Thursday, November 15, 2018

Kara Walker's Pastoral installed in Woldenberg Art Center

In the spring of 2018, a new School of Liberal Arts Management Minor(SLAMM) course, “How to Acquire a Work of Art,” was offered by the Newcomb Art Department and led with creativity and innovation by Associate Professor Michael Plante. The class, and the acquired artwork that resulted from the course, was made possible through the generous funding of New York City-based art advisor and Tulane graduate Sandy Heller (A&S '94). 
 
Last week at Homecoming, we unveiled Kara Walker's Pastoral. At the unveiling, Dr. Mia Bagneris offered the following explication.

Kara Walker (American, b. 1969), Pastoral, 1998, wall painting in black

“This piece (Pastoral) is a departure from the bulk of my work which is situated in a fictionalized version of the Antebellum South, which is the hub where profane racial mythologies shake hands with the mundane reality of day to day existence in a racially divided culture. This is a quiet little contemplative piece in which a Negress of Renown dons sheep´s clothing, or is dry humped by its filthy little self.”
                                    Kara Walker
Born in California but raised in Stone Mountain, GA, home of the rebirth of the Ku Klux Klan, Kara Walker cites her upbringing in a community profoundly invested in the romantic mythology of the Old South as a force that powerfully informs her work.  The artist first received notice for her panoramic silhouette installations, dark phantasmagorias evocative of antebellum plantations that confront the viewer with the weight of history, violence, and trauma and their intersections with race, gender, and sexuality.  
Walker’s use of the silhouette form is masterful.  She explodes the genteel connotations of the medium, presenting the viewer with violent, often brutally sexual scenes of depravity, debauchery, and even defecation.  Exploiting and disrupting the silhouette’s indexical quality, Walker presents the viewer with impossibly nightmarish tableaux that, steeped in history, nonetheless have the patina of reality.  Expertly, she probes the innate ambiguity of an art form that communicates only at its edges, requiring all information to be relayed in the outlines and forcing viewers to question what they see.  Ultimately, Walker does not offer a hopeful vision, but in her brutally fantastic imaginaries, the artist presents a realistic picture of the crippling burden of the nation’s dark past that continues to haunt its present.
Walker achieves all this and more in Pastoral.  In a compelling game of visual bait-and-switch, the figure of the Negress—a stock character in her oeuvre—merges with that of a sheep and simultaneously suggests the form of a tree.  Does the Negress bear the weight of her ovine burden as a garment?  Is she engaged in a bizarre bestial sex act? Will the bloodshed portended by the razor she daintily holds in her hoof-like hand be directed toward herself or someone else?   The solitary, introspective figure is, as Walker suggests, somewhat of “a departure” from her more chaotic panoramas.  However, the violence and “profane racial mythologies” that characterize her work remain, and Walker delivers none of the peace of an Arcadian idyll that Pastoral’s title suggests.

Wednesday, November 7, 2018

Phi Beta Kappa Fall Lecture

Stone Auditorium, 210 Woldenberg Art Center

The members of the Alpha of Louisiana Chapter at Tulane would like to invite you to the 2018 Phi Beta Kappa Fall Lecture. Stephanie Porras, Associate Professor of Art History and Vice President of the Alpha of Louisiana Chapter of Phi Beta Kappa, will be speaking on "Early Modern Globalization: Ivory Sculpture as the First Global Luxury Good." The lecture will take place Wednesday, November 7, at 6:00 PM in Stone Auditorium (room 210 of Woldenberg Art Center). A reception will follow. Phi Beta Kappa is the oldest and most prestigious undergraduate honors society in the United States. In addition to its role in recognizing academic excellence, Phi Beta Kappa supports teaching, research, and learning in the liberal arts and sciences.

Undergraduate Juried Exhibition

Please join us in the Carroll Gallery on Wednesday, November 7th at 3pm for a walkthrough with Cristina Molina, Juror of the 2018 Undergraduate Juried Exhibition. 
 

Congratulations to the recipients of this year's Juror's Awards: 

Sue Choi, Alex Lawton, Harleigh Shaw, Jordan Tavan, and Nathalie Toth.

Tuesday, October 30, 2018

Undergraduate Juried Exhibition

Please join us on Thursday, November 1st, for the opening reception of the Undergraduate Juried Exhibition, from 4:30-6:30pm in the Carroll Gallery. Award winners will be announced at the opening.

The MFA Open Studio event will also take place on Thursday evening from 5:30-7:30pm.

MFA Open Studios

The Newcomb Art Department at Tulane University invites you to attend our MFA Open Studio event, Thursday, November 1st from 5:30-7:30pm at the Woldenberg Art Center.

