Smith organizes exhibit at Hillman Library
In September, Teaching Assistant Professor of Museum Studies Deirdre Smith's exhibit "We Humans" at 70: Educating Pittsburgh on Race in the 1950s opened at the Hyland Gallery at Hillman Library. The exhibit focuses on "We Humans," an exhibit on race and racism developed by two curators of Anthropology at the Carnegie Museum that opened in downtown Pittsburgh in 1955.
Design Studio 2 Students Visit Proposed Development Site in Strip District
On a sunny Saturday in September, ARC 1202 Design Studio 2 met with Riverlife Pittsburgh Director of Planning and Projects Gavin White to tour a proposed development in the Strip District at the corner of Railroad Street and the 31st Street Bridge. Riverlife is a community organization dedicated to the development of Pittsburgh's riverfronts. The group hopes to transform the site into a mixed use development and a public park.
Art Journal Publishes Article by Alex Taylor on James Rosenquist
The latest edition of Art Journal (Volume 84, 2025) includes Taylor's article titled "Body Count: The Critical Matrices of James Rosenquist’s Growth Plan."
Nygren's forthcoming book awarded Meiss Prize by CAA
Christopher J. Nygren received the Millard Meiss Prize from the College Art Association for his forthcoming book, Sedimentary Aesthetics: Painting on Stone and the Ecology of Early Modern Art (Yale, 2026).
Read more about the Meiss Prize: https://www.collegeart.org/programs/publishing-grants/meiss
Bertagnolli Begins Public Lectures Series
Isaiah Bertagnolli (Ph.D. 2025) has partnered with a local theater in Bozeman, Montana to deliver a public lecture series through October. The series, "Art! With Dr. Ike, PhD" will draw on his dissertation research and a new archival project. Through an hour long format, this conversational lecture series will explore topics like art nuclear weapons, social movements, and the Bozeman architect Fred F. Willson (1877-1956).
López begins Will Barnet Foundation Predoctoral Fellowship at SAAM
PhD candidate Janina López has joined the Smithsonian Institution's Fellowship Program as the Will Barnet Foundation Predoctoral Fellow at the Smithsonian American Art Museum. This fellowship will support work on her dissertation, “The Royal Chicano Air Force’s Comuniversidad: Public Art and Education in Northern California since 1969,” which examines the murals, printed materials, and educational programs of the Sacramento-based collective of artists and activists.
Alex Taylor Reports on Calder Mobile at New Airport Terminal
Alex Taylor was consulted by local journalists on the reinstallation of the Alexander Calder mobile Pittsburgh (1958) in the new terminal of the Pittsburgh International Airport. Taylor has written the new interpretative label for the work, which is now suspended over a two-story atrium as the centerpiece of the landside terminal. The terminal will open in the last quarter of 2025.
Bertagnolli Presents at Smithsonian American Art Museum
Isaiah Bertagnolli (PhD 2025) presented dissertation research on during SAAM's annual fellow's lectures. Bertagnolli discussed Barbara Donachy's "Amber Waves of Grain" (1983), a 35,000 piece model of the US nuclear arsenal made from clay. In his analysis, he described audience emotional reactions to the artwork as logged in viewer comment books, how "Amber Waves of Grain" facilitated social organizing against the arms race, and how the material of fired clay made connections to antinuclear platforms.
Fava-Piz Appointed Curator of Modern Art at the Phillips Collection
Alumna Clarisse Fava-Piz (PhD 2022) has been appointed the new Curator of Modern Art at the Phillips Collection in Washington, DC. She will help steward the Phillips’s internationally recognized modern art collection and collaborate across departments to create dynamic exhibitions and fresh scholarship that foster more inclusive narratives about modern art within a global context. Clarisse’s work will focus on expanding the modernist canon through transnational and interdisciplinary approaches that resonate with contemporary audiences.
Bromberg Receives Tenure
Alumna Sarah Bromberg (PhD 2013) was awarded tenure at Fitchburg State University.
Reparative Histories of Art and Architecture - Update from the Grant Team - HAA Colloquium
The grant team leading the work for the Reparative Histories of Art and Architecture grant from the Andrew W Mellon Foundation will lead a discussion about the current state of the work being done. They will give a brief introduction to the theme and aims of the grant, introduce the grant team, and describe the events the unfold across the next academic year.
Read more about the grant in the press release.
Serrato Doyen presents on the Teenie Harris Archive at eLaboratories
Graduate student Kale Serrato Doyen will present her ongoing dissertation research in "Research in Progress: New Projects Committed to Recontextualizing Visual Objects" at the University of Virginia's eLaboratories. Serrato Doyen will share developments in her dissertation, Mapping the Teenie Harris Archive: Photography, Community, and Pittsburgh's Black Built Environment. eLaboratories is an emergent space committed to making source materials accessible, discoverable, or (re)imaginable. This event will be held virtually.
Copeland Invited to Getty Research Institute as Guest Scholar (January-June 2026)
Andrew W Mellon Professor Huey Copeland has been invited to the Getty Research Institute in Los Angeles as a Guest Scholar for the spring and summer 2026 terms. While in residence he will continue work on his monograph, "Thinking the Unthought: From Continental Philosophy to Black Radical Study," in the context of the Institute's year-long thematic engagement with notions of "Repair," which productively resonates not only with his scholarship, but also the department's Mellon-funded exploration of reparative art histories.
Summer Studio Design students are falling for Fallingwater
The summer Fallingwater Studio, a new design studio in the Architectural Studies program led by Gabe Nolle and Drew Armstrong, was featured by the Dietrich School of Arts & Sciences.
Read Gabe Nolle's faculty profile: https://www.haa.pitt.edu/people/gabe-nolle
Read Drew Armstrong's faculty profile: https://www.haa.pitt.edu/people/christopher-drew-armstrong
Vuk Vuković was awarded an ACLS Leading Edge Fellowship
Recent graduate Vuk Vuković (PhD 2025) was profiled in PittWire after being award the ACLS Leading Edge Fellowship, which will support his position position as an associate curator at the National Public Housing Museum in Chicago.