Faculty News: Aaron Collier at UMass

"Datum Drawing" gallery talk with Prof. Aaron Collier

Datum Drawing (February 4-March 8) is an exhibition that explores the use of datum in drawing as an architectural or spatial point of reference. A Datum Line is a line to which dimensions are referred on engineering drawings, and from which measurements are calculated. The term datum refers to a piece of information or fixed point of scale that serves as a reference in defining the geometry of a composition and in measuring aspects of that geometry to assess its relation to another value in space. Artists, architects, designers, engineers, cartographers and many others use datums to construct and define visual representation of space and place.  This show brings together two artists and   two architects who employ the use of datum lines in their work.

ARTISTS:

Aaron Collier, Assistant Professor of Art, Tulane University 

Perry Kulper, Professor of Architecture, University of Michigan 

Derek Lerner, NYC based artist

Tiffany Lin, Associate Professor of Architecture, Tulane University      

Curated  by Sandy Litchfield, Assistant Professor Department of Architecture

DESIGN BUILDING GALLERY
University of Massachusetts 

John W Olver Design Building #180
551 North Pleasant Street

Amherst MA

ELIZABETH HILL BOONE, 2019 CAA DISTINGUISHED SCHOLAR

The College Art Association is honoring Elizabeth Hill Boone, Professor of History of Art and Martha and Donald Robertson Chair in Latin American Art at Tulane University, as the 2019 CAA Distinguished Scholar.

The Distinguished Scholar Session honoring Elizabeth Boone will take place Thursday, Febrary 14, 2019, from 4-5:30pm.

An expert in the Precolumbian and early colonial art of Latin America with an emphasis on Mexico, Professor Boone is the former Director of Pre-Columbian Studies at Dumbarton Oaks and recipient of numerous honors and fellowships, including the Order of the Aztec Eagle, awarded by the Mexican government in 1990.

CAA media and content manager Joelle Te Paske corresponded with her recently to learn her thoughts on art history, scholarship, and challenges in the field. Read their interview here. 

Casey Reas: Earthly Delights

Please join us for the 2019 Sandra Garrard Memorial Lecture

Casey Reas: Earthly Delights

Thursday, February 7, 7:00 pm

Freeman Auditorium

Woldenberg Art Center

Reas’ software, prints, and installations have been featured in numerous solo and group exhibitions at museums and galleries in the United States, Europe, and Asia. His work ranges from small works on paper to urban-scale installations, and he balances solo work in the studio with collaborations with architects and musicians. Reas’ work is in a range of private and public collections, including the Centre Georges Pompidou and the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art. Reas is a professor at the University of California, Los Angeles. He holds a masters degree from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Media Arts and Sciences and a bachelor’s degree from the College of Design, Architecture, Art, and Planning at the University of Cincinnati. With Ben Fry, Reas initiated Processing in 2001; Processing is an open-source programming language and environment for the visual arts.

image: Casey Reas, KNBC (December 2015), 2015, custom software, digital video, computer, projector,  dimensions variable, Sound by Philip Rugo

Call for applications: funded MA in Art History

Mia L. Bagneris and Mickalene Thomas speak at Mickalene Thomas: Waiting on a Prime-Time Star exhibition opening at Newcomb Art Museum. Wednesday, January 18, 2017. (photo: Josh Brasted)

The Newcomb Art Department at Tulane University in New Orleans is accepting applications in Art History. The application deadline is February 1, 2019. Further information and application guidelines can be found here. The application process can be completed online here. 

The Master of Arts in Art History at the Newcomb Art Department of Tulane University allows students to work closely with dedicated faculty who specialize in a wide range of artistic practices and historical contexts – from Pre-Columbian to Contemporary Art. Students also benefit from affiliate faculty in Tulane’s Department of Classical Studies and the Stone Center for Latin American Studies, opportunities to study and conduct research abroad in the summer and from close links with Newcomb Art Department’s MFA program. The department is particularly strong in the study of the art of Latin America and of the early modern period, and students may draw on the rich interdisciplinary faculty and resources at Tulane in these areas. Each semester, the Department brings a number of visiting artists, scholars, curators and critics to campus for lectures and workshops, introducing students to artists and thinkers shaping the future of the discipline.

Completed over two years, the Art History MA promotes critical inquiry and independent research via small, dynamic seminar courses, culminating in the writing of a thesis. Recent alumni of the MA in Art History have gone on to top PhD programs in the discipline, including those Columbia, Bard, CUNY, and to pursue careers in museums and galleries, as well as arts administration and arts education. All admitted MA students are offered tuition wavers and are typically fully funded via research and teaching fellowships (approximately $18,130 per year). In addition, the department offers research and travel funding to support students’ thesis research and participation in disciplinary conferences and workshops.

Located in New Orleans, a vibrant and culturally rich city in the Gulf South, the Newcomb Art Department draws from a diverse and exciting range of artistic and cultural production. Local resources include The New Orleans Museum of Art, Prospect New Orleans, an international art Biennial, the newly established Joan Mitchell Center, The Contemporary Arts Center of New Orleans, The Ogden Museum of Southern Art, and Pelican Bomb, a leading arts criticism organization.

Art History Faculty: Adrian Anagnost, Mia Bagneris, Elizabeth Boone, Michelle Foa, Holly Flora, Leslie Geddes, Michael Plante, Stephanie Porras

Recent visiting art historians, curators, critics and artists include:Zarouhie Abdalian, Carol Armstrong, Tania Bruguera, Mel Chin, Darby English, Theaster Gates, Miranda Lash, Yukio Lippit, Maurie McInnis, Richard Meyer, Helen Molesworth, Jeffrey Moser, Alexander Nagel, Trevor Paglen, Joanne Pilsbury, Debora Silverman, Arlene Shechet, Jenni Sorkin, Mickalene Thomas, Hank Willis Thomas, Marvin Trachtenberg and Lisa Yuskavage.

Application deadline: February 1, 2019

Tulane University

Newcomb Art Department 

202 Woldenberg Art Center 

New Orleans, Louisiana 70118

United States 

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.

Phi Beta Kappa Fall Lecture

"Early Modern Globalization: Ivory Sculpture as the First Global Luxury Good" 

Dr. Stephanie Porras

November 07, 2018 6:00 PM

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.