Sara Abbas (Painting) Studio 502
Joshua E. Bennett (Digital Arts) Studio 123
Allison Beondé (Photography) Studio 500
John Glass (Glass) Studio 119
Blas Isasi Gutiérrez  (Sculpture) Studio 123F
Jarrod Jackson (Painting) Studio 504
Juliana Kasamu (Photography) Studio 500
Cora Lautze (Printmaking) Studio 123D
Joris Lindhout (Digital Arts) Studio 506
Mark Morris (Glass) Studio 115
Holly Ross (Ceramics) Studio 108


[photo: Juliana Kasamu, Process #2, 2015]

Tuesday, October 23, 2018

Undergraduate Juried Exhibition: call for entries

On Thursday October 25th from 9am to 3pm, students may submit up to five art works to be considered for the 2018 Undergraduate Juried Exhibition.The call is open to all Tulane undergradauate students currently working towards a degree.

This year's juror is Cristina Molina, a member of the New Orleans artist-run gallery The Front where she regularly curates, exhibits her own artwork, and co-organizes The Front’s annual juried film festival. 

Works must be dropped off in person to the Carroll Gallery. Entry forms can be submitted online through the following link: https://goo.gl/forms/AY29kCuIp0nJRGpl1.

The exhibition opens on Thursday, November 1st with a reception from 4:30-6:30pm. A walkthrough with juror Cristina Molina will take place on Wednesday, November 7th at 3:00pm.
 

Tuesday, October 16, 2018

ASAP/10 Association for the Study of the Arts of the Present

The Association for the Study of the Arts of the Present will hold its 10th Annual Conference in New Orleans, October 17-20, 2018, hosted by the New Orleans Center for the Gulf South at Tulane University and Pelican Bomb. Wednesday evening, October 17th, the Newcomb Art Department will host the opening night's Artists Talk, the Sandra Garrard Memorial Lecture, "Machine Visions," with Trevor Paglen, at 6pm in Freeman Auditorium, 205 Woldenberg Art Center. 

The following Tulane faculty, staff, and students will participate as hosts, presenters, and moderators at ASPA/10: Adrian Anagnost, Amy Crum, Kate Baldwin, Laura Blereau, Courtney Bryan, Joel Dinerstein, Christopher Dunn, Brian Edwards, Megan Flattley, Denise Frazier, Eric Herhuth, Z’etoile Imma, Zachary Lazar, Amy Lesen, Monica Ramírez Montagut, Cheryl Naruse, Adriana Obiols, Christopher Oliver, John Ray Proctor, Ama Rogan, Matt Sakakeeny, Daniel Sharp, Rebecca Snedeker, Red Vaughan Tremmel, Emily Wilkerson, and Edie Wolfe. 
For more information, please visit the ASAP/10 website: https://asap10.tulane.edu.

Friday, October 12, 2018

Trevor Paglen: Machine Visions

The Newcomb Art Department presents the 2018 Sandra Garrard Memorial Lecture, Machine Visions, an artist's talk by Trevor Paglen, on Wednesday, October 17 at 6:30 pm in Freeman Auditorium, 205 Woldenberg Art Center.

Trevor Paglen is an artist whose work spans image-making, sculpture, investigative journalism, writing, engineering, and numerous other disciplines. Among his chief concerns are learning how to see the historical moment we live in and developing the means to imagine alternative futures. Trevor Paglen’s work is included in the collections of the Metropolitan Museum of Art; the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art; the Smithsonian American Art Museum; the Whitney Museum of American Art; Berkeley Art Museum; the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York; Victoria and Albert Museum, London; and the Nevada Museum of Art. He has launched an artwork into distant orbit around Earth in collaboration with Creative Time and MIT, contributed research and cinematography to the Academy Award-winning film Citizenfour, and created a radioactive public sculpture for the exclusion zone in Fukushima, Japan.

He is the author of five books and numerous articles on subjects including experimental geography, state secrecy, military symbology, photography, and visuality. Paglen’s work has been profiled in the New York Times, the New Yorker, the Economist, and Artforum. He is a 2017 recipient of the MacArthur Foundation Award. Paglen holds a B.A. from U.C. Berkeley, an M.F.A. from the Art Institute of Chicago, and a Ph.D. in Geography from U.C. Berkeley.

Thursday, October 11, 2018

In Conversation with Sally Heller

by Emily Wilkerson

New Orleans-based artist Sally Heller worked with Newcomb Art Department students for the last two weeks of September to develop the installation Mind Over Mayhem. In October, School of Liberal Arts Writer and Editor Emily Wilkerson sat down with Heller to speak about her artistic practice, her new installation in Tulane’s Carroll Gallery, and experiential learning.

