Art History Program Distinguished Scholar Lecture and End of Year Awards

On April 4, the Art History Program hosted its Distinguished Scholar Lecture in Abramson Recital Hall in the Katzen Arts Center. The undergraduate Art History award winners were also announced during the program. Jordan Hillman won the Robert and Susan Pence Award for Outstanding Art History Senior, Thomas Williams was awarded the Art History Faculty Award for Outstanding Art History Senior, and Caroline Marsh was presented with the Maiden Scholarship for Junior Art History Major.

John Ravenal, Curator of Modern and Contemporary Art at Virginia Museum of Fine Arts, delivered the Distinguished Scholar Lecture to students, faculty, and members of the American University community.

John Ravenal, VMFA

Ravenal’s talk was entitled “Building a 21^st Century Collection.” He discussed his method for creating a modern and contemporary collection for VMFA that represents a wide range of cultures, materials, and subjects while still remaining appropriate to the museum’s status as a state institution.

Fred Tomaselli, Woodpecker (2008)

Ravenal highlighted several key works in VMFA’s collection, including Fred Tomaselli’s Woodpecker (2008; above). Woodpecker is an extremely detailed, meticulously produced collaged and painted work. The eye of the woodpecker, for example, is made up of tens of tiny collaged images of eyes, while the feathers consist of hundreds of images of natural forms.

Detail: Ryan McGinness, Art History is Not Linear (2009)

Ravenal concluded with a discussion of Ryan McGinness’ Art History is Not Linear (2009), commissioned by the museum. The work, consisting of sixteen four-by-four foot panels, responds to objects in VMFA’s collection. McGinness studied and sketched selected VMFA works, created “logos” based on the works, and then silkscreened the logos onto the panels in carefully designed arrangements. Ravenal discussed how McGinness’ painting serves as an excellent introduction to the collection and also provides unexpected connections between works in different departments.

VMFA completed an expansion project in 2010 and now boasts a new wing and sculpture garden. Make sure to check out their website and plan a visit. The museum’s current exhibitions include “Making History: 20^th Century African American Art,” and “Diana Al-Hadid: Trace of a Fictional Third.”

Thank you to John Ravenal for an engaging lecture, and congratulations to this year’s award recipients!

22nd Annual Robyn Rafferty Mathias Student Research Conference

The AU Art History program was well-represented at the 22nd Annual Robyn Rafferty Mathias Student Research Conference on March 31st.  MA students Kari Allegretto, Emily Heap, and Catherine Southwick, and senior art history major Allison Porambo gave presentations.  The art history students were placed in three panels: “Mapping Space, Constructing Identity;” “Histories Transformed: Literature, Art, and Film;” and “Unfinished Revolutions.”

Man Ray, Marcel Duchamp as Rrose Sélavy (c. 1920-21)
Gelatin silver photograph

Kari Allegretto and Emily Heap presented in the session “Mapping Space, Constructing Identity,” chaired by Professor Juliet Bellow of the Art History department. In her paper “Readymade Rrose: The Art of the Alter Ego,” Kari argued for a new definition of Marcel Duchamp’s Rrose Sélavy. Duchamp was photographed in drag as Rrose Sélavy in the 1920s, and he would later credit her with various artworks. Conventionally, Sélavy is seen as either an alter ego or as Duchamp’s exploration of a hidden sexuality. Instead, Kari proposed that Rrose Sélavy was not an alter ego for Marcel Duchamp as much as ‘she’ was an artistic object, one of Duchamp’s readymades. When Duchamp used his own body as a readymade, he challenged the authority and identity of the artist. Recognizing Sélavy as a readymade begs the question: who had the right to claim authorship? Kari concluded that accepting the actual human body as art acknowledges Duchamp’s readymades as not just challenges to consumerism, but to self-definition and authorship.

Paolo Uccello, Saint George and the Dragon (c. 1470)
Oil on canvas

Emily Heap’s presentation was entitled “The Lost Perspectival Theories of Paolo Uccello,” a portion of her MA thesis. Emily detailed the changes in Uccello’s use of perspective from his 1458-60 version of Saint George and the Dragon and his c. 1470 painting of the same subject. She argued for a more nuanced approach to Uccello’s perspectival theories, one that allows for more innovation than current art historical scholarship suggests.

