Alumni News

During 2003-04 Alejandro Anreus (1997) co-organized and was a presenter at the conference “Latin American and Chicano/a Art Criticism:from Modernism to Globalization” held at the Rockefeller Study and Research Center, Bellagio, Italy, November 24-28, 2003. The essay “Growing Up Cuban in Working Class New Jersey” will appear in volume II of Transcultural New Jersey (Rutgers University Press, Fall 2004). The articles “The Road to Dystopia: The Paintngs of Antonia Eiriz” (Art Journal, fall 2004) and “Juan Sánchez: Icons of Resistance” (Third Text, winter 2004-05) are forthcoming.

In 2004, Maurice Berger (1988) will publish two books: Masterworks of the Jewish Museum (Yale University Press) and Museums of Tomorrow (Georgia O'Keeffe Museum Research Center and The Center for Art and Visual Culture). Additionally, he will publish essays on Trisha Brown (Addison Gallery), Alexis Rockman (Brooklyn Museum), Amedeo Modigliani (Yale University Press and The Jewish Museum), and Jenny Holzer (Kunsthaus Bregenz). In 2004, two traveling exhibitions he organized will open in New York: “Fred Wilson: Objects and Installations, 1979-2000” (Studio Museum in Harlem) and “White: Whiteness and Race in Contemporary Art” (International Center of Photography). His essay on interracial friendship, “The Value of Things Not Said,” will appear in Emily Bernard, ed., Some of My Best Friends (HarperCollins, 2004). And PBS/Media Frontiers has optioned his 1999 memoir on American race relations—White Lies: Race and the Myths of Whiteness (Farrar, Straus & Giroux)—for a television documentary due in 2006.

Suzaan Boettger’s (1998) book Earthworks: Art and the Landscape of the Sixties (University of California Press, December 2002) went into a second printing in April 2003 and early into paperback in February 2004. She will chair a session devoted to Robert Smithson at the forthcoming College Art Association conference, February 2005 and is in her second year as Assistant Professor at Bergen Community College, Paramus, New Jersey.

Mishoe Brennecke (2001) lives and works (since fall of 1995) in Sewanee, TN at The University of the South. She teaches in the Department of Art and Art History and recently was awarded tenure and promoted to Associate Professor (effective July 1, 2004).

Martha Buskirk’s (1998) book, The Contingent Object of Contemporary Art, was published by MIT Press in fall 2003. She curated a related exhibition, “Infinitely Specific,” with photographs and videos by Janine Antoni, Nayland Blake, Mona Hatoum, Zoe Leonard, and Gabriel Orozco, for the Montserrat College of Art Gallery, January-February 2004. In spring 2004 she was a fellow at the Clark Art Institute, where she began work on a new project, “Now and Then: Tradition as Subject and Method in Contemporary Art.” During the past year she has given lectures on her recent book and current work at MIT’s List Visual Arts Center in Cambridge, Cooper Union and Pratt Manhattan Gallery in New York, CAA in Seattle, The Henry Moore Institute, Kingston University, Bonn University, University of Edinburgh, and the Clark Art Institute.

Susan E. Cahan (2003) is the Des Lee Endowed Professor in Contemporary Art at the University of Missouri-St. Louis. Her most recent essay, “Carrie Mae Weems: Reflecting Louisiana” appears in the catalogue for the touring exhibition “Carrie Mae Weems: The Louisiana Project.”

Daniell Cornell (2002), Associate Curator at the de Young Museum, Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco, organized “Between Promise and Possibility: The Photographs of Adi Nes” for the Legion of Honor Museum, San Francisco and the Tel Aviv Museum of Art, Israel. He published an essay in the accompanying exhibition catalogue entitled “Imprisoning Desires: Politics, Fashion, and the Homoerotic Image.” The Fall-Winter 2003-4 issue of Fine Arts Magazine published his article on John Langley Howard, “At the Crossroads: Labor in Depression-Era San Francisco.” The exhibition he organized, “American Accents, 1670-1945,” traveled to the Winterthur Museum Garden and Library, Delaware (October 2003-February 2004) and to the Charles M. Avampato Museum, Charleston, West Virginia (April-June 2004).