Emily: Tell me a little about Mind Over Mayhem, the installation you developed in the Carroll Gallery with Tulane students.

Sally: All of my installations have titles that are a play on words, for example Bloom and Doom and Terrain Wreck, and they are usually about my general impression of the world as a chaotic place. So the idea of Mind Over Mayhem addresses what’s going on politically, and how we can bring to order these matters that are out of our control.

Emily: And how did the installation unfold?

Sally: I began the installation by accumulating low-end consumer goods, often materials or things that get used and thrown away. Then the students and I transformed these objects by bundling, cutting, and knotting them to remove them from their intended context. During the first day of installation, the students and I also applied rigging to the grid on the gallery’s ceiling, which consisted of clothesline tied in a crisscross fashion across the length of the space. At the same time, we mounted a twenty-foot photographic print onto the back wall. From there we could suspend forms, the items we collected and transformed, from the rigging and against the backdrop of the wall print. This created a three-dimensional effect—it was as though the students and I constructed a three-dimensional, abstract painting with the gallery space as our canvas.

Emily: What do you hope students gain from their experience working with you?

Sally: In constructing the installation, we made decisions about how to access the piece, where to place boundaries, and how much tension should be applied to the rigging, so the students were examining materials, planes, and space carefully. The process takes into account everything they are learning in their individual classes, such as painting and sculpture, and combines all of that into this one process.

What’s interesting to me about making this work is the potential I see in the materials themselves. And that is something I hope to impart to the students—the excitement of building with these non-traditional art materials.

Emily: Can you talk about what inspires your work?

Sally: There’s a raw energy that comes from making something with your hands, especially on a really large scale. I’m also using objects that we generally don’t pay attention to, and am turning these objects into art. By turning disposable items into something significant, you can begin to see the power in very nominal things.

Everybody’s aesthetic sensibility is really about who they are. It comes from a deep place inside you. My work and process are impacted by not wanting to stay within the boundaries of painting, a cannon that was mostly dominated by white, male artists. When I became a feminist, I realized I didn’t have to subscribe to the boundaries of painting. My process is really about me as a person.

Emily: How do you think visual art, and the liberal arts, influence the way we see and move in the world around us?

Sally: It seems that right now the political climate is all about tightening rules. And I think the liberal arts allow you to expand your thinking. I also think a liberal arts background, and exposure to the arts, allow you to have more sympathy, and not be too reactive in situations.

I believe the more knowledge you have, the better decisions you’ll make in your relationships, in your workspace, and really in every aspect of life.


Mind Over Mayhem is on view at Tulane's Carroll Gallery through October 24.

Sally Heller is a multi-material based artist who creates recognizable yet improbable landscapes constructed from cultural detritus. She has been awarded residencies at Headlands Center for the Arts, San Francisco; Civitella Ranieri, Umbertide, Italy; the Vermont Studio School, Johnson, Vermont; and Yaddo, Saratoga Springs, New York. Her work has been exhibited at the Lawndale Art Center, Houston; the Contemporary Arts Center, New Orleans; DePauw University, Greencastle, Indiana; Whitespace Gallery, Atlanta; Kemper Fine Art, New York City; and Scope, Miami, among many other sites. She holds a B.S. from University of Wisconsin and an M.F.A. from Virginia Commonwealth University.

Thursday, October 4, 2018

Kevin Jones: Work from 2012-2018

Work from 2012-2018  by Kevin H. Jones, Associate Professor and Chair of the Newcomb Art Department, will be on view at the Anderson, Virginia Commonwealth University's art gallery, from October 9 through November 3, 2018.

Over the past six years within Jones’ work, one can see transitions in and synthesis of media including painting, video, physical computing, and more recently, 2-dimensional digital prints. Through this synthesis of media, the conceptual investigation of the natural world through charts, diagrams and systems is a constant theme. His early work used solar energy to power a fictional television station, while more recent work uses sensors to create an interactive video installation that questions entropy. 

This exhibition is presented as part of the Anderson’s 2018–2019 Alumni Open Call. 
 

Wednesday, October 3, 2018

Sally Heller: Mind Over Mayhem

The Carroll Gallery is pleased to announce the opening reception of Sally Heller: Mind Over Mayhem, an installation created collaboratively with Tulane University studio art students, on Thursday, October 4, 5:30 – 7:30 pm. A short walkthrough with the artist will take place at 6:00 pm. In addition the Newcomb Art Department will host an artist’s talk with Sally Heller on Thursday, October 24, at 6:00 pm in Stone Auditorium. The exhibition is on view through October 24, 2018. This exhibition is supported by the Dorothy Beckemeyer Skau Art and Music Fund at the Newcomb College Institute.

