History of Art and Architecture

Undergraduate Summer Research 2015

Emily Mirales (HAA, 2016) received a Milton Fine Museum Profession Fellowship with the Decorative Arts and Design Department at the Carnegie Museum of Art. The fellowship supported a 12-week full time position, providing the opportunity to experience many facets of museum operations. Emily worked with Rachel Delphia, curator, and Catherine Walworth, curatorial research assistant, on projects related to the upcoming exhibition Silver to Steel: The Modern Designs of Peter Muller-Munk. The exhibit will tell the story of Muller-Munk’s transition from a silversmith to a top industrial designer and how his firm, Peter Muller-Munk Associates, shaped consumer and industrial products throughout the mid-century period. Some of the major tasks Emily worked on included the transcription of audio interviews for exhibition use, library research, and the production of high-resolution scans for archival and photographic assets. She also helped with record keeping through the departmental library database and the museum database KE Emu. Emily will be continuing her work in the Decorative Arts Department as a volunteer during the fall semester.

 

 

John Shaver (HAA, 2015) graduated from Pitt in the History of Art and Architecture Department this past April. He began working in the Curatorial Department at the Andy Warhol Museum as a Milton Fine Fellow at the beginning of June. John contributes to ongoing research at the museum while shadowing curators Jessica Beck and Bartholomew Ryan on project meetings and gallery installations. After a few weeks of intensive reading in an effort to familiarize himself with the broad scope and shifting contexts of the life and work of Andy Warhol, John focused his research on the often closeted facet of sexuality in and around the artist’s body of work. From there, John began a detailed investigation into the Ladies and Gentleman series, one of Warhol’s largest and most lucrative commissions. Now, having cultivated a more nuanced understanding of Andy Warhol’s cultural potency, John is trying his hand at some didactic writing and is busy drafting wall texts for the museum’s galleries. This fall, John is staying on two days a week at the Warhol and continues to work on independent creative projects. 

 

Meghan Hipple (HAA, 2016) received a summer research award from the Office of Undergraduate Research. Her research over the summer involved studying representations of the American landscape in two different mediums-- painting and film. She spent most of the summer familiarizing herself with the history of American landscape painting, and focused primarily on the 19th century painters Thomas Cole, Albert Bierstadt and Thomas Moran. Their paintings dealt with themes of nationalism, industrialization, religion and Manifest Destiny. Landscape paintings, like those created by Cole, Bierstadt and Moran, were considered the first truly American genre of art, and were paraded around the country to viewers who sought to soak up the contemplative, heavily American themes found within them. Inspired by the first season of the HBO series True Detective, created by Nic Pizzolatto and directed by Cary Fukunaga, her research project sought to unify the concept of landscapes through the shots and still frames from the series and the earlier American paintings. Both the series and the paintings feature landscapes of a deep, contemplative quality, and she felt that this parallel was worthy of exploration. Visual representations of American landscapes are deeply wrapped up in the American identity, and Meghan’s research aims to discover how changing representations affect national identity as a whole. This project is an ongoing venture that she hopes to develop into an honors thesis.

 

Melissa Quarto (HAA, 2016) received a London International Field Studies program Research Award, allowing her to travel abroad for two weeks conducting independent research to supplement research for her honors thesis. Inspired by an interdisciplinary honors course “Discourses in the Humanities: Art, Communication, and Contact Zones,” her initial objective explored how national and international institutions create representations of self and others through the collecting and display of art and cultural objects, particularly in regard to their ethical responsibility of curating for a national public.  Her research materialized in the form of a digitized metro map of London sites, focusing on unexplored connections created through the juxtaposition and interaction of these different landmarks, thus creating an interplay between images, text and space, between the connecting nodes of different monuments. The most striking narrative created by her travels throughout London is the juxtaposition between two concurrent exhibitions at major British museums, which proposed conflicting versions of the national museum's responsibility in constructing a collection for the shared identity of their public. In short, while the Victoria & Albert museum focused their attention on ethical standards, transparency, and how to connect with a contemporary audience with "All This Belongs to You," the British Museum reverted to their self-seeking interest in the preservation of their past institution as well as their ruling empire’s greatness, and  consequentially highly charged  empirical rhetoric rings throughout their two main thematic galleries "Enlightenment" and "Collecting the World" In both the form of text and images.