Hildegard of Bingen, Mother Wisdom, Mother Church from Book of Scivias (1150)

Allison Porambo presented in the session “Histories Transformed: Literature, Art, and Film,” chaired by Professor Erik Dussere of the Literature department. Her paper, entitled “The Sacred and the Feminine: The Manuscript Illuminations of Hildegard of Bingen and Herrard of Landsberg,” examined the work of these two 12^th century abbess-artists. Allison argued that as the Gregorian Reforms restricted the activities, mobility, and education of nuns, and the growing cult of the Virgin created an increasingly unreachable moral standard for women to attain, these artists articulated a feminine theology through their texts and, more importantly, their illuminations. These manuscript illuminations depicting the Church, the Holy Spirit, and other religious concepts as female created a theology open to female spiritual equality. Allison used iconographical analysis to propose that Hildegard’s and Herrad’s imagery of feminized theological concepts represented a possible alternative to a growing Christian misogyny. Due to the manuscripts’ unique purposes for the abbesses’ monastic houses, this more gender-equal vision of Christian theology was not seen by much of the outside world, and thus did not gain a foothold in Medieval Europe at large.

Pierre Auguste-Renoir, Ball at the Moulin de la Galette (1876)
Oil on canvas

Catherine Southwick spoke in the “Unfinished Revolutions” session, chaired by Professor April Shelford of the History department. She presented a portion of her MA thesis, which examines Renoir’s Ball at the Moulin de la Galette in the context of the Franco-Prussian War and Paris Commune. Previous scholars have considered post-Commune Impressionist painting as a nearly unified bourgeois urgency to reclaim – pictorially and therefore psychologically – sites important in the Commune, an event that was seen as a working class overthrow of the government. However, Catherine argued that Renoir, as the only Impressionist of working class background yet financially dependent on bourgeois patrons, would have a necessarily more complicated relationship to the Paris Commune. Ball at the Moulin de la Galette, set at a dance hall in the working class neighborhood of the Commune’s first skirmish, is well suited to analyze this relationship. Catherine proposed that the formal and social confusions of Ball at the Moulin de la Galette expose Renoir’s complex relationship to Parisian class structure.

The Mathias Conference provided art history students with a forum in which to present and gain feedback on their research. Further, by presenting in wide-ranging sessions, students discovered unexpected affinities with research in other disciplines. Thanks to the professors who sponsored our research, and to the session chairs who facilitated thought-provoking discussions!

Nichole Rawlings’ Internship at the Smithsonian National Museum of African Art

[written by second year M.A. student Nichole Rawlings]

Ever since taking AP Art History my junior year of high school I have been hooked on the discipline.  A class trip to Italy solidified my interest in the field, and I went on to receive a BA in art history from Elon University.  I held an internship at the High Museum of Art during the summer of 2008, and became extremely interested in the possibilities of a museum career.  When I decided to go on to graduate school, my decision rested heavily on the strength of the academic program and its proximity to museums.  American University’s program certainly fit the bill!

After my first year in the MA program here at AU, during the summer of 2011, I had the extraordinary opportunity of interning at the Smithsonian National Museum of African Art (NMAfA) in the Education and Public Programs department.  When I began applying to internship opportunities, I never dreamed that I would work with the Smithsonian Institution!  The mentorship and recommendations that I received from my professors here at AU played a large part in securing such a great internship, and I am incredibly grateful.

Now, you may be asking, “Why African art?”  It’s true that my specialty here at AU is in the Italian Renaissance.  When I was at Elon University, I had the opportunity to work with the school’s incredible African art collection to curate an exhibition entitled “Music and Art as Voice of Africa and the African Diaspora: Rhythm, Movement and Color.”  This experience was extremely important to me in several ways—first, I had the opportunity to work with actual art objects in a professional setting.  Second, I realized there was so much material available for exhibition that I was unaware of—the African objects that I worked with were fascinating, and I loved learning about them.

My exhibition experience at Elon led me to consider a wide range of museums for my summer internship here in Washington—at the National Museum of African Art, for example, I would have the opportunity to continue my education in an area I was unfamiliar with while gaining insight in to the museum profession.  After a rigorous application process and an interview with the Education department I was offered the internship with Education and Public Programs, and could not have been more excited!

While at the NMAfA, I had the opportunity to perform a wide range of tasks and gain invaluable work experience.  Some of my primary responsibilities over the summer were related to researching for future museum programming and providing support for summer events.  While interning at NMAfA I was also able to attend planning meetings with other museum departments and outside Smithsonian staff.  On several occasions I attended these meetings without supervision and represented NMAfA to outside institutions.  This allowed me to see the working dynamic of the entire Smithsonian Institution and to feel like a valuable member of the museum team.

