Faculty spotlight: Michelle Foa

Michelle Foa has received several research and teaching fellowships, prizes, and grants in the past year.  She is at work on a book on Edgar Degas, and an article drawn from this research published in The Art Bulletin and titled “In Transit: Edgar Degas and the Matter of Cotton, between New World and Old,” received the annual article prize from the Nineteenth-Century Studies Association.  She also received a grant from the National Endowment from the Humanities to undertake a major environmental humanities curricular initiative at Tulane.  A Studio in the Woods and the ByWater Institute awarded her a scholarly residency to be completed during the upcoming year.    

 

At commencement this past May, Professor Foa received the Suzanne and Stephen Weiss Presidential Fellowship for Undergraduate Education, the university’s top undergraduate teaching prize. She was also recently appointed as the Carnegie Corporation of New York, Solon R. Cole, MD, and Siegel Professor in Social Entrepreneurship at the Phyllis M. Taylor Center.  Venues of recent and forthcoming lectures on her research include the Royal Museum of Fine Arts in Brussels, Saint Andrews University in Scotland, University of Virginia, College of William and Mary, Cleveland Museum of Art and Case Western University, and the Louisiana Endowment for the Humanities Lecture Series at Gallier House.  She chairs the virtual speaker series for the Association of Historians of Nineteenth-Century Art and continues to serve on the Board of Directors of the National Committee for the History of Art.

2022 Newcomb Art Awards

On Friday, May 6th the Newcomb Art Department hosted its annual Student Art Awards ceremony in Stone Auditorium. Stephanie Porras, Professor of Art History and Chair, presented the Art History Awards and Teresa Cole, Professor of Printmaking, presented the Studio Art Awards.

Art History Awards

The Marilyn Brown Award for Outstanding Art History Major  Alex Landry

The Marilyn Brown Award for Outstanding Art History Major  Kamryn Pigg

The Marilyn Brown Senior Honors Scholar Award  Kamryn Pigg 

The Marilyn Brown Senior Honors Scholar Award Zoe Ariyama

The Henry Stern Prize Paper in Art History  Isa Zweiback

The Nell Pomeroy O’Brien Award for a Sophomore or Junior in Art History  Ava Bush

Studio Art Awards

The Class of 1914 Award in Painting  Yume Jensen

The Alberta “Rusty” Collier Memorial Award in 3D Art  Sydnee Fagan

The Alberta “Rusty” Collier Memorial Award in 2D Art  Sophie Bennett

The Sandy Chism Memorial Award in Painting  Ava Jeanne Davis

The Juanita Gonzales Ceramics Award  Lauren Bean

The Nell Pomeroy O’Brien Award for a Sophomore or Junior in Studio Art  Leah Baron

Michelle Foa awarded Weiss Presidential Fellowship

During Commencement 2022, four Tulane University faculty received university-wide teaching awards – two Weiss Presidential Fellowships for Undergraduate Teaching and two President’s Awards for Excellence in Graduate and Professional Teaching.

The 2022 Weiss Fellows are Michelle Foa, associate professor of art history in the Newcomb Art Department in the School of Liberal Arts and a Carnegie Professor at the Phyllis M. Taylor Center for Social Innovation and Design Thinking, and Tiffany Lin, associate professor of architecture and design program director at the School of Architecture.

The recipients of 2022 President’s Awards for Excellence in Graduate and Professional Teaching are Alessandra Bazzano, associate professor at the School of Public Health and Tropical Medicine, Carnegie Corporation of New York Professor of Social Entrepreneurship at the Phyllis M. Taylor Center for Social Innovation and Design Thinking, and director of the Tulane Center of Excellence in Maternal and Child Health, and Guadalupe García, associate professor in the Department of History at the School of Liberal Arts.

Stephanie Porras awarded APS and CAA publication grants

Stephanie Porras is the recipient of the 2021 Publication Grant awarded by the Association of Print Scholars (APS in support of her forthcoming book, The First Viral Images: Maerten de Vos, Antwerp Print, and the Early Modern Globe.

