Student News: Lilith Winkler-Schor (BFA, 2017)

Lilith Winkler-Schor is one of 62 national recipients of the prestigious Truman Scholarship

by Barri Bronston, photo by Ryan Rivet

With so much work to complete before the end of the semester, Tulane University senior Lilith Winkler-Schor was in a grumpy mood. She needed something to cheer her up — and she got it in the form of a phone call from Tulane President Mike Fitts on April 7.

Fitts informed her that she is one of 62 in the nation to win a prestigious Truman Scholarship, and just like that, the grumpiness turned into ecstasy. “I was elated,” she said. “I called my parents, but I didn’t want to post anything until I saw something in writing.”

Her skepticism was short-lived. She indeed won the scholarship, which provides $30,000 toward graduate school and the opportunity to participate in professional development programming to prepare for a career in public service leadership.

Candidates for the scholarship must be nominated by their colleges. This year, 768 candidates were nominated by 315 institutions. That number was whittled down to 199 finalists, and eventually the 62 winners, who will receive their awards at the Harry S. Truman Presidential Library and Museum in Independence, Missouri, on May 28.

Winkler-Schor, a Newcomb Scholar from Seattle, Washington, is pursuing a bachelor’s degree in social policy and political science and a bachelor of fine arts degree in glass and sculpture. Her scholarship focuses on urban policy, with special emphasis on incarceration, poverty and housing policy.

She is co-founder of Roots of Renewal, a community development nonprofit that provides work training for formerly incarcerated young adults as they re-enter their neighborhoods. She is a fellow at the Next City Vanguard, and is one of two recipients this year of the Tulane Center for Public Service’s Jim Runsdorf Excellence in Public Service Award.

Winkler-Schor plans to defer graduate school so she can continue working at Roots of Renewal and helping the formerly incarcerated become productive members of society. “It’s been a wild and wonderful journey,” she said. “But it’ll be nice to concentrate on this work without having to worry about school for a while.”

[Tulane New Wave, April 27, 2017]

Student Art Awards and BFA Exhibition

Celebrate with us this Thursday, April 27th!

Newcomb Art Department Student Art Awards
(includes reading of Henry Stern Prize Paper in Art History)
5:00 pm, Stone Auditorium

Bachelor of Fine Arts Exhibition
5:45 pm, Carroll Gallery



[from left, details of works by:  Marisa Chafetz, Lis Rossi, Eliza Carey, Lilith Winkler-Schor]

Mia Bagneris: Redefining the Early African Diaspora

Assistant Professor Mia L. Bagneris, the Jesse Poesch Junior Professor of Art History in the Newcomb Art Department and her collaborator Anna Arabindan-Kesson of Princeton University's Department of Art and Archaeology have won an ACLS Collaborative Research Fellowship for their project Beyond Recovery: Reframing the Dialogues of Early African Diaspora Art History, c. 1700-1900. The book aims to redefine early African diaspora art history by revealing and reconsidering the varying entanglements of artists of African descent—and the art histories they have often been written out of—and to offer a model for breaking new ground in the field.

Read more about Prof. Bagneris' work on The Representation of Enslaved Mixed-Race Women in British Art in News from the Field, School of Liberal Arts newsletter, April 2017.

Inside Looking Out / Outside Looking In: Paintings by Ronna S. Harris

Inside Looking Out / Outside Looking In: Paintings by Ronna S. Harris is on view at the Blowing Rock Art & History Museum in Blowing Rock, North Carolina from March 25 - July 23, 2017.

Ronna S. Harris was trained in the philosophy of impressionism and its warm and cool palette, yet her current practice involves a back-and-forth and intertwined relationship between American realism and abstract expression. Formally, her paintings depict still lifes, portraiture, and details pulled from the landscape. Conceptually, Harris discloses connections between all three. Inside Looking Out / Outside Looking In celebrates this and many other diverging and converging relationships in her work through an exhibition of twenty oil paintings.

Through a proficient understanding of light and skillful mark-making, Harris’ paintings serve as windows into the intimate, connective details of nature, objects, and humanity. A window rendered within the painting may serve as a backdrop for other subjects, or the physical frame of the painting itself may serve as a window into nature. One painting may place the viewer inside, allowing for one to look outward, while another places the viewer outside, allowing for one to reflect inward.

[Ronna Harris, The Actress, What Kind of Fool am I? Oil on canvas. Courtesy the artist]

AnnieLaurie Erickson in residence at YADDO and exhibiting in Seattle, Providence and Budapest

AnnieLaurie Erickson, the Ellsworth Woodward Junior Professor in Studio Art, was awarded a residency at YADDO in Saratoga Springs, NY, where she is currently working. Her photographs have been included in a number of exhibitions.

The PCNW 21st Juried Photography Exhibition at the Photographic Center Northwest, Seattle, juried by Sandra Phillips, Curator Emeritus, SF MOMA is on view March 27 – June 11, 2017. Unseen: Photography Beyond the Visible at the Providence Center for Photographic Arts in Rhode Island is on view April 20 – May 13, 2017. Punctum at the PH21 Gallery in Budapest, Hungary is on view March 9 – April 4, 2017.

This year Erickson received a $49,000 ATLAS grant from the Louisiana Board of Regents. The Awards to Louisiana Artists and Scholars (ATLAS) program provides support for major scholarly and artistic productions with potential to have a broad impact on a regional and/or national level.  This funding allowed Erickson to travel to major data centers in Europe this past fall and to expand on her project, Data Shadows, a photographic investigation into the physical apparatus of the Internet and digital surveillance.

[AnnieLaurie Erickson, Google Data Center, Mural Project, Dublin, Ireland]

Jim Steg: Innovator and Existentialist

The extensive and inventive oeuvre of artist Jim Steg (1922-2001), printmaker and professor at Tulane University's Newcomb Art Department for over forty years, is the subject of a new exhibit at the New Orleans Museum of Art which will be on view April 7th - October 8th, 2017.

On Wednesday, April 5th at 6:00 pm, the American art critic and historian Donald Kuspit will present a lecture, "Jim Steg: Innovator and Existentialist" at NOMA. Kuspit is professor emeritus of art history and philosophy at State University of New York at Stonybrook.

Glass program celebrates four decades of growth

by Margaux Armfield

For more than 40 years, Tulane has offered students the opportunity to explore glass as a sculptural medium. Professor Gene Koss took charge of the program in 1977 and has seen it grow from only eight students to more than 70.

Tulane’s glass program is unique in that it emphasizes using glass as a sculptural element to create artwork as opposed to craftwork.

“If you come and study [glass] at Tulane, it’s going to be sculpture that’s idea-based,” Koss said. “We want the work to be elevated enough that it can fit into the fine art world.”

This emphasis on sculpture encourages students to create mixed media pieces. Students have access to the woodshop, metal shop and sculpture foundry in addition to the glass studio. Senior Ethan Champagne, currently enrolled in Intermediate Glass, said the program has taught him a variety of technical skills.
“We have some new laser cutters and new computer software to help us with design and fabrication, but the thing that [Koss] finds and that we find enjoyable is having something to do with our hands,” Champagne said.                     [Read more: Tulane Hullabaloo, March 22, 2017]