s vast art and museum-related field communities. This year’s guest speakers included Desiree Gordon, Programs and Strategy Director at Brooklyn Arts Council [fig. 9] Alison Clark took us behind the scenes into the storage and conservation areas of the Metropoli-

Lee, a graduate student at New York University’s Institute of Fine Arts Conservation program, spoke about her work on the AMNH’s spiders, owls and other animals. We visited the New York Art Conservation Team in the Brooklyn Navy Yard and the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s Textile Conservation Department [figs. 14–15] Kremer Pigments manager and artist Roger Carmona came to the class, which Atefe Shekofte and Omid Oudbashi from the Art University of Isfahan in Iran also visited [fig. 16]. Throughout this new course, students also learned how to craft condition reports for objects in the Church of St. John the Baptist nearby FIT [fig. 17], with enthusiastic support from church historian Barbara Brandes.

This was the first year of a new collaboration with the University of York in England. Three AHMP seniors studied at the University of York in the fall, while two students from York were our guests. Malaya Salcedo, Chloe Foster and Artemis Burgos enjoyed their time as AHMP students in York, while Molly Hoon and Niamh Sansom came from across the Atlantic. Molly Hoon and Sofia Santos (AHMP ‘24) enjoyed an evening on art conservation at the Brooklyn Museum in September 2023.

Earlier in the fall, the AHMP Association, now spearheaded by Christina Pene (AHMP ‘23) invited Tiffany Lucke, Social Media

Content Producer at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, for an event on November 17, 2022 [fig. 18]. We also spent a fantastic two days in Boston and Harvard in March 2023 (see p. 10). In fall 2022, students from FIT’s art history classes visited Thierry Mugler: Couturissime, the first retrospective of the French designer at the Brooklyn Museum and enjoyed a tour by exhibition curator Matthew Yokobosky [fig. 19]. They also visited the Morgan Library’s exhibition She Who Wrote: Enheduanna and Women of Mesopotamia 3400-2000 BC, where they received tours by co-curator Erhan Tamur and Educator Nicole Leist [figs. 20-21].

As we close on another academic year, I thank all of our students, alumni, faculty, staff, guest speakers, and professional colleagues for their time, efforts and continued support of the Art History and Museum Professions program. ▪

Assistant Professor Alex Nagel, PhD Chair, Art History and Museum Professions Program

The FIT Art History and Museum Professions program acknowledges that it is located on Lenapehoking, the ancestral homelands of the Lenape people. We recognize the continued significance of these lands for Lenape nations past and present; we pay our respects to the ancestors, as well as to past, present, and emerging Lenape leaders. We also want to recognize that New York City has one of the largest urban Indigenous populations in the United States. We believe that addressing structural Indigenous exclusion and erasure is critically important and we are committed to actively working to overcome the ongoing effects and realities of settler-colonialism within the institutions where we currently work.