The book, to be published by Penn State University Press, considers how a single engraving, the painting upon which it is based, and an illustrated book, traveled and functioned across the globe.  Porras cites examples of the engraving's influence as a model for Spanish and American painters, Chinese printmakers, and Filipino ivory carvers. She proposes that, more than a story of migrant artists and objects, this book reconsiders the role of images in the uneven processes of globalization, beyond the transmission of artistic styles, ornament, or iconographic motifs. The publication aims to test art historical notions of copying and agency, context, and viewership.

Dr. Porras also received a grant from the College Art Association's Millard Meiss Publication Fund, which supports book-length scholarly manuscripts in the history of art, visual studies, and related subjects that have been accepted by a publisher on their merits, but cannot be published in the most desirable form without a subsidy.

Stephanie Porras is Associate Professor of Art History at Tulane University. She is the author of Pieter Bruegel’s Historical Imagination (2016), Art of the Northern Renaissance: Courts, Commerce and Devotion (2018) and co-editor of The Young Dürer: Drawing the Figure (2013). She currently serves as Reviews Editor for The Art Bulletin and is on the editorial board of the Nederlands Kunsthistorisches Jaarboek. Her forthcoming book, The First Viral Images: Maerten de Vos, Antwerp Print, and the Early Modern Globe, considers how a single engraving, the painting upon which it is based, and an illustrated book, circled the globe in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries.

Scholars honored at Tulane's first Research, Scholarship and Artistic Achievement Awards ceremony 

The Office of Research held the first Tulane University Research, Scholarship and Artistic Achievement Awards on Thursday, Nov. 4, to honor outstanding Tulane scholars and recognize their exceptional research. Art History was well represented in the awards ceremony held at the Higgons Hotel in downtown New Orleans. 

Elizabeth Hill Boone was inducted into the Research Hall of Fame. Mia L. Bagneris received the Spirit of Tulane Award, which recognizes outstanding achievement of scholars whose work embodies Tulane’s motto, “Not for oneself, but for one’s own,” and enhances the university’s research mission. Prof. Bagneris and Adrian Anagnost received Funding Awards in recognition of their $225,000 grant from The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation to convene a year-long site-specific inquiry exploring changing historical narratives in New Orleans and the greater Gulf South region.

See Tulane News to read more about the ceremony and award reciepients. 

Award Winning Article

Prof. Michelle Foa’s article, “In Transit: Edgar Degas and the Matter of Cotton, between New World and Old,” The Art Bulletin 102, no. 3 (September 2020) was awarded the 2021 Article Prize by the Nineteenth-Century Studies Association.

Prof. Foa is currently at work on a book on Edgar Degas titled The Matter of Degas: Art and Materiality in Later Nineteenth-Century Paris, in which she analyzes the conceptual significance of the artist’s sustained experimentation with diverse media and techniques in the context of his investigation into the physical and material qualities of the world around him. 

[Edgar Degas, A Cotton Office in New Orleans, 1873, Musée des Beaux-Arts de Pau, France]

2021 Faculty Awards | SLA Dean's Office

Outstanding Faculty Research Award

Elizabeth Hill Boone

Since 1994, Elizabeth has served as the Martha and Donald Robertson Chair in Latin American Art. Author of six monographs, co-author of another two books, and editor or co-editor of fourteen other volumes, her work has been influential not only in art history, but in the related fields of history, anthropology and literary theory. In 2018, she was named the College Art Association’s Distinguished Scholar, the first Latin Americanist art historian to receive this honor since its founding in 2001. She was also the first Latin Americanist to hold the Andrew Mellon Professorship at the National Gallery of Art in 2006-8. In 2010 she was Professor invitée at the École Pratique de Hautes Etudes, at the Sorbonne. She is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and the Academia Mexicana de la Historia and recipient of the government of Mexico's Order of the Aztec Eagle for her contributions to Aztec scholarship. Her latest monograph book, Descendants of Aztec Pictography: The Cultural Encyclopedias of Sixteenth-Century Mexico (University of Texas Press, 2021), is the first synthetic analysis of the pictorial encyclopedias of Aztec culture created in the decades after the Spanish conquest. After 27 years at Tulane, Elizabeth is retiring at the end of this academic year. Her career at Tulane University has been extraordinary, to say the least, and we can think of no better tribute than to offer her the Research Award.

The April Brayfield Outstanding Faculty Teaching Award

Sean Fader

Since his arrival at Tulane in 2018, Sean has helped to rewrite curriculum in the photo area, separating darkroom and digital practices; he has also overhauled the digital and darkroom spaces, enhancing usability and access. His courses are always overenrolled and his teaching evaluations are superlative. Here are some examples of his student evaluations: “Sean is extremely supportive and knowledgeable about what he teaches. He makes material exciting, engaging, and relevant.“, and “He is Thanos with all the infinity stones.”

Art Chair Stephanie Porras says, “I would particularly like to praise Sean for making adjustments to his teaching this year – not only folding in the switch to hybrid teaching, but also readjusting all his syllabi to center BIPOC scholars and artists. By overhauling his syllabi in this way, Sean modelled what it means to decenter and question the artistic canon. He shared resources with other faculty in the department and encouraged all of us to revisit the readings and artists we use to teach the history, theory and practice of art.”

Art History Student Art Awards

The Newcomb Art Department is pleased to announce the recipients of the 2021 Art History Student Awards.

The Henry Stern Prize for Best Paper in Art History: Abigail McDade

Abby McDade wins the Henry Stern Prize for her paper, "Social Practice Art: The Role of Audience Encounter," which discusses works by California-based contemporary artist Suzanne Lacy and the Pittsburgh-based artist collective Conflict Kitchen. Abby examines how these artists' socially-engaged works attempt to grapple with structural violence, by promoting community-driven resilience through shared meals, community discussions, and civic actions, as well as exhibitions and traditional art objects. Abby's paper is notable for its innovative use of both art historical analysis and public health research by Kaiser Permanente and the Prevention Institute. Abby is graduating with a B.F.A. in printmaking, and will be moving to New York to continue developing her artistic practice.

 

The Marilyn Brown Award for Outstanding Art History Major: Lindsay Hardy

Lindsay receives this award for both her excellent performance in her art history classes, as well as her significant research and writing achievements in her honors thesis. Lindsay consistently contributes insightful comments to class discussions, and she has tackled some particularly challenging and ambitious research topics. Her honors thesis, “The Casa Group: Confronting Tradition and Modernism Through Art in Post Protectorate Morocco,” argues that the artists and teachers of the School of Fine Arts in Casablanca (the “Casa Group”) actively valorized Moroccan culture, and therefore Moroccan national identity, after the country gained independence from France in 1956. Her thesis is highly original and demonstrates Lindsay’s superb abilities as a researcher and writer.

 

The Nell Pomeroy O’Brien Award for a sophomore in Art History: Alessandra Fraim

Ali has performed exceptionally well in her art history courses thus far, proving herself to be an excellent writer, a valuable participant in class discussions, and a perceptive viewer of works of art.  But what stands out most about Ali is her admirable enthusiasm for learning and her eagerness to challenge herself.  I'm consistently impressed by these qualities in her, which make her a particular joy to work with.

The Nell Pomeroy O’Brien Award for a junior in Art History: Alex Landry

Alex is an extremely talented student who has performed at the very highest level in her art history courses. She combines a keen intelligence with a profound curiosity about the material, and she consistently makes tremendously astute comments in class, elevating any discussion that she is part of.  Alex is constantly pushing herself to delve deeper into the material and to take on important questions, engaging with whatever topic is at hand in a remarkably sophisticated way.  It's been a great pleasure to have her as a student.

 

The Marilyn Brown Award for Senior Honors Scholar: Reina Proetzel

Reina has been an outstanding student throughout her time at Tulane. Her honors thesis, “The AIDS Epidemic in the United States: The Artistic Response,” examines three artworks created in response to the AIDS epidemic in the 1980s and 1990 within the contexts of politics and postmodern theory. Reina is a brilliant writer, and her sensitive exploration of these historic issues surrounding the AIDS crisis retains a human dimension while deftly pointing to similar, contemporary issues surrounding the epidemic of Covid 19.