Tuesday, October 2, 2018

Aaron Collier: Of Rocks and Ruins

Aaron Collier: Of Rocks and Ruins October 6 – October 27, 2018
Octavia Art Gallery, 454 Julia Street, New Orleans
Opening reception: October 6, 6 – 8 pm *In conjunction with Art for Art's Sake

Abstraction, marked as it is by the ability to be both suggestive and silent, proves to be a fitting vehicle for exploring the possibility of paint to simultaneously reveal and conceal. This dichotomy parallels a shifting, evolving world where what we know consistently shares an edge with what we do not. Paintings in Of Rocks and Ruins layer observed positive shapes and negative spaces from historical works such as Leonardo’s Virgin of the Rocks and Hendrick Goltzius’ Pieta to the degree that the individual and original referent becomes difficult to delineate. Piecing together a knowledge or experience of something through remaining or available fragments mimics our daily interactions with the world. Rather than suggest that these interactions foreground a certain lack or shortcoming, I wonder if incomprehensibility can ever be a source of joy? 
 
– Aaron Collier 

Aaron Collier is a visual artist living in New Orleans. He teaches drawing and painting at Tulane University as an Assistant Professor. This is Aaron’s first solo exhibition at Octavia Art Gallery. Previous solo exhibitions of his work have occurred at Cole Pratt Gallery and Staple Goods, an artist-run gallery in the St. Claude Avenue Arts District of New Orleans. He has participated in recent group exhibitions at The Clemente in New York and the Ogden Museum of Southern Art in New Orleans. Additionally, his work has been featured in New American Paintings and is represented in such collections as the New Orleans Museum of Art, Iberia Bank, and the Boston Medical Center. Collier has been awarded artist residencies by the Ragdale Foundation, the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts, the Joan Mitchell Center (New Orleans), ISCP (Brooklyn), and Open Ateliers Zuidoost (Amsterdam). 

Wednesday, September 26, 2018

Faculty Spotlight - Aaron Collier

Fragments of Reality

Faculty Spotlight - Aaron Collier

Written by Emily Wilkerson

Wednesday, September 26, 2018

Assistant Professor of Art Aaron Collier is inspired by questions and possibilities. His new paintings and works on paper, which will be on view in his upcoming exhibition, Of Rocks and Ruins at New Orleans’ Octavia Gallery, respond to the illusiveness of our inability to see or understand something fully.

“I find there to be an extreme amount of verisimilitude in abstract painting. Abstraction can feel more like an experience with the world than viewing something chronicled in its totality,” Collier explains. While his paintings are mostly composed of varying expanses of color and little recognizable imagery, Collier doesn’t claim to be a purely abstract artist; in other words, he doesn’t wish for there to be a complete divorce between his imagery and the world.

Of Rocks and Ruins will be comprised of Collier’s newest body of work that is inspired by traditional paintings, such as Leonardo da Vinci’s “Virgin of the Rocks,” 1483-1486, as well as his experience visiting Palatine Hill in Rome. In a recent conversation, he explained that while some architectural elements are more intact at Palatine Hill’s ancient site, visitors essentially examine shards and fragments in order to create a vision of what once was.

“The questions that drive my practice are several: how can we enjoy, how can we take pleasure in, how can we exist within finite knowledge? How can we savor and appreciate these beautiful, astounding fragments?”

Collier began teaching in Tulane’s School of Liberal Arts in 2006 as a professor of practice in painting and drawing, focusing on fundamentals in foundations courses such as line, shape, and color. During those first few years, he began reconsidering these same fundamentals in his own work.

“The daily opportunity to observe and participate in the creative processes of Tulane's driven students is incredibly inspiring, challenging, and humbling. Students have no idea how thankful I am for such a gift.”

Tuesday, September 11, 2018

Anne C. Nelson: Invasive Species at Staple Goods

Anne C. Nelson, Professor of Practice in Painting and Drawing, is the recipient of a 2018-19 Lavin Bernick Research Support Grant. 

During the summer of 2018 she traveled extensively, visiting locations in Minnesota, the East Coast, and Northern Europe where she has ancestral roots. 

Nelson's resulting art work reflects a desire to examine the negative consequences of European immigration in the 19th century and to consider the bearing that history has on present narratives. 

An exhibition of new paintings is on view at Staple Goods Gallery in New Orleans from September 8 - October 7, 2018.