Lai-Kent Chew-Orenduff (2002) has had a change in a teaching assignment, from Lecturer in Art History at Bermuda College, Bermuda, to Assistant Professor of Art History at Valdosta State University, Valdosta, Georgia.

Melody Davis (2004) finished her Ph.D. in January with the dissertation topic, “Doubling the Vision: Women in Narrative Stereography, The United States, 1870-1910.” A Henry Luce/ACLS Dissertation Fellowship in American Art enabled her to research stereographs in collections throughout the United States. Dr. Davis is currently revising her dissertation in hopes of publication.

Margaret Doyle (2004) will be starting a new job as assistant curator in the department of exhibition programs at the National Gallery of Art.

Beth S. Gersh-Nesic (1989) gave a paper, “Picasso’s ‘El Guitare’” at the Mediterranean Studies Association Conference, Barcelona, May 27-30, 2004.

Jennifer Gross (2000) is now the Seymour H. Knox Jr. Curator of Modern and Contemporary Art at the Yale University Art Gallery having handed over ten centuries of European Art to Laurence Kanter from the Metropolitan Museum. This year the Gallery initiated the Robert and Evelyn Doran Artist-in-Residence program at Yale and the first resident Jennifer worked with was Janine Antoni. The project resulted in an exhibition curated by Antoni of non-artists drawings that was presented at Apexart in New York as well as at Artspace in New Haven. Jennifer is currently organizing a traveling exhibition of the Societe Anonyme Collection that opens at the Phillips Collection in Washington in the fall of 2005 and travels to the UCLA Hammer Museum and then to the Dallas Museum before returning to Yale.

Herbert R. Hartel, Jr. (2002) continues to teach at John Jay College, CUNY as adjunct assistant professor. He continues to contribute book reviews to The Art Book (London, Blackwell Publishing). He continues to serve as the area chair for Visual Arts in the West for the Southwest / Texas Popular Culture Association and American Culture Association. He edited Part 9: American Modernism, which went online last October. He contributed the following article to that issue of Part: “Stuart Davis’ Taste for Modern American Culture.” He gave the following paper: “Reconsidering Clyfford Still and Native American Shamanism: The Creation of Abstract Art as Spirit Power,” in the panel “The Northwest School: Far Beyond and Deep Within,” 92nd Annual Conference of the College Art Association, Feb. 21, 2004, Seattle.

Mitchell Kahan (1983) received the 2003 Distinguished Museum Professional Award from the Ohio Museums Association at the organization's annual meeting on April 19, 2004. On May 22, he celebrated groundbreaking for a new 64,000 square foot addition to the Akron Art Museum, where he has been director since 1986. On June 12, he was elected to the Board of Trustees of the Association of Art Museum Directors.

Maud Lavin (1989), associate professor of Visual and Critical Studies and Art History, Theory and Criticism at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, has been named the first graduate director of SAIC's new MA in Visual and Critical Studies.

Valerie Ann Leeds (2000) was a major contributor to a forthcoming publication, American Paintings in the Detroit Institute of Arts, volume three, writing on Robert Henri and works by Ashcan School artists. She was a contributor to the forthcoming catalogue of American art at the Telfair Museum of Art, Savannah, Georgia. She wrote an article published in American Art Review, “American Art at the Flint Institute of Arts,” in conjunction with the publication of the Flint Institute’s catalogue of American art, published in 2004, by Hudson Hills, for which she also served as Project Director. She wrote the catalogue essay for an exhibition on the work of William Glackens held at the Gerald Peters Gallery, in New York. She curated an exhibition at the Newark Museum, “History of Flight: Art and Innovation.” She curated the retrospective exhibition for the Telfair Museum of Art on the art of Ray Ellis and authored the catalogue essay in a book published by Abbeville. The show will travel to the Butler Institute of American Art in Youngstown, Ohio, and also to the Morris Museum of Art in Augusta, Georgia. Finally, Valerie was a contributor to the forthcoming catalogue of the American collection for the Blanton Museum of Art, at the University of Texas, Austin, and also served as an editor for the project.

