News

Smithsonian American Art Museum Announces Fellows for the 2009–2010 Academic Year

The Smithsonian American Art Museum has announced the appointment of its fellows for the 2009–2010 academic year. Awards are granted for scholars and students to pursue research at the museum, including senior, predoctoral, and postdoctoral fellowships.

The 2009–2010 museum fellows are:

Dana Byrd—James Renwick predoctoral fellow in American Craft, Yale University; “Reconstructions: The Material Culture of the Postbellum Plantation, 1861–77”

Kathleen Merrill Campagnolo—postdoctoral fellow, Courtauld Institute of Art; “Art and Homage in 1960s New York”

David Peters Corbett—Terra Foundation for American Art senior fellow, University of York; “Landscape, City, and Identity in American Painting, ca. 1840–1917”

Anna Dezeuze—Terra Foundation for American Art postdoctoral fellow, University of Manchester; “The Everyday in American Art, 1958–71”

Amanda Douberley—predoctoral fellow, The University of Texas at Austin; “The Corporate Model: Sculpture, Architecture, and the American City, 1946–75”

Nika Elder—Wyeth Foundation predoctoral fellow, Princeton University; “Show and Tell: Representation, Communication, and the Still Lifes of William M. Harnett”

Jason Hill—Patricia and Phillip Frost predoctoral fellow, University of Southern California; “The Artist as Reporter: The PM News Picture, 1940–48”

Joseph Larnerd—Douglass Foundation graduate fellow, Temple University; “Re-contextualizing the Throne: James Hampton’s Material Iconology”

Kate Lemay—Terra Foundation for American Art predoctoral fellow, Indiana University; “Forgotten Memorials: The American Cemeteries in France From World War II”

Nenette Luarca-Shoaf—predoctoral fellow, University of Delaware; “The Place of the Mississippi River in Antebellum Visual Culture and Imagination”

James Meyer—senior fellow, Emory University; “The Return of the 1960s: Narratives of the Contemporary”

John Ott—postdoctoral fellow, James Madison University; “Brotherhood on Paper: Giacomo Patri and the Representation of Interracial Solidarity in the American Labor Movement”

Stephen Phillips—postdoctoral fellow, California Polytechnic State University, San Luis Obispo; “Towards a Research Practice: Frederick Kiesler’s Experiments in Morphology and Modern Design”

Sarah Rogers—Terra Foundation for American Art postdoctoral fellow, Southern Methodist University; “Innocents Abroad, Again: American Art in Beirut, 1953–75”

Julia Sienkewicz—Joshua C. Taylor postdoctoral fellow, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign; “Citizenship by Design: Art and Identity in the Early Republic”

Catherine Walsh—predoctoral fellow, University of Delaware; “Tell Me a Story: Narrative and Orality in Nineteenth-Century American Visual Culture”

The Smithsonian also announced two fellowship appointments in American art at the National Portrait Gallery. They are Alexandra Davis, predoctoral fellow, University of Pennsylvania; “The Vogue of Art: Representations of Artists in American Fashion and Lifestyle Magazines, 1923–51” and Amy Mooney, postdoctoral fellow, Columbia College Chicago; “Portraits of Noteworthy Character.”

May 27, 2009

Jean Schiff (1929–2009)

The Denver Post reports that Jean Schiff, artist and long-time art professor, has passed away. “She gave [students] a very solid foundation and influenced them to go and pursue their art,” said Leona Lazar, executive director of the Art Students League, where Schiff had taught. “She had this wonderful humor in her art as well as intelligence. It really impacted a lot of students who not only saw her work but studied with her.” Schiff taught at Metropolitan State College of Denver from 1971 until 1997 and taught for more than twelve years at the Art Students League. She was also a visiting professor at the University of London, as well as in Caracas, Venezuela; Chicago; Alberta; and other colleges in Colorado.

May 26, 2009

Smithsonian Awards Eldredge Prize to Cécile Whiting for Book on LA Pop Art

Cécile Whiting, a professor of art history at UC Irvine, has won the 2009 Charles C. Eldredge Prize for Distinguished Scholarship in American Art for her book _Pop LA: Art and the City in the 1960s_. The Los Angeles Times reports that the prize, accompanied by a three-thousand-dollar award, is given out by the Smithsonian American Art Museum in Washington, DC. Art-related books published in the last three years are eligible for consideration.

Whiting, who previously taught at UCLA for fifteen years, said the idea for her book originated from a previously published work that focused on Pop art in New York. “I wanted to shift toward LA and explore how artists became fascinated with the city and how they worked to create an image of it,” the author told the _Times_.

She said that her book is intended to fill in historical background about the Pop art movement and to bring attention to artists who haven’t received adequate recognition, such as Llyn Foulkes, Noah Purifoy, and the feminist artists of LA’s Women’s House.