Tuesday, September 4, 2018

Kevin H. Jones: Stellar Rays

Kevin H. Jones had a solo show, Stellar Rays, at Art Lab Akiba in Tokyo, Japan during the month of August 2018. The exhibition presented new work examining the fleeting and unattainable by investigating astronomy, high speed photography, and chemistry. By moving from the micro with chemistry to the macro with astronomy, ephemeral moments are captured in various forms. The work Self-Reflexive (shown left) is a high-speed camera that has been altered to give the illusion that it is melting. By representing the apparatus’ state of being as what can only be seen in slow motion, the sculpture captures what is elusive and unattainable.  Two works in the exhibition use star maps to elicit this mysterious nature. Within the work, Gravitational Field, a star chart is recreated on a tire innertube evoking a blackhole and astrophysics. While the sculpture, Hyperhat, presents the viewer with a silver-plated top hat that has been severed by an intersection of the vast universe as an LCD screen that shows a star map in motion. Both of these works bring the night sky to a more human level, manifested in a more tangible format. Other works examine graphics related to chemistry and popular culture by bringing clusters of images together that elude meaning.

New faculty: Sean Fader

The Newcomb Art Department welcomes Sean Fader to the faculty as Professor of Practice in Photography.

Fader’s practice looks at the photographic event as the site of performance.  He is interested in how these images are created, disseminated, and digested in digital public spaces. 

Fader earned his MFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and previously taught at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, the Fashion Institute of Technology (FIT), New York University Tisch School of the Arts (NYU), Hunter College, Hampshire College, and The Metropolitan Museum of Art (MET).

Monday, August 20, 2018

The art of pilgrimage

To develop a course on the art of pilgrimage, Prof. Holly Flora and Prof. Leslie Geddes traveled in June to Israel and Jordan to meet scholars of medieval art and to view sites long venerated in the Holy Land. As an invited speaker, Prof. Flora presented “Materiality and the Senses in Cimabue’s Assisi Murals (c. 1200)” to faculty and graduate students participating in a seminar on medieval art and the senses at Tel Aviv University. Their host, Dr. Renana Bartal, escorted Professors Flora and Geddes to sites near the Sea of Galilee, including Capernaum, the Church of the Multiplication of the Loaves and Fish, and Magdala. Medievalist doctoral students of Tel Aviv University took them to see the 12th-century Crusader church, now a Benedictine monastery, at Abu Ghosh. In Jerusalem they were fortunate to participate in a private tour of the Western Wall and the Via Dolorosa, facilitated by TAU’s Prof. Assaf Pinkus. Prof. Galit Noga-Banai of Hebrew University showed them the archaeological site of the first Marian church, located halfway between Jerusalem and Bethlehem. One their own, Professors Flora and Geddes traveled to Masada, the fortified palace built by Herod the Great and site of an infamous siege during the First Jewish-Roman War, and Petra, where they saw the famous rock-cut architecture of the Nabataeans.

Tuesday, July 24, 2018

Gene Koss: Through the Valley

Through the Valley, an exhibition of recent sculpture by internationally-known glass sculptor Gene Koss will be on view at Arthur Roger Gallery, located at 432 Julia Street, from August 4–September 22, 2018. 

The gallery will host an opening reception with the artist in attendance, Saturday, August 4 from 6 to 9 pm in conjunction with the Hancock Whitney White Linen Night

Tuesday, May 22, 2018

TACTILE FOCUS: The Reciprocality of Painting & Architecture

The Lavin-Bernick Grant for faculty research has sponsored a collaboration between the Tulane School of Architecture and the Newcomb Art department, supporting an interdisciplinary course that examines the spatial behavior of color. Associate Professor Tiffany Lin (architect) and Assistant Professor Aaron Collier (painter) have co-authored a paper to describe this curriculum entitled, Tactile Focus: The Reciprocality of Painting and Architecture.  

This manuscript was presented at the 2018 National Conference for the Beginning Design Student (NCBDS) in Cincinnati and will be published in forthcoming conference proceedings. Lin and Collier have also been invited to show their work at the University of Massachusetts Amherst in February 2019. The Lavin-Bernick grant will support the creation and transportation of paintings to this exhibition, as well as fund travel and accommodation costs related to the opening.