Richard Leslie (2003) continues to teach as Visiting Assistant Professor at SUNY-Stony Brook, and at the School of Visual Arts (SVA), where he has been asked to structure a new MFA program that integrates criticism, theory and studio practice. As a foreign correspondent for Art Nexus, he has published reviews in the past year: “The Whitney Biennial, 2004” and “Valeska Soares at The Bronx Museum of Art” for July-September, 2004; “To Be Political It Has To Look Nice” at Apex Art, April-June, 2004; “Inigo Manglano-Ovalle,” at Max Protech Gallery, June-August, 2003. He wrote the essay for the exhibition catalogue “photography: ccny, 2004” in June 2004 (City College) and on-line reviews for Art & Science Collaborations, Inc, in March 2004 on Cheryl Safren and Debra Swack. He gave a “Murphy Lecture” at The Spencer Museum of Art, University of Kansas, Lawrence, in April, 2004 (“Telling Directions in the Post-Post Age”) and served as visiting critic and lecturer, Department of Art for three days. He was panel chair for “Curricular Models for Art History,” at the National Conference on Liberal Arts and the Education of Artists: The Educated Artist, SVA, in October, 2003; panelist for “Visualizing History” for “Learning to Look: New Media, Visual Resources, and Humanities Education,” sponsored by the NEH, the American Social History Project and the Graduate Center of the City University of New York, June 2003. His paper, “Visual Culture, Cultural Studies, and Contemporary Art Theory” was part of the panel “Art and Vision/Visual Culture,” CAA, New York, Feb., 2003.

Sarah M. Lowe (1996) curated “Tina Modotti & Edward Weston: The Mexico Years,” which will remain up in London until August 1, 2004. A richly illustrated catalogue of the same name, published by Merrell (London and New York) will be available in the US in early June. Also by Dr. Lowe, the main essay in: “Edward Weston: Life Work” will come out this summer from Lodima Press.

Aside from finishing her degree, Valerie Mendelson (2004) has also presented at the NEMLA (March, 2004) with a paper titled “The Landscape of the Moon: Two Victorian Travelogues”; had a one-person exhibition at the Laurel Tracey Gallery in Red Bank, NJ titled “Flowers” (November 2003); done an installation at the Chashama Gallery, NY (June, 2004); received an EDIT grant from LaGuardia Community College; and been appointed part-time core faculty in Visual Studies at the New School beginning in September.

In the last year Alan W. Moore (2000) published an essay on MWF Video Club (my longtime project) in Clayton Patterson, ed., Captured: A Film and Video History of the Lower East Side (Federation of East Village Artsits, NY, 2003). Journal of Aesthetics & Protest online edition for August, ’03 (www.journalofaestheticsandprotest.org) posted my “General Introduction to Collectivity in Modern Art.” He published reviews on Artnet.com and Thing.net, about Peter Fend and Sanford R. Gifford, the Howl! festival, and a show of artists’ groups at Apexart. He also consulted with the New Museum and the Grey Art Gallery on exhibitions about downtown NYC in the ’70s and ’80s. He presented at the “Free Cooperation” conference, Media Study Department, University of Buffalo in April of ’04. This summer Alan is teaching in the Pratt Pre-College program, and in the fall at NYU Continuing Education (a course on artists’ districts), and at Queensborough Community College, CUNY. He is public programs coordinator for the Staten Island Waterfront Festival Market, producing an environmental education area.

Rosemary O’Neill (2003) is Associate Chair of the Critical Studies Department at Parsons School of Design/New School University. She published “Arman: Reconnaissance of the Already Seen” in Essays from the 1st International Conference on European History (Athens: Atiner, 2004), and “From Website to On-Site: Notes on New Media in the Art History Classroom” in FATE in review, vol. 25 (CAA, 2003-2004). She presented “School of Nice: Art and Tourism in the ‘Tahiti of the Hexagon’” in the “Objects in/and Visual Culture” conference organized by Pennsylvania State University (March 2004), and two New School University papers: “New School University Faculty Senate” (November 2003), and “Making Progress: Collaboration as a Working Method”(April 2004).

Arleen Pancza Graham (2002) has been appointed Assistant Dean of Freshmen at Fordham College, Lincoln Center. She has been an adjunct member of the Department of Art and Music at Rose Hill since 1993 and an assistant dean there since 2001.