 

Nikita Costantini (HAA, 2016) During the spring semester of 2015, Nikita was enrolled in Kirk Savage's Dark Tourism class. Dark tourism, as defined by Malcolm Foley and JJ Lennon in JFK and Dark Tourism, is “…the phenomenon which encompasses the presentation and consumption (by visitors) of real and commodified death and disaster sites.” This class opened Nikita’s eyes to a whole new way of viewing the average tourist, and to her advantage, there was not an abundant amount of information on the topic. She thought it would be a perfect opportunity to explore new and undocumented information within dark tourism. During Nikita’s undergraduate career, she has focused on German art and art history, specifically from the early 1900s through present day. Her interest in German art history stems from her constant fascination surrounding the time period around WWII, and over the summer, Nikita received a travel grant from the University Honors College to research dark tourism in Nuremberg, Germany. Before traveling, Nikita conducted an in-depth study of the Memorium Nuremberg Trials in Courtroom 600 and the 700-year old beer cellars that were turned into bunkers during WWII, and was interested in how tourists interacted with these locations and whether or not they considered them to be dark tourism sites. In order to conduct this research more thoroughly, Nikita traveled to Nuremberg for a weekend and received permission from both sites to interview tourists. In the upcoming year, she would like to take her research further and contact the administrators of these two sites to gain more information about tourist statistics and reactions. She also plans to travel back to Nuremberg within the next six months to conduct more interviews and gain more personal information from the tourists.

 

 

Sarah Gahr (HAA, 2015) received the Milton Fine Fellowship, and over the summer, she worked with the curatorial team at the Andy Warhol Museum. She worked closely under the instruction of curator, Bartholomew Ryan, and co-curator, Jessica Beck. During her time at the Warhol Museum, she was able to conduct research within the museum's permanent collection and create a blog posting around her research about Andy Warhol's "Dance Diagram" series. In addition, she worked with the development of the museum's traveling exhibitions and compiled research for the upcoming show featuring Ai Weiwei. Sarah currently works at a gallery in New York City.

 

Shengyu Wang (HAA, 2016) In recent years, the art market has boomed to record levels with an estimated $66 billion in sales for 2014. However, the majority of this wealth goes to auction houses, galleries, dealers, collections, museums, and a few celebrated art stars. Their activities are usually supported by employees who are paid standard or below standard rates, while a large number of artists and associates work without receiving payment. The question arises: “Should art labor be free?” In order to answer this question, Shengyu conducted questionnaire surveys based on cultural districts in Pittsburgh and communicated with scholars in UC, Berkeley and New York thanks to the generosity of the Friends of Frick Fine Arts research award.This summer, Shegyu focused on the economic situation of art workers in Pittsburgh and California through conducting questionnaire surveys in Pittsburgh cultural districts. She collected the majority of questionnaires from the galleries at Pittsburgh Cultural District during the Gallery Crawl night on July 10, 2015, and collected others from galleries and studios in Shadyside, Pittsburgh. After conducting the survey in Pittsburgh, Shengyu traveled to the University of California, Berkeley to research the April 2014 event “Valuing labor in the arts: A practicum,” which was a day of artist-led workshops that engaged with questions of art, labor, and economics. After indicating the reason for visiting, she was given access to many primary source documents that aided in my research.Through the research, Shengyu found that the economic situation of art workers has gained a great deal of attention in the art world. From the east coast to the west coast, artists, curators, writers and economists have been trying to solve the problems based on the economic disparity between impoverished art workers and prosperous contemporary art market. Though her summer grant is over, she plans to keep exploring these issues with her advisor, Prof. Terry Smith. 

 

 

Sonnie Solomon (HAA, 2017) received a Summer Brackenridge fellowship from the University Honors College to research the effect of physical disability on art, a project overseen by Gretchen Bender. Stemming from a lecture discussing strategies for blind and visually impaired artists, the project was inspired by several questions, such as: Why do some gravitate towards art after life-altering experiences? How can acquired disabilities and, conversely, congenital conditions alter the artistic process? Can challenges enhance creativity? Over the course of the summer, Sonnie conducted interviews and formed case studies of artists with physical disabilities, particularly focusing on those within the Pittsburgh arts community. Networking with local organizations, including Creative Citizen Studios—a professional studio arts environment for adult artists with intellectual and developmental disabilities—she gained contacts for Pittsburgh-based artists. Sonnie is planning to reach out to more artists nationally, and hopes to eventually expand her research into an honors thesis. 

 

Paige Anderson (Arch Studies, 2016) received the Friends of Frick Fine Arts Award as well as the Fil Hearn Award, and was priveleged to spend two weeks in Hong Kong and one week in Washington, DC over the summer of 2015 to examine the public space the the Umbrella Movement and Occupy DC protests occupied. Paige's experience in Hong Kong was incredible; she saw some of the densest populations, most diverse cultures, and tallest buildings all crammed between the ocean and the jungle. Much differently, DC's formal public spaces, grand avenues, and spectacular vistas created a start contrast that truly verified Paige's belief that these places played powerful roles in the protests' establishment and escalation. At the sites, Paige met with local journalists, urban designers, professors and protestors that provided great insight into their environment, while explaining to her exactly how the protests played out. She learned a lot about the complexity of public space and the cultural differences in appropriating them, now a dominant theme in her thesis. She is using this research and continued analysis for her Honors Thesis, which will be finished in the spring.