Tuesday, May 15, 2018

Bachelor of Arts Exhibition 2018

Newcomb Art Department | Tulane University
Bachelor of Arts Exhibition 2018
closing reception:  Friday, May 18, noon – 2 pm
  


Amelia Blackburn
Jacqueline Cooke
Brianna Douglass
Gali Du
Janey Hollis
Lucia Hughes
Kristian Murina
Sarah Schacht
Farah Serur
Noa Sklar
Madison Steiner
Casey Vinder
Andrew Winston
Yu Zou

Wednesday, May 9, 2018

Michelle Foa awarded a Samuel H. Kress Senior Fellowship

Professor Michelle Foa has been awarded a Samuel H. Kress Senior Fellowship at the Center for Advanced Study in the Visual Arts (CASVA) at the National Gallery of Art for the 2018-2019 academic year.  There, she will research the National Gallery’s rich Degas collection and work on her book manuscript, The Matter of Degas: Art and Materiality in Later 19th-Century Paris. 

Tuesday, May 8, 2018

Art history students research trafficked, endangered artifacts

by Sarah Ahmed, Tulane New Wave
Tulane University students enrolled in an introductory art history course have released a report providing background information on cultural artifacts in danger of illicit trafficking and destruction in the ongoing war in Yemen.
The 13 undergraduate student authors are taking Art Survey I: Prehistory Through the Middle Ages, taught by Lily Filson, an adjunct professor of art history in the School of Liberal Arts. The students completed the report in response to an emergency “Red List” published by the International Council of Museums (ICOM), which outlined a number of Yemeni cultural artifacts in danger of illicit trafficking during the ongoing Yemeni civil war. 
The students’ report, “Tulane Art History Students Take on ICOM’s ‘Emergency Red List of Cultural Objects at Risk, Yemen,’” provides a detailed contextual analysis and description of each individual artifact in an effort to showcase the cultural and historical value of each piece. The listed artifacts include items from stone statues to bronze busts and ancient incense burners.
“So much damage is being done to a history that we are only beginning to study,” said Filson. “Studying these artifacts is just as important as studying the traditional art history we look at in textbooks about ancient Mesopotamia, ancient Egypt and ancient Greece. It’s our shared human heritage. 
“Tulane students are the only ones in the country in a basic art history survey class that are interacting with urgent issues in the field and writing their own original content,” Filson added. “I hope they take away an expanded view of ancient art history and particularly an awareness of a vast and ancient art tradition that is not really taught in American universities.”
Read the students’ report here.

Tuesday, April 24, 2018

Student Art Awards + BFA Reception

Newcomb Art Department | Tulane University

2018 Student Art Awards Night

+ Bachelor of Fine Arts Opening Reception

 
Thursday, April 26, 2018

Award Ceremony: Stone Auditorium, 6:00 pm

Stern Prize Paper – Art History Awards – Studio Art Awards

followed by BFA, Part 2, Opening Reception in the Carroll Gallery, 6:30 pm


Caroline Chase, Rubi Ferras, Megan Wolfkill

Wednesday, April 18, 2018

Faculty news: Elizabeth Boone

Elizabeth Boone, professor of art history and Martha and Donald Robertson Chair in Latin American Art, lectured on "Spatial Grammars: The Union of Art and Writing in the Painted Books of Aztec Mexico" and led a workshop on "Reading the Past and the Future in the Painted Books of Aztec Mexico" as part of the Henry King Stanford Distinguished Professors lecture series, January 25-26, 2018. She was a discussant in the Dumbarton Oaks workshop "Future Directions in Pre-Columbian Studies" in Bogotá, March 22-23, 2018.

An expert in the Precolumbian and early colonial art of Latin America, with an emphasis on Mexico, Boone is the former Director of Pre-Columbian Studies at Dumbarton Oaks. Professor Boone has earned numerous honors and fellowships, including the Order of the Aztec Eagle, awarded by the Mexican government in 1990. She is a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and a Corresponding Member of the Academia Mexicana de la Historia.

Renaissance Society of America Annual Conference

by Shannah Rose, MA Student in Art History,  Wednesday, April 18, 2018

The Renaissance Society of America (RSA) held its 64th Annual Conference on March 22nd – 24th, 2018, hosted by Hilton New Orleans Riverside and sponsored by Tulane’s Latin American Library, the New Orleans Museum of Art, and SEL Studies in English Literature. The largest international society dedicated to the study of the era 1300-1700, RSA is a prestigious platform for scholars of various disciplines in the liberal arts to present current research projects and new directions for their respective fields.

RSA 2018 commenced on March 21st with a concert at the Immaculate Conception Church and receptions at the Latin American Library and the New Orleans Museum of Art. The exhibit featured at the Library included items from its world-renown collection, including original Mesoamerican painted manuscripts as well as some of the earliest products of sixteenth-century Spanish American presses. The conference itself featured a full program of nearly 600 formal papers, roundtable discussions, and plenary sessions delivered by distinguished, junior, and independent scholars, museum professionals, and doctoral students from various countries, institutions, and disciplines.