Vanessa Rocco (2004) is an Assistant Curator at the International Center of Photography, where she curated the exhibition “Expanding Vision: Laszlo Moholy-Nagy’s Experiments of the 1920s” this spring, and authored its accompanying brochure. She is currently organizing “Looking at Life” with Carol Squiers, a selection of 100 prints gifted to ICP from the Time-Life Picture Collection.

Thayer Tolles (2003) was editor and a co-author of Perspectives on American Sculpture before 1925 (Metropolitan Museum of Art, 2003), proceedings from a symposium held at the Metropolitan in October 2001.

Margarita Tupitsyn (1996) published Gustav Klutsis and Valentina Kulagina: Photography and Montage After Constructivism (International Center of Photography/Steidl, 2004) and Verbal Photography: Ilya Kabakov, Boris Mikhailov, and The Moscow Archive of New Art (with Victor Tupitsyn; Museu Serralves, Porto, 2004).

After having been appointed to a full-time art history line at John Jay in 2002, Thalia Vrachopoulos (1999) has been engaged in curating exhibitions accompanied by catalogues almost monthly and publishing articles in various magazines, including Art and Culture and NY Arts. Her last two shows on the sculptors Angiola Churchill and Sylvia Wald received several important reviews each. She just returned from South Korea where she lectures frequently and brings artists to show in New York. She is returning to Gwangju in September where she will participate in the Biennial and various symposia. During Spring 2004 she was awarded a PSC grant for a book on Hilla von Rebay, the Guggenheim founder, which she is co-authoring with Dr. John Angeline, also an alumnus of the CUNY Graduate School art history program.

Paul Werner (1997) read a paper, “Katerina l'Africaine ou la ruse du dessin,” at the École des hautes études en sciences sociales (EHESS) in Paris. Publication is scheduled for year’s end.

Amy Winter(1995) awaits the forthcoming publication of “Transformations, transparences, et totémisme” in Mélusine XXIX (Paris: Université de Paris III: La Sorbonne Nouvelle, October 2005). She published “From One Amy to Another,” catalogue essay, Amy Ernst, La Surrealista, Galeria Zero, Barcelona, Spring 2004. She participated in the symposium “Alexander von Humboldt and the Visual Arts in America,” Bildner Center for Western Hemisphere Studies, The Graduate Center of the City University of New York, Fall 2004. She lectured on “Wolfgang Paalen’s Ethnographic Collections,” at Pollock-Krasner House, Springs, NY, Summer, 2004 and “Wolfgang Paalen, Totemism, and the New York School,” at C.W. Post College, Long Island University, Fall 2004. Amy moderated a roundtable discussion for the exhibition “Memory and History” with panelists B. Amore, Pauline Jakobsberg, Eugenia Paulicelli (European Lang. & Lit., Queens College), Olga Litvak, (Dept. of History & Judaic Studies, Princeton University), and Noam Elcott (Doctoral Fellow, Art History, Princeton University). Exhibitions curated at the Godwin-Ternbach Museum, Queens College include “Memory & History: The Art of B. Amore and Pauline Jakobsberg” (February-June 2004) showing prints, collages, and mixed media installations of two contemporary artists who explore personal and cultural memory and identity in the contexts of immigration, family and history; “The Light of Infinite Wisdom: Asian Art from the Godwin-Ternbach Museum and Other Collections” (October-June 2004) showing artworks of China, Japan, India, Thailand, and Tibet in all media from the 2nd millennium to the 19th century (with loans from The Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Brooklyn Museum of Art, the Rubin Museum of Tibetan Art, and other public and private collections) in the contexts of Buddhism, Confucianism, Hinduism, Islam, and Taoism; and “Clinton Hill: Retrospective 1980-2000” (February-May 2003), displaying handmade paperworks, paintings, and wood and plastic relief constructions of this NY School pioneer paper artist. Catalogues include The Light of Infinite Wisdom: Asian Art from the Godwin-Ternbach Museum and Other Collections (52 pp.); Memory and History: The Art of B. Amore and Pauline Jakobsberg (24 pp.); and Clinton Hill: Retrospective 1980-2000 (20 pp.).

Beginning May 1, 2005
Submissions for next year's newsletter can be made at www.gcarthistory.com/newsletter

We regret that we can no longer accept paper submissions.