May 25, 2009

David Craven to Chair Department of Art and Art History at University of New Mexico

David Craven, distinguished professor in art history, has been named chair of the University of New Mexico’s department of art and art history. He has been a visiting professor at several universities internationally, including Leeds University, the National Autonomous University of Mexico, and Humboldt University in Berlin.

In addition, he has given guest lectures in more than one hundred universities both here and abroad, including most recently Cambridge University, the University of Edinburgh, and the University of Sao Paulo in Brazil.

Craven has written ten books and catalogues for major art museums and more than 150 articles and review essays, which have appeared in the leading publications of over two dozen different countries and been translated into more than a dozen languages.

Among his more well-known publications are "Mythmaking in the McCarthy Period," "Abstract Expressionism as Cultural Critique" and "Art and Revolution in Latin America, 1910-1990," which has been singled out for praise by Ernesto Cardenal, the Minister of Culture in Nicaragua during the 1980s. Craven coedited and introduced Dialectical Conversions: The Art Criticism of Donald Kuspit, which is forthcoming through Liverpool University Press in 2010.

Craven has a doctorate from the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill.

May 23, 2009

University of Manitoba Receives Over $30 Million for Art Research Technology Lab

The University of Manitoba was given a $41-million boost from the federal and provincial governments on Thursday, one day after politicians announced $33 million in investments at Red River College and the University of Winnipeg. The federal government is giving the university $15 million for its Art Research Technology Lab. The provincial government is contributing an additional $18.5 million to the lab. The new sixty-thousand-square-foot facility will give undergraduate and graduate students and faculty access to digital technologies and upgraded space for collaboration, experimentation, and research, including animation and advanced computer-aided expression.

May 22, 2009

Brandeis Halts Retirement Payments

Buffeted earlier this year by the outcry over its plans to raise money by closing its art museum and selling the collection, Brandeis University said this week that it would suspend payments to the retirement accounts of faculty and staff members starting in July, according to the New York Times

“There is this perception that the nonprofit world is maybe a gentler, kinder world than corporate,” said Roland King, vice president for public affairs at the National Association of Independent Colleges and Universities. “So some people seem to perceive this as a breach of faith, especially since many people go into nonprofit work at less salary, because the benefits are so good. But we are absolutely at a point in this economy where these sort of things have to be on the table.”

Suspending Brandeis’s contribution to retirement plans from July 1, 2009, through June 30, 2010, will cover $7.4 million of its projected $8.9 million deficit, the university’s president, Jehuda Reinharz, said in an email message to the faculty and staff. In the message, Reinharz said he had planned to share the news of the suspension at the end of the week, but was preempted when it was announced in the May 19 edition of the Brandeis student newspaper, The Justice.

May 22, 2009

Dagmar Richter Appointed Chair of Cornell University’s Architecture Department

Dagmar Richter, a professor of architecture and urban design at UCLA, has been selected for the top architecture post at Cornell University, according to the Los Angeles Times’ David Ng. Richter will become the chairwoman of the department of architecture at Cornell University's College of Architecture, Art, and Planning. The appointment is set to begin July 1. She will succeed the department's interim chair, Mark Cruvellier, who will continue teaching at Cornell.

Richter is the principal at DR_D, a design research practice that has offices in Berlin and Los Angeles. Educated in Europe, Richter has served as a professor at UCLA since 1989. She also has held teaching posts and professorships at the Harvard University Graduate School of Design, Rhode Island School of Design, Cooper Union, Columbia University, and the Art Academy in Berlin and in Stuttgart. Her work has been published in two books: XYZ: The Architecture of Dagmar Richter and Armed Surfaces: Architecture and Urbanisms 5.

May 19, 2009

Michael Grady to Head Appalachian State University’s Department of Art

Michael Grady has been named chair of Appalachian State University’s Department of Art. His position begins August 1. He replaces Dr. Marilyn Smith, professor of graphic design, who has served as the department’s interim chair since July 2007. She will return to the faculty.

Grady will leave the John F. Kennedy University in Berkeley, California, where he has served as professor and chair of the department of arts and consciousness since 1994. Grady has worked at the San Francisco Art Institute, serving first as director of admissions and then as dean of students. He was assistant director of admissions for art and design at the Pratt Institute in Brooklyn, NY, and was a counselor for the Family Youth Center of Downstate Medical Center at the State University of New York.

“I see the art department as being a key element in the exciting new changes that are occurring in the College of Fine and Applied Arts as well as the larger university community,” Grady said.

May 19, 2009

RISD Faces Layoffs, Benefit Cuts, and Reduced Museum Hours

Faced with a steep drop in its endowment, the Rhode Island School of Design will rely on a combination of layoffs, benefit cuts, and reduced museum hours to make up the shortfall, according to the Providence Journal.