Notable topics ranged from panels on music and devotional paintings in medieval Ethiopia, to “sacred geographies” in Aztec Mexico; from roundtables on interdisciplinary research on the global Renaissance, to ideas on incorporating the oft overlooked south of Italy in teaching methods. Faculty from Tulane’s Medieval and Early Modern Studies (MEMS) program in particular was well represented: Professor Holly Flora delivered a paper on gender and emotion in a Trecento illuminated manuscript, and Professor Stephanie Porras organized a session on knowledge production in early modern print culture. Doctoral students’ papers were also accepted to the conference: Lucia Abramovich presented on collecting Spanish colonial art at the New Orleans Museum of Art, and Jennifer Saracino presented on cosmography and cartography in colonial Mexico City.

Each year RSA provides a platform for students and scholars alike to share their research and create exciting new connections with colleagues that cross disciplinary, linguistic, and international borders. We are most fortunate to have had the opportunity to welcome the conference in New Orleans, particularly given the city’s cross-cultural and multilingual heritage.

The Renaissance Society of America’s 65th Annual Conference will take place spring 2019 in Toronto, ON.

Thursday, April 5, 2018

BROKEN ENGLISH: Film Screening and talk by Jeanne C. Finley

The Tulane Art Club (formerly known as T/NASA) is pleased to present a film screening and talk by Jeanne C. Finley, interdisciplinary artist from California College of the Arts.

BROKEN ENGLISH
Wednesday April 11, 6:15pm
Stone Auditorium

Jeanne C. Finley will present a screening of experimental non-fiction works and installation projects.  These works, many created in collaboration with John Muse, frequently utilize complex narrative structure and story telling to reflect on the contested past, the turbulent present and the unpredictable future.   Her process often includes documentary strategies such as research and interviews to produce multiple narratives that collide and interweave amid a lush visual and sonic landscape.  The use of layered visual and spoken text, such as subtitles and voice-over serves to uncover contradictory layers of meaning.  Ranging in subjects from her mother’s participation in the invasion of Southern France during WWll, to 16-year-olds today aging out of an orphanage on the steppes of Kazakhstan, these projects explore the physical sites where transformative social events shape individual lives.

www.finleymuse.com

Monday, March 26, 2018

Mignon Faget (BFA 1955): recipient of the Distinguished Alumni Award 2018

Congratulations to Mignon Faget, this year's recipient of Tulane's Distinguished Alumni Award. A fifth generation New Orleanian, Mignon Faget has flourished in the culture and traditions of her birthplace. Faget’s formal training in the arts began at Sophie Newcomb College of Tulane University from which she received a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree, with a concentration in sculpture. She furthered her studies at l’Atelier de la Grande Chaumiere in Paris and the Parsons School of Design in New York. Faget returned to Tulane University to take post graduate classes in botany and other areas of personal interest.

Faget began her design career in 1969 with the launch of her first ready-to- wear clothing collection. The success of the collection prompted her to explore creating accessories such as belts, pins and jewelry to compliment the ready-to- wear pieces. This early exercise and her studies in sculpture from Sophie Newcomb College led to her first jewelry forms. Since then, jewelry has become her all-consuming interest in the field of design. From the beginning, she has worked closely with natural and architectural forms—extracting the essence of a particular shape and refining into her own unique sculptural interpretation.

Faget has also long been an active philanthropist, preservationist, and art advocate. In 1969, when Faget launched her first collection, women entrepreneurs were a bit of rarity in New Orleans. Today, she is committed to celebrating and advocating for women across a number of fields as well contributing to diverse communities and groups in need. In addition, she is passionate about giving back to the culture and community that inspires her life’s work. Since 2005, Faget has donated over half a million dollars of proceeds from her designs to the Audubon Society, Louisiana Beekeeper’s Association, Tulane-Xavier University Center for Bio-Environmental Research, the Louisiana Cultural Economy Foundation, and the Coalition to Restore Coastal Louisiana, to name a few. She has been an active leader and supporter of the arts and has served on boards for several of the local museums. The Historic New Orleans Collection and the Louisiana State Museum Capitol Park honored Faget with a retrospective exhibit titled Mignon Faget: A Life in Art and Design.

https://alumniawards.tulane.edu/awardee/mignon-faget/

Tuesday, March 20, 2018

MFA Thesis Exhibitions: Abdi Farah and Skylar Fein

Newcomb Art Department, Tulane University MFA Thesis Exhibitions

Abdi Farah:  KNEEL
Skylar Fein:  School’s Out Forever


exhibitions on view:  March 22 – April 6, 2018

opening reception: 

Thursday, March 22, 5:30 – 7:30 pm, walkthroughs by the artists at 6:00 pm

Gallery hours: M – F, 9 am – 4 pm
Gallery closed on official Tulane holidays, including March 30.