 

 

 

Studio Art Student Art Awards

The Newcomb Art Department is pleased to announce the recipients of the 2021 Studio Art Awards.

The Class of 1914 Prize in Art: Eden Weinstein

The first thing that struck me about Eden was her positive attitude and her willingness to think outside the box. Eden was willing not only to finish the task at hand, but to create something with quality and distinction.  She took constructive criticism well and was also willing to take the time to give a thoughtful critique of the work of others. I was constantly impressed with her ability to think and produce with a perspective both interesting and different from those around her. I feel assured that the qualities which caused her to thrive in the Tulane Art Department will be invaluable for her future endeavors.  On another note, I would like to add that I feel it important to reference her personal qualities along with her academic qualifications.  All in all, Eden is a unique individual with an extraordinary capacity to rise to any challenge handed to her.

            

The Alberta “Rusty” Collier Memorial Award in 2D Art: Elana Bush

During her tenure at Tulane, Elana has been a fixture in the photography area. Elana is a powerhouse. She is incredibly smart, makes beautiful photographs, and works incredibly hard. Additionally, the bar Elana sets for herself is exceptionally high and inspires everyone around her to be better and work harder to create. On top of all of that, she is generous. She is always willing to help her peers with a shoot or sit down to talk about their ideas. During her tenure at Tulane, she has become tremendously skilled in both digital and traditional practices and used these skills to explore ideas around queerness, digital spaces, censorship, and isolation. Her BFA show, Crescent, is poignant and visually lush. For Crescent, she documented the empty poetic spaces of New Orleans with her medium format camera and shifted the colors to create dreamy images of New Orleans shabby chic spaces. The images beautifully capture her love of New Orleans and the quiet beauty of our beloved city empty. Elana Bush has a bright future ahead.  

The Alberta “Rusty” Collier Memorial Award in 3D Art: Leo Fine

Leo is a dedicated, hard-working and creative artist.  He uses clear glass optics and traditional glass working techniques to create sculptures that represent both prehistoric and modern lifeforms and show the biological mechanisms that connect life together.  Leo sees sculpting natural forms in clear glass akin to sculpting in light.  Leo’s work challenges us to think differently, and he is most deserving of the Alberta “Rusty” Collier award.

The Sandra “Sandy” Chism Memorial Award in Painting: Murell Levine

The Tulane Painting Department would like to acknowledge Murell Levine for her exceptional commitment to painting. For Murell, the relationship between painting and life seem inseparable, partly due to the amount of time she spends in studio; but one also gets the sense that she carries that curiosity and excitement from the studio into the outside world as well. We have enjoyed watching her paintings evolve into a body of work so informed, yet personal. We are excited to select Murell for this year’s Sandy Chism award and look forward to seeing her paintings continue to develop.  

The Senior Honors Scholar in Studio Art: Jimena Padilla Pineda

Jimena joined the photo area in her junior year and landed directly on her feet. After just one semester, she successfully applied to receive her BFA in studio art, and immediately she was a force in photography. She has spent the past two years honing her craft both in film and digital photography and using her skills to intelligently think through image-making. Her BFA show, Conversations with Gen Z, combines portrait sessions with interviews, found imagery, and scans beautifully composited together to create poignant portraits of her gen-z peers. Her BFA show is supported by a beautifully written honors thesis that smartly outlines and examines ideas around generational identity, zeroing in on the gen-z generation in the time of covid. Jimena has proven to be an intelligent, critical, visually literate, and culturally aware image-maker.  

Juanita Gonzales Memorial Award in Ceramics: Kay So 

Kay So has distinguished herself as a young ceramic artist of particular skill, invention and energy. Kay’s exceptional work is complemented by her dedication to learning about all aspects of the clay studio. She is devoted to developing a detailed understanding of the chemistry of materials used in her work as well as the contemporary discourse of the ceramic art field. Kay demonstrates a deep curiosity about the potentials of the ceramic art medium and the initiative to test and explore the possibilities on her own. Definitely a strong presence in the clay studio, Her work is characterized by a clarity of shape and form, and a rich use of glaze surfaces.

Nell Pomeroy O’Brien Award for a Sophomore in Studio Art: Zachary St. Pierre 

The Newcomb Art Department would like to acknowledge Zachary St. Pierre for his exceptional work in Painting and Drawing. Last year Zachary demonstrated outstanding rendering abilities in his introductory courses. His interest and knack for form, color, and mark-making has developed into a series of optically complex and exquisite landscape paintings. We are excited to see what comes about in this nascent stage of his work and commend his hard work and enthusiasm. 

Alexis Culotta awarded NEH summer stipend grant

Alexis Culotta, Professor of Practice in Art History, was awarded a grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities for her project, Fare la Bella Figura: Mapping and Documenting the Vanishing Tradition of the Roman Frescoed Façade. The funding will support archival research and fieldwork to document sixteenth-century frescoed façades in Rome leading to the creation of an online database and article.

Megan Flattley awarded Fulbright-Hays Fellowship

The Newcomb Art Department is thrilled to announce that Megan Flattley, PhD candidate in Art History and Latin American Studies at Tulane, has been awarded a Fulbright-Hays DDRA (Doctoral Dissertation Research Abroad) 12-month grant. She plans to conduct research in Mexico City June 2021 to May 2022. Her dissertation, “Out of the Fragments, New Worlds: Perspective and Spatiality in the Work of Diego Rivera, 1913-1933” analyzes how Rivera responded to Cubism’s break with linear perspective in his transition from easel painting to mural work. Her research foregrounds Rivera’s place in an international network of avant-garde artists concerned with modernist theories of space and revolutionary politics. Congratulations, Megan!!! 

Image: Rivera’s mural in the Palacio Nacional, Mexico City.

Faculty Awards Spring 2020

On Thursday May 28th, Brian T. Edwards, Dean of the School of Liberal Arts, announced this year's faculty awards.

We are pleased to report that Teresa Cole, Professor of Printmaking, is this year’s George Lurcy Affiliated Fellow at the American Academy in Rome. Professor Cole will spend a month in residence at the Academy working on a new printmaking project based on the intricate patterns and vibrant colors found in the medieval mosaic floors created by the Cosmati brothers. To inspire her new work she will study the mosaic floors and patterned columns in the Pantheon and S. Maria in Trastevere.

Faculty Research Awards were granted to the following Newcomb Art Department faculty: AnnieLaurie Erickson (Slow Light), Leslie Geddes (Weapons of Atlas: The Art and Science of Early Modern Cartography 1580-1650), and Kevin Jones (Decollage - a solo art exhibition).

Art History Student Art Awards

The Newcomb Art Department is pleased to announce the 2020 Art History Student Art Awards.

The Marilyn Brown Award for Outstanding Art History Major  Carly LaCoste
Carly LaCoste has been an exceptional student and citizen for her entire career at Tulane. Her thesis for the 4 plus 1 MA program on images of the Last Judgement in French medieval manuscripts promises to be thoughtful, original, and impactful. Carly's scholarship is all of her courses is outstanding; she writes clear papers and is highly motivated and self-directed. Her professors consistently remark that her work in seminars is already on par with graduate student work. She will make a wonderful contribution to the field of art history.


Nell Pomeroy O'Brien Award for a Sophomore or Junior in Art History   Kamryn Pigg
Kamryn is an exemplary art history student.  She has an exceptional ability to synthesize key ideas from lectures, discussions, and readings, and her visual analysis skills are truly impressive.  Her written work and contributions to class discussions consistently reflect the sophistication of her engagement with the course material and her deep curiosity about art history.  It has been a true pleasure having her in class.”