The measures, which include plans to trim as many as twenty full- and part-time staff positions—as much as 3 percent of the payroll—and close the school’s museum of art during the month of August, were announced on Wednesday in an email to faculty and students.

In a statement, RISD President John Maeda said the value of the school’s endowment has plunged more than 30 percent over the last eighteen months. The endowment currently stands at $250 million, down from a peak of $375 million at the end of 2007, according to school officials.

“Like many other colleges and universities, RISD has been affected by the downturn of the financial markets,” Maeda wrote. “We have had to make some difficult decisions, but I am fortunate to lead an organization with such clear guiding principles. Above all, we must do everything we can to ensure the excellence of our academic programs and to create the best possible experience for our students.”

May 14, 2009

Anders Ruhwald Receives Grant from the Danish Arts Foundation

Anders Ruhwald, a Danish artist currently serving as artist-in-residence and head of the ceramics department of Cranbrook Academy of Art, has received a thirty-thousand-dollar 2009 Artist Grant from the Danish Arts Foundation. The foundation was established by the Danish government in 1964.

Ruhwald was appointed to his positions at Cranbrook in 2008 following the retirement of Tony Hepburn. His work has been shown in galleries and museums across the globe. He was awarded the Sotheby Prize from the Victoria and Albert Museum in London in 2007. In 2005, he received the Annie and Otto Johannes Detlef's Award, for young, experimental ceramic artists from the Museum of Art and Design in Denmark. In 2002, he was awarded Biennial Award in the Danish Biennial for Craft and Design. More can be found on DesignTaxi.

May 14, 2009

Joe Scanlan to Head Visual Arts at Princeton University's Lewis Center for Arts

Joe Scanlan has been selected as the new director of the program in visual arts at Princeton University's Lewis Center for the Arts. The sculptor and installation artist was associate professor at the Yale University School of Art since 2001. Prior to his position at Yale, Scanlan served as assistant director of the Renaissance Society at the University of Chicago, a contemporary art museum specializing in radical, conceptual, and installation-based artworks. He has received numerous awards and fellowships from organizations including the Creative Capital Foundation, the National Endowment for the Arts, and the Larry Kramer Initiative for Lesbian and Gay Studies at Yale.

Scanlan has presented his work throughout the United States and Europe, mounting nineteen solo exhibitions in the past decade. As an art critic, Scanlan has published more than fifty articles and reviews in international periodicals including Artforum, Art Issues, Frieze, and Parkett. Scanlan is the holder of US patent number 6,488,732 for a process of converting postconsumer waste into viable potting soil.

May 13, 2009

Chapman University Receives $25 Million for Performing Arts Center

Chapman University, in Orange County, California, has received a twenty-five-million-dollar gift that will make possible a new 1,300-seat performing arts center on the campus, Chapman officials announced on the university's web site. The donors are longtime Orange County residents who wish to remain anonymous. However, the gift is a challenge donation: The university must raise another twenty-five million dollars to match it. If the fund-raising goals can be reached, the gift will allow Chapman to go forward with plans to build a long-hoped-for performing arts center, which will cost around fifty million dollars. Plans are only in the concept stages now, but will likely feature a midsized multipurpose performing arts center of 1,200 seats, with the option to expand to 1,300 seats for performances with no orchestra pit. The center will also include rehearsal space for the more than seven hundred students enrolled in Chapman’s recently established College of Performing Arts. When completed, the venue will be the largest university performing arts center in Orange County, and second in size among all halls in the county only to the Orange County Performing Arts Center. Pfeiffer Partners has been chosen as the architectural firm for the project.

May 13, 2009

Dr. Ned Rifkin Appointed Director of the Blanton Museum of Art

Dr. Ned Rifkin, former undersecretary for art at the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, DC, has been appointed director of the Blanton Museum of Art at the University of Texas at Austin. Beginning September 1, Rifkin also will hold the position of professor of art and art history in the department of art and art history in the College of Fine Arts, and will also become a special adviser to president William Powers Jr. on the visual arts for the campus and collections at the university. "Ned Rifkin is a tremendous addition to our university,” said Powers. “His vision, energy, and knowledge will be a critical factor in shaping the visual arts at the university into a new and exciting era. I could not be more excited or delighted about what Ned Rifkin will mean for making the University of Texas one of the nation's leading centers for the arts. Under his leadership, the Blanton will become the 'arts entrance' to our campus.” Rifkin succeeds Jessie Otto Hite, who retired in March 2008 after having been director of the art museum for fifteen years. Ann Wilson, associate director of the museum, has been the interim director.

May 11, 2009