Monday, March 19, 2018

Visiting Artist: James Vella

The Newcomb Art Department welcomes James Vella as Visiting Artist in Glass on Wednesday March 22nd.

Vella will demonstrate a variety of hot glass sculpting techniques in Tulane's Pace-Willson Glass Studio from 3-6pm. The demonstrations will be followed by a barbecue from 6-7pm and slide talk from 7-8pm.

This free event is open to the public and supported by the Joann Flom Greenberg Fund.

Wednesday, March 14, 2018

Debora Silverman: 'The Great Forgetting' and the Never Seen

On Monday March 19th, the Newcomb Art Department and the Art History Graduate Association present: 

“‘The Great Forgetting’ and the Never Seen: Violence, Modernism, and the Visual Unconscious of Belgian Colonialism at the Tervuren Royal Museum for Central Africa, 1897-2017”

a talk by by Debora Silverman, Distinguished Professor of History and Art History at UCLA and the University of California Presidential Chair in Modern European History, Art and Culture.

The lecture will analyze the relationship between Belgian Art Nouveau and the country’s violent colonial rule in the Congo Free State.

Monday, March 19th at 6:30pm
Stone Auditorium, 210 Woldenberg Art Center 
Tulane University

Thursday, March 8, 2018

MFA Thesis Exhibitions: Sadie Sheldon and Cassie White

Newcomb Art Department / Tulane University MFA Thesis Exhibitions

Sadie Sheldon:  Scenic Viewpoint
Cassie White:  Kin


exhibitions on view: March 8 – 16, 2018

closing reception: Friday, March 16, 5:30 – 7:30 pm

with walkthroughs by the artists at 6:00 pm

Carroll Gallery hours: M – F, 9 am – 4 pm
Gallery closed on official Tulane holidays.

Wednesday, March 7, 2018

Summer Abroad in Italy

Explore Art, Child and Adolescent Development and Education
June 3 – June 30, 2018

Located in Ferrara, Italy, Tulane’s summer study abroad program offers courses in Education, Psychology, and Art History. A short train ride away from Florence and Venice, Ferrara is in the heart of the Emilia-Romagna region, regarded as Italy’s best for its cuisine. Students will also be surrounded by the region’s lush Renaissance castles, ornate churches, and the fashion and design culture of northern Italy.
Ferrara is very close to Reggio Emilia, a city famous for innovative programs in early childhood education. Designed with Teacher Certification students in mind, the program offers firsthand training in the Reggio Emilia method via classroom visits in that city. The program is also open to students in Psychology and Art History, who can fulfill degree requirements for their majors at a reduced tuition rate while immersing themselves in the wonders of Italy.
Students will select two (3 credit hour) courses, enhanced with co-curricular, cultural and community activities, such as visits to schools and museums and city tours.
Students from any major and level are welcome to join the experience! **This program is also open to the public. **
Program cost $7,000 and includes:
  • All courses taught in English
  • Practical experiences
  • Housing and some meals
  • Day trips to Reggio and Florence
  • 2 - night trip to Venice
  • Scheduled visits to museums and guest lectures
  • Most Fridays are open for field trips and to explore the other areas.
    *Airfare is not included as well as any additional meals.
Select 2 courses from the list below to earn 6 credit hours:
Dr. Holly Flora *Pre-req not required
  • ARHS 3200: The Art of Renaissance Italy (3hrs)
  • EDUC 6900: Special Topics (OR alternatively ARHS 6900 Special Topics in Museum Studies): Museum Education: An International Perspective (3hrs)
    Dr. Shannon Blady *Pre-req not required
  • EDLA 3160: Children’s & Adol Literature (3hrs)
  • EDLA 3896: Service Learning for EDLA 3160 (20hrs)
EDUC 6860: Special Topics - A look at the Reggio Emilia Approach
to Education (3hrs)
Dr. Julie Alvarez
* PSYC 1000 pre-req required
Students will be housed the Hotel Carlton, in Ferrara which is centrally located in double occupancy rooms.
  • PSYC 3210: Child Psychology (3hrs)
  • PSYC 3200: Educational Psychology (3hrs)
    Reception is open 24/7.


For more information, contact Monique Hodges, Assistant Director, Teacher Certification mhodges3@tulane.edu or Office of Study Abroad 504-865-5339