Henry Stern Prize Paper in Art History Rachel Cline
'She Lives in Vice’: Depreciation of Aztec Cultural Practices Through Images of the Auiani and Noblewomen in the Florentine Codex
 “‘She Lives in Vice’: Depreciation of Aztec Cultural Practices Through Images of the Auiani and Noblewomen in the Florentine Codex,” was written for Prof. Elizabeth Boone’s seminar on Mexican Manuscript Painting in fall 2019.  Rachel’s outstanding paper investigates the visual and textual descriptions of Aztec women found in the monumental encyclopedia of Bernardino de Sahagún, revealing how Sahagún’s artists framed female identities by drawing on imagery from both the indigenous and European traditions.  Moreover, she successfully argues that these artists and scribes employed many of the same visual and text tropes for Aztec noblewomen that they used to describe auiani (“pleasure women”), creating a paradox that effectively undercut the honor of Aztec noblewomen.  Rachel dug deep into the specialist literature with keen insight and crafted a well-supported argument that raises our understanding of the cultural mediation between Aztecs and Europeans in early colonial Mexico.


Marilyn Brown Senior Honor Scholar Award   Kate Moranski
Kate’s senior honor thesis, “Visual Activism in the Photography of Carrie Mae Weems,” examines two of the artist’s photographic series from the perspective of the artist as political activist. Kate argues that Weems’ work combines text with appropriated imagery to create photographs that encourage her viewers to consider the ways representation can shift the politics of race, gender and class. Although Carrie Mae Weems’ work receives a fresh “rethink” in the thesis, Kate also outlines the ways in which contemporary artists in general can and do work toward the realization of visual activism.

Studio Art Student Art Awards

The Newcomb Art Department is pleased to announce the 2020 Studio Art Student Art Awards.

Class of 1914 award    Amelia Wiygul

Through the completion of majors in both Studio Art and Environmental Studies, Amelia Wiygul has demonstrated exceptional dedication to her academic and artistic pursuits at Tulane. Her work with drawing, painting, and mixed media presents unique visions of the natural world, including an ambitious hand-drawn eco-feminist graphic novel that envisions a future in which urban spaces and nature are no longer separate. Amelia’s commitment to her work is unwavering, and her interdisciplinary artistic endeavors offer a much-needed sense of hope for a sustainable environmental future.


Alberta “Rusty” Collier Memorial Award in 3D Art   Andrew Mahaffie

Andrew Mahaffie uses his sculpture as a reflection of his inner state with a focus on time.  He works with glass and metal to create both large scale and small detail heavy pieces.  In his larger works, he features domestic bottle glass and a variety of casting techniques to create visually dominating sculptures.  The recycled material creates a unique ability to have different opacities within the glass based on thickness, and the use of hot casting techniques adds a powerful physicality and prominent texture to the works.  In his smaller sculpture he works with blowing and hot sculpting techniques to create highly detailed dramatic series.  His adoption of so many different styles of working with glass reflects his love and fascination with the material and a desire to continue to accumulate techniques to shape it.


Sandy Chism Award in Painting    Elizabeth Hopmann

In her four years at Tulane, Elizabeth Hopmann has fearlessly embraced the expansive potential of ceramic and painting mediums.  Her experimentation and deep curiosities have sharpened, solidified, and refined her craft far beyond what instructors could individually impart.  She is truly and impressively a student of the material. Recent work offers a resolute self and social awareness as well as the pleasure and multivalency of paint as a communicative medium.  Elizabeth's work possesses the rare and promising balance of being simultaneously vulnerable and imposing.

Alberta “Rusty” Collier Memorial Award in 2D Art   Isabella Scott

Current and former professors of Isabella Scott have admired her sharp-eyed and steady focus, as well as her unwavering consistency as a student and painter.  Her attendance to class is foremost an attendance to her craft, which she has pursued rigorously for four years.  The images that come from her hand are fashioned with meticulous precision, tenderness, honesty, and fidelity.  Isabella's paintings emerge from what is personal and forthright, yet in their cumulative variety offer something magnetic and mysterious.

Nell Pomeroy O’Brien Award      Zora Parker

Zora operates under a quiet sense of mindfulness. She takes authority in her decisive artist practice but is not so stern that she is always open to suggestions and criticism. In class her works have shown her willingness to share her love of creatures and insects as well as her fascination with the fantastical. My hope is that she continues to develop her practice in printmaking because of her drive and attention to detail. She can truly excel in this medium.

Juanita Gonzales Memorial Fund in Ceramics     Emma Conroy

Emma Conroy has distinguished herself as a BFA student, presenting a successful thesis exhibition that investigates the individual's relationship to vulnerability, risk and power. Working in ceramics and glass, Emma had developed exciting new sculptures that reference organic forms such as spines and bones, suggesting structures that are dynamic and simultaneously fragile and menacing,  Emma's thoughtful work process reveals her long term commitment to visual art, and her interest in a dialog with a wide range of viewers. In her time at Tulane, Emma has gained excellent and comprehensive skills in ceramics, spanning clay fabrication, glaze experimentation and firing a wide range of kilns. Always a team played in the studio, her positive outlook and willingness to share information and help her colleagues, contribute to make her this years outstanding candidate for the Juanita Gonzales Memorial prize in Ceramics.

Cimabue and the Franciscans

Congratulations to Tulane Art History Prof. Holly Flora, who has just been awarded the prestigious Premio San Francesco, awarded by the Pontificia Università Antonianum, for her book: Cimabue and the Franciscans (Brepols, 2019.) 

Cimabue and the Franciscans sheds new light on the legendary artist Cimabue, revealing his sophisticated engagement with complicated intellectual and theological ideas about materials, memory, beauty, and experience. 

Prof. Flora will be awarded the prize at a ceremony in Rome on January 16, 2020.

Alumni News: Adriana Obiols-Roca

2019 Art History M.A. graduate Adriana Obiols-Roca was recently awarded the Stone Center for Latin American Studies' Donald Robertson Prize for best paper in the Humanities by a Latin American Studies Graduate Student. This award honors Donald Robertson, a professor of Art History at Tulane for more than 25 years and a pioneer in the field of Latin American art history. He authored the groundbreaking Mexican Manuscript Painting of the Early Colonial Period: The Metropolitan Schools, and motivated a generation of budding Art Historians and Ethnohistorians.

Adriana's award-winning paper, "The Battle of the Whale: Bataillean Aesthetics in El Techo de la Ballena," analyzed the 1960s Venezuelan artistic and literary group El Techo de la Ballena, in relation to the dissident surrealism of French writer Georges Bataille. While El Techo has been the focus of sustained analysis on the part of literary critics, the group’s artistic production has received comparatively less attention. Their artistic production has previously been understood as part of a continuation of postwar gestural abstraction, and as a rejection of the geometric abstract art and modernist architecture that characterized the developmentalist state in 1950s-70s Venezuela. However, Adriana’s paper convincingly argues that El Techo’s practice should not be understood as a belated modernist project, but as quintessentially of its time, as a particularly Venezuelan take on the 1960s neo-avant-garde strategies of entropy, base materiality, and assemblage.

Ph.D. candidate Patricia Lagarde named a Fulbright-Hays fellow

As a 2019 Fulbright-Hays fellow, Patricia Alexander Lagarde, a doctoral candidate in art history and Latin American studies, will conduct research in Peru for seven months at Chavín de Huántar, a ceremonial center in the Andes mountains that dates to 1200-500 BCE. She will focus on a group of anthropomorphic stone sculptures known as the tenon heads that were installed on the exterior walls of the temple architecture. Her project will explore the variety in style, the assortment in material, and the overall viewer experience of the sculptures. Lagarde will be an affiliate with the Chavín International Research Center (Centro Internacional de Investigación de Chavín) where she will work with archeologists to examine what the sculptures’ roles were in the ceremonial and religious traditions at the time. While only one sculpture is still installed at the site, more than 100 existed, varying in shape and size. This fellowship will support Lagarde’s goal to create a comprehensive catalog of the tenon heads at Chavín de Huántar.  Studying their materiality, Lagarde hopes to gain a greater understanding of the Ancient Andean peoples’ perspective of the natural landscape as animate—she’s interested in how specific stones were chosen, potentially representing specific regions, communities, or ancestors.

Sean Fader receives grant from Skau Music & Art Fund

The Newcomb College Institute's Skau Music & Art Fund awarded a grant to Professor of Practice Sean Fader to support a documentary photographic art project. Fader's description of the project follows. 

With the assistance of a grant from the Skau Music and Art Fund, I will spend eight weeks this summer crisscrossing the country, driving to all of the locations where queer people were murdered in 1999 and 2000. I will be photographing the locations with a Sony Digital Mavica, the first digital camera that was available at the time, to create a photographic archive of all the recorded queer murders. There is an immediacy to this project: It was exactly 20 years ago that the Matthew Shepard and the James Byrd, Jr. Hate Crimes Prevention Act was presented to Congress, expanding the definition of federal hate crime laws to include queer people.  It was eventually signed by President Barack Obama 10 years ago. Additionally, it is exactly 50 years since the Stonewall riots. However, the current administration is changing laws that have protected queer people. The trans ban in the military, the bathroom ban, and the religious rights movement all play a part in institutionalizing queer hate. According to LAMBDA’s Website, “the National Coalition of  Anti-Violence Programs’ ‘Crisis of Hate’ report [states that] 2017 was the deadliest year in recent history for LGBTQ+ people in the United States.” Queer people are still being murdered at horrific rates.

Student Art Awards 2019

On Thursday April 25th the Newcomb Art Department hosted its annual Student Art Awards ceremony in Stone Auditorium. Kevin H. Jones, Associate Professor of Digital Arts and Chair, presented the Studio Art Awards and Dr. Michael Plante, Associate Professor of Art History, presented the Art History Awards. Following the awards presentation, the celebration moved to the Carroll Gallery for the Bachelor of Fine Arts Exhibition reception featuring work by Elizabeth Chan, Christopher Gonzalez, Arden Kelley, Alexandra Kugler, and Jordan Tavan.

2019 Student Art Awards 

Outstanding Art History Major: Rada Kuznetsova
The Henry Stern Prize Paper in Art History: Michael Russo
The Nell Pomeroy O’Brien Award in Art History: Lou Rambeau
The Marilyn Brown Award for a Senior Honors Scholar in Art History: Sophia Buchanan
The Alberta “Rusty” Collier Memorial Award for 2D Art: Alexandra Kugler
The Alberta “Rusty” Collier Memorial Award for 3D Art: Harleigh Shaw
The Nell Pomeroy O’Brien Award in Studio Art: Abigail McDade
The Sandy Chism Award in Painting: Dominic Frost
The Class of 1914 Prize in Art: Erin "Squid" Dixon
Juanita Gonzales Prize in Ceramics: Jordan Tavan

Alumni News: Elliot Doughtie recieves Joan Mitchell Foundation grant

Elliot Doughtie (BA, Studio Art, Art History, '07) was named a 2018 recipient of the Joan Mitchell Foundation Painters & Sculptors Grants. The Foundation currently awards $25,000 to twenty-five artists through a nomination process. Nominators from across the country are invited to recommend artists, at any stage in their career, who are currently under-recognized for their creative achievements, and whose practice would significantly benefit from the grant.

Elliot Doughtie is a Baltimore-based artist originally from Dallas, TX. Doughtie’s current practice utilizes drawing, collage, sculpture, and installation in the service of generating new experiences that transcend existing boundaries or assumed functions. Cosmic landscapes and bathroom plumbing are used as metaphors for the body in transition in his own explorations of the fluidity of gender and sexuality.  Doughtie describes his practice, “My sculptures and installations are metaphors for how I envision my own body and the bodies of those who are, like myself, transgender. Often the sculptures, or their attached component parts, are tools that would be used specifically by a trans person to push the body to something other than its current limits.”


Elliot Doughite, Alchemy Set For A Future Body (Part 2), 2016, mixed media installation: plaster, paper clay, plastic tubing, ink, ink jet transfer, copper couplings, and found table, 48" x 60" x 30"