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Allan Braddock Joins the Department
Alan Braddock is our new Ralph H. Wark Chair in Art History and American Studies. Alan comes to us from Temple University, but most recently he was a Senior Fellow at the Smithsonian. He is best known for his work on Thomas Eakins (most particularly his book Thomas Eakins and the Cultures of Modernity) and for his work in Eco-Criticism (a field in which he co-edited a key text—A
keener Perception: Ecocritical Studies in American Art History). His new
project bears the intriguing title—Gun Vision: the Ballistic Imagination in
American Art.
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Cristina Stanciuou Joins the Department
Cristina Stanciuou is our new Medievalist, though her work and teaching expand the boundaries of that term as it is usually used. Cristina's degree is from UCLA where she completed her dissertation "Objects and Identity: An Analysis of Some Material Remains of the Latin and Orthodox Residents of Late Medieval Rhodes, Cyprus, and Crete." This interest in the visual culture of Byzantium and the Western Middle Age includes artistic exchange and cultural identity, architecture and ritual, devotional art, and the history of dress as well as the interrelationship of memory, identity, and self-representation more generally.
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Welcome Back Brian Kelley ‘07
Art Department alumnus Brian Kelley rejoins the department this fall to teach drawing and foundations.
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Professor Watkinson Retires
Last spring the department's resident medievalist Professor Barbara Watkinson retired, and the Muscarelle Museum of Art marked her departure with Writ In Gold an exhibition of finely-crafted medeival works.
In February, Professor Watkinson received the Rockefeller Award for Excellence in Teaching from the college's chapter of Phi Beta Kappa. Read more.
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Professor & Artist William Barnes Retires from Department
Professor Barnes retirement was marked by the Muscarelle Museum of Art exhibition William D. Barnes: Three Decades of Still Life and Landscape, and by the Andrews Gallery alumni exhibition 37 Years of Painting at William and Mary.
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Associate Professor
Sibel Zandi-Sayek Publishes a New Book.
Last spring the department had the pleasure of congratulating Professor Zandi-Sayek on the publication her book Ottoman Izmir: The Rise of a Cosmopolitan Port, 1840-1880 (The University of Minnesota Press, 2012). Zandi-Sayek’s book investigates how urban space, institutions and everyday practices shaped one another in a thriving Mediterranean seaport at the nexus of nineteenth-century global trade and cultural exchange. It focuses on a variety of urban actors—Muslims and non-Muslims, Ottomans and Europeans, merchants, investors, civil servants, and journalists—who were actively engaged in restructuring the city. By examining their intense battles over citizenship, property rights, governance, public space, and the public good and highlighting the completed, unevenly implemented, and rejected modernization projects, Zandi-Sayek's book establishes Izmir as a key site for understanding the complexities of nineteenth-century urbanism.
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New Book Published by Susan V. Webster
Jane W. Mahoney Professor of Art and Art History and American Studies
Quito, Ciudad de Maestros: Arquitectos, edificios y urbanismo en el largo siglo XVII Based on extensive archival research, this book offers a series of essays that explore the historical context and the people and processes of architectural production in Quito during the “long seventeenth century” (ca. 1580-1720), from architects and masons to carpenters, sculptors, painters, gilders, and blacksmiths. It contains a major re-assessment and re-dating of the renowned Church of San Francisco based on unpublished documents that establish a completely new and surprising construction for the church. Several chapters focus on infrastructure and urbanism, particularly bridges. Ultimately, the human factor is the principal focus of the book, with particular emphasis on the participation, perspectives and agency of Andean professionals in the construction and adornment of seventeenth-century Quito. Hard cover; 297 pages; 102 color photographs.
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Assistant Professor of East Asain Studies, Xin Wu Secures Materials for Future Courses and Lectures
In the spring art historian Xin WU curated The Three Perfections an exhibition of Chinese painting and calligraphy (read more) and worked with Swem Library on the aquisition of facsimile masterpieces of Chinese paintings. Read more.
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Sculpture Professor Receives Two Awards
The department congratulates Associate Professor Elizabeth Mead for being appointed as Dean's Distinguished Lecturer and winning the Coco Faculty Fellow for 2012.
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