This summer NMAfA hosted one of its largest Education programs, Community Day.  The event served as the capstone to a yearlong partnership with area schools and the program itself is dedicated to raising students’ awareness about Africa and its importance.  (Check out a great video about Community Day 2011). Much of my summer work was related to this program, and I learned valuable lessons related to public programming.  I was responsible for creating a timeline of events for the day, coordinating with performers and vendors, confirming their participation—when the Community Day schedule was implemented the day-of with no problems, I felt incredibly proud and validated.

Overall, my experience at the National Museum of African Art helped me to gain new knowledge about a particular art historical area and to develop my career goals.  This summer I realized that creating programming for visitors is a vital and engaging aspect of museum work, and I was able to experience it first hand.  As I begin considering life-after-graduate-school, I feel sure that my experience at NMAfA will greatly impact the opportunities that I consider.  I hope to earn a position that challenges me to grow intellectually while allowing me the opportunity to encourage the same growth in visitors.

To learn more about the Smithsonian National Museum of African Art and its mission, check out their website. NMAfA has a wide range of cultural opportunities constantly open to the public, and they always provide a fun and educational experience!

“Renoir, Impressionism, and Full-Length Painting” at the Frick Collection

Pierre-Auguste Renoir
La Promenade (1875-76)
Oil on canvas
67 x 42 5/8 in.
The Frick Collection, New York

[written by second year M.A. student Catherine Southwick]

I am now in the final editing stage of my thesis on Impressionism and the Paris Commune. Since writing this blog entry on my thesis research, my topic has narrowed. My thesis now focuses on Renoir only, and specifically his painting Ball at the Moulin de la Galette (1876). When I was in New York a few weeks ago, I was able to visit the Frick Collection’s exhibition, “Renoir, Impressionism, and Full-Length Painting.”

The exhibition is a great opportunity to see Renoir’s large scale, full-length portraits together in one gallery. It was particularly interesting to see Renoir’s dance portraits side by side: Dance in the City and Dance in the Country from the Musée d’Orsay, and Dance at Bougival (Bougival was a site of suburban leisure with a somewhat seedy reputation) from the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston. The three works, dating from 1882-83, reflect the differences in decorum in three social spaces.

Renoir was unique among the Impressionists for his work in this traditional mode of portraiture. In my thesis, I discuss how his loyalty to portraiture was partially based on financial need: he relied on portrait commissions for his livelihood until the late 1870s. Renoir came from a working class background, unlike his fellow Impressionists, and this distinction forms the core of my argument about Renoir’s reaction to the Commune.

I was excited to see Renoir’s La Promenade (pictured above) in person. It was probably this portrait commission that gave Renoir the funds to rent a house in the Montmartre neighborhood. There, he worked on Ball at the Moulin de la Galette, set at a Montmartre dance hall, and a few other non-commissioned paintings.

“Renoir, Impressionism, and Full-Length Painting” runs through May 13. Visit the Frick exhibition site for more details.

Third Annual Feminist Art History Conference: Call For Papers

Announcing the Third Annual
FEMINIST ART HISTORY CONFERENCE
at American University in Washington DC

 Friday-Sunday, November 9-11, 2012

CALL FOR PAPERS: please submit via email a one-page, single-spaced proposal and two-page curriculum vita by May 15, 2012 to fahc3.cfp@gmail.com.

Notification of acceptance by July 1, 2012

This conference builds on the legacy of feminist art-historical scholarship and pedagogy initiated by Norma Broude and Mary D. Garrard at American University. To further the inclusive spirit of their groundbreaking anthologies, we invite papers on subjects spanning the chronological and geographic spectrum to foster a broad dialogue on feminist art-historical practice. Speakers may address such topics as: artists, movements, and works of art and architecture; cultural institutions and critical discourses; practices of collecting, patronage, and display; the gendering of objects, spaces, and media;
the reception of images; and issues of power, agency,
gender, and sexuality within visual cultures.

 Keynote address:
“Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner? Feminism, Art History and the Story of a Book”
Whitney Chadwick, Professor Emerita of Art History
San Francisco State University

 Sessions and keynote will be held on AU’s campus
with additional events at the National Museum of Women in the Arts
in conjunction with its 25th Anniversary celebration

 Sponsored by the Art History Program, Department of Art,
College of Arts and Sciences at American University
Organizing committee:  Kathe Albrecht, Juliet Bellow, Norma Broude, Kim Butler, Mary D. Garrard, Namiko Kunimoto, Helen Langa, and Andrea Pearson

Second Annual Feminist Art History Conference: A Success!

The second annual Feminist Art History conference wrapped up on Sunday after three days of fascinating feminist scholarship, great networking opportunities, and more than a few chances to refuel at coffee breaks and receptions. Thank you to everyone who attended, both presenters and participants! If you couldn’t make it this year, here’s a recap of what you missed.

The conference kicked off with a luncheon and curator-led tour of the exhibition Seeing Gertrude Stein: Five Stories at the National Portrait Gallery. The first conference session also took place at the NPG, appropriately titled “Feminisms, Sexualities, and Gertrude Stein (Part I).” Catharine Stimpson from New York University and Deborah Kass from Yale University spoke, and then panelists and participants discussed the exhibition.

After an afternoon at the NPG, conference attendees were treated to an opening reception and choral concert at the Katzen Arts Center at American University. Special thanks to the AU Chamber Singers and conductor Daniel Abraham for their program of music by women composers, “Gender Settings.”

Graduate students assist a conference attendee at Friday’s registration

Saturday featured three sets of three sessions with four speakers in each. Themes ranged from “Female Agency: France and America” to “Challenging Canonical Relationships.” In the “Female Agency” session, Lynn Clement spoke about images of the pétroleuses, women who supposedly participated in the burning of buildings in Paris in the aftermath of the Commune. In the “Challenging Canonical Relationships” session, Joan Marter of Rutgers University discussed women artists with a Pop Art aesthetic who have not been recognized as part of the (assumed to be male-dominated) movement.

Evening reception in the Katzen Arts Center

After a long day of sessions, conference attendees headed over to the Katzen Arts Center rotunda for a reception before the keynote speech. The keynote was given by Mary D. Sheriff, the W.R. Kenan, Jr. Distinguished Professor of Art History at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Sheriff’s talk, entitled “The Future of Feminist Art History. Where Have We Come From, Where Are We Going?” advocated continuing to push the boundaries of feminist methods of interpretation. She discussed the eponymous Gauguin painting, Where Do We Come From? What Are We? Where Are We Going?, in conjunction with Fragonard’s The Souvenir and Cassatt’s murals from the Woman’s Building at the Columbian Exposition.

                              
Above: Selected scholarship by Mary D. Sheriff, keynote speaker

The conference concluded on Sunday morning with one final group of three sessions: “19^th and 20^th Century European Art,” “The Body,” and “Feminist Art and Politics.” Presenters included Elise Archias of California State University, Chico, who spoke about Carolee Schneemann’s Eye Body (1963), and Karla Huebner of Wright State University, who discussed an inversion of gender roles in the partnership of Czech artists Jindřich Štyrský and Toyen.

We are already looking forward to next year’s Feminist Art History conference, November 9-11, 2012. Watch for the call for papers next spring. Thanks again to everyone who participated!

Graduate Student Research and Travel: Emily McAlpine

[Emily McAlpine is an August 2011 MA graduate, specializing in Modern European art]

In April, I applied for and received the Carol Bird Ravenal award for research travel purposes. Carol Ravenal is Professor Emerita in Studio Art and Art History, and her award for student research travel alternates yearly between the programs. This year, the award was split between myself and Patti Bray—Patti used it for travel to California, while I used it for international travel to visit exhibitions and museums focused on the art of Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec in Cardiff, Wales; London, England; and Albi, France.

The research was in support of my master’s thesis in my area of specialization—Modern European art. The goal of my thesis was a reconsideration of Toulouse-Lautrec’s famous painting At the Moulin Rouge, painted in 1892/95 and housed at the Art Institute of Chicago. The crux of the reconsideration was based on the figure of Moulin Rouge dancer May Milton in the far right foreground of the image.

Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec, At the Moulin Rouge, 1892/95; Art Institute of Chicago

Here’s an excerpt from my thesis introduction that talks about Milton:

“The remarkable green cast of her face is due to artificial stage light that is not present in the picture’s composition. Because of this unnatural coloring to her face, Milton’s face here has been noted as garish, confrontational, and shocking—consequently, Milton exists as the radical artifice at play here compared to the normative, more naturalistically colored figural groupings in the middle ground and background. When considering At the Moulin Rouge, a more comprehensive approach to understanding contextual information is necessary, because it will better allow us to see that Milton is not artifice incarnate, but […] serves as the lynchpin between two poles here—reality and artifice. She can then be used as a departure point for investigation into these issues.”

Within a study of this painting, I address numerous issues, but I ultimately offer a nuanced re-consideration of this painting, by establishing the basic historical context of Montmartre and Toulouse-Lautrec’s life in its dance halls, looking at how social tensions and issues of the body and sexuality manifested in the performance culture of fin-de-siecle France, addressing the previous literature on At the Moulin Rouge, offer up an extensive analysis through feminist consideration of Toulouse-Lautrec’s painted works, and consider the degree of division between public and private in his work.

For the first part of my proposal, I outlined why it would be beneficial to visit two exhibitions on Toulouse-Lautrec. The first of these took place at the National Museum Cardiff in Cardiff, Wales, UK, a show of prints on loan from the British Museum being exhibited together under the headline “High Kicks and Low Life: Toulouse-Lautrec Prints.” These prints were divided into ‘Public Passions’ and ‘Private Passions,’ and the public/private divide was a portion of my reconsideration of At the Moulin Rouge and the artist’s other work. I was also interested in their presentation of Toulouse-Lautrec’s more erotic images as sensitive rather than the previous scholarly trend of viewing it as misogyny.

National Museum Cardiff in Cardiff, Wales, UK: "High Kicks and Low Life: Toulouse-Lautrec Prints"

My stay in Cardiff was short but sweet—in addition to touring the art museum and the city’s main sights, I checked out Cardiff Castle.

From Cardiff, I took a train to London for the next exhibition—I was especially lucky to have two such geographically close exhibitions overlap each other by a mere ten days, so I was able to see both. The London show was held at the Courtauld Institute Gallery and was a bit bigger, titled “Toulouse-Lautrec and Jane Avril: Beyond the Moulin Rouge,” and was the first show to look specifically at the platonic relationship between Toulouse-Lautrec and Moulin Rouge dancer Jane Avril, seen in many of his dance hall images, as well as in At the Moulin Rouge (identifiable by her signature red hair).

I was extremely lucky at the Courtauld, since At the Moulin Rouge had actually (rather secretly) traveled from Chicago to London for the show! Here I am reveling in my two birds, one stone moment.

The Courtauld show was very strong, with a lot of great pieces that I was able to really study up-close and take notes on. The catalogue was very comprehensive and really contributed to my research and boosted some arguments I made in my paper. Of course, I checked out the rest of the world-famous Courtauld collection and really enjoyed seeing so many of my favorite modern art pieces. I squeezed in a visit to the Tate Modern and the British Museum as well!

For the second part of my Ravenal award proposal, I pushed for being able to take advantage of affordable air travel in Europe and travel down to Albi, France to see the Musée Toulouse-Lautrec in the artist’s hometown. This allowed me to see the largest body of the artist’s works, many of which are not widely reproduced. It was wonderful being able to see so many of Toulouse-Lautrec’s paintings and posters up close, although I did end up wishing they were able to have more paintings on view at one time—it’s not a collection to be missed, though! Unfortunately, no photographs were allowed inside, but the gardens of the Berbie palace (where the collection is held) were absolutely gorgeous.

Musée Toulouse-Lautrec in Albi, France

Berbie Palace Gardens

Albi is situated in the Midi-Pyrenees region of France, about an hour bus ride through the French countryside from the sizable city of Toulouse (where I flew in). Albi, however, is a very small and extremely old town—their main bridge was built around the year 1000! I knew Albi would be small, but I had figured since they have the Toulouse-Lautrec museum as well as the absolutely enormous Saint-Cecile cathedral, it would still be quite accessible to tourists. Well, good thing I took six months of French last year, because only about three people I interacted with spoke any English! In a moment of bravery after receiving the award, I made a phone call via Skype to Albi when booking my hotel, since I wanted some help from the tourism office on reserving a place to stay. When I got there, the tourism office supplied me with free wine, posters, maps, and free admission to all the tourist activities including the museum… it worked out great!

Albi, France

My trip went perfectly, and was made possible by Professor Ravenal’s amazing grant, so when it next comes up for the Art History program, AU grad students should definitely apply! I was able to come home with a lot of invaluable first-hand looks at Toulouse-Lautrec’s work and really enrich my thesis paper.

I posted almost all of my travel photos to my Flickr account if you want to see more pictures and some video! At the end of my trip, I was able to spend a little of my own money and fly cheaply over to Stockholm to see some dear friends, so I have some photos from there too. Found here:

Cardiff, Wales

London, England

Albi, France