News

Poster that reads "Flashpoint! Protest photography in print. 1950-Present"

Flatto Contributes to Volume on Protest Photography in Print

Diana Flatto contributed research and texts on feminist activism to "Flashpoint! Protest Photography in Print, 1950-Present," recently published by 10x10 Photobooks. Flatto, a PhD candidate, wrote for the book's "Gender" section, covering photography books, fliers, journals, alternative newspapers, posters, and zines from movements in Argentina, Ghana, Iran, Italy, the Netherlands, Poland, Spain, South Africa, Thailand, Ukraine, United Kingdom, and the United States.

Cover image for the "The Emamzadeh Yahya at Varamin: An Online Exhibition of an Iranian Shrine"

Nakhaei Collaborates on Online Exhibition Exploring an Iranian Shrine

Graduate student Hossein Nakhaei collaborates on "The Emamzadeh Yahya at Varamin: An Online Exhibition of an Iranian Shrine," hosted by Khamseen: Islamic Art History Online. An online exhibition, exhibition catalog, and multi-media book in one, this website offers an alternative museological space for exploring the Emamzadeh Yahya’s many looks, functions, resonances, and stories over the last 700 years. The mirrored website in English and Persian includes six thematic galleries with over 70 contributions, including essays, films, digital interactives, and catalog entries.

Two people sit on a bench admiring framed scenes of nature on a gallery wall

Reinstallation of American Art Collection Co-Curated by King

Isaac King (Phd 2020) co-curates Crossing the Divide: American Art from the Permanent Collection at the BYU Art Museum. The exhibition, open through 2029, eschews chronology for thematic arrangements that examine “the diverse geographies, perspectives, lives and histories woven across the territorial boundaries of the United States.” Learn more about the exhibition at the BYU Art Museum website.

Room in the University Art Galley

Secret Pittsburgh Podcast Visits the University Art Gallery

The Secret Pittsburgh Podcast interviewed Sylvia Rhor Samaniego as part of a behind-the-scenes tour of the University Art Gallery. The podcast's hosts speak with Rhor Samaniego about her career trajectory as well as artworks on display in the exhibitions “Rewilding” and “Broken Ground.” The Secret Pittsburgh Podcast is produced by students in the class “Secret Pittsburgh” Literature.

Black and white photo of William J. Holland writing a letter at a desk

Museum Studies Students' Work Featured on Carnegie Museum of Natural History Social Media

Last semester, as part of Teaching Assistant Professor Deirdre Smith's class "Inside the Museum," Pitt Museum Studies students engaged with recently digitized letters from the Holland Correspondence Archive, which features letters written by former Carnegie Museum of Natural History Director William J.

HAA Advertises Postdoc in Reparative Art Histories

The Department of History of Art and Architecture is seeking applications for a Mellon Foundation Postdoctoral Associate position on “Reparative Art Histories.” We invite candidates who have completed or will complete a Ph.D. in the history of art, architecture, or visual culture to apply for this two-year appointment, running August 1, 2025, through July 30, 2027, that is funded by a grant from the Mellon Foundation on the theme of social justice and disciplinary knowledge.

African Arts winter 2024, volume 12, number 6 newsletter cover

Lauren Taylor Publishes Article on Independent Senegal's First Art Museum

As the first museum to be built in Senegal following the nation’s independence, the Musée Dyamique, inaugurated in Dakar during the First World Festival of Negro Arts (1966), was an architectural expression of the roles that Senegal, negritude, and artistic exchange could play in healing a world torn by the violence of colonialism, the devastation of the World Wars, and the tensions of the Cold War. Its design emerged from a partnership between the Senegalese government and the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO).

Edra Soto, El Destino (Destination), 2024. Paint, sintra, aluminum, viewfinders, inkjet prints

Paula Kupfer Publishes Exhibition Review of the CMOA's "Widening the Lens"

Kupfer's review discusses the exhibition "Widening the Lens: Photography, Ecology, and the Contemporary Landscape," underscoring its expansive and multidimensional approach to the history of landscape representation in photography. Aperture is a longstanding photography publisher based in New York. "Widening the Lens" is on view at the Carnegie Museum of Art until January 11, 2025.

Scroope Terrace building at Cambridge University

Terry Smith Appointed Slade Professor at Cambridge 2025-6

Terry Smith has been appointed Slade Professor of Fine Arts at the University of Cambridge for 2025-2026. The Slade Professorship of Fine Art at Cambridge was founded in 1869 as the result of a bequest from the art collector Felix Slade (1788-1868). At the same time, similar chairs were founded in the Universities of Oxford and London. Holders of the Chair usually deliver eight public lectures and four classes for students in the department of the History of Art during either the Michaelmas or the Lent Term of their year in office.

Semiha Berksoy. Singing in Full Colour, exhibition view Hamburger Bahnhof

Finkelstein Co-Curates “Semiha Berksoy: Singing in Full Color” at Hamburger Bahnhof

Berksoy studied at the Hochschule für Musik in Berlin from 1936 to 1939, and enjoyed a distinguished career as a visual artist and an opera singer. Spanning over six decades, the exhibition traces Berksoy’s continued connection with Berlin, and explores the intersection of her two passions, emphasising her unique, spontaneous, and bold approach to painting.

"Conversations in Chile: Hans Ulrich Obrist Interviews" book cover

Flatto Works on Volume of Interviews with Contemporary Chilean Artists

PhD candidate Diana Flatto is the associate editor of Conversations in Chile, a new volume of interviews between curator Hans Ulrich Obrist and contemporary Chilean artists. The book includes discussions of Chile's history of experimental art during the Pinochet dictatorship and its aftermath, exploring culture's capacity for resistance and connection. Artists profiled include Sylvia Palacios Whitman, Eugenio Dittborn, Paz Errázuriz, Cecilia Vicuña, and Alfredo Jaar, among others.

In Memoriam: Fil Hearn

Submitted by Professor Emerita M. Alison Stones.

Huey Copeland Reflects on the Lecture as Form

The December issue of Europe's leading contemporary art journal, "Texte zur Kunst" focuses on the art of the lecture in theory and practice, with contributions from critics and scholars including Isabelle Graw, Branden Joseph, and Tavia Nyong'o. For his intervention, Mellon Professor Huey Copeland re-performed his 2014 talk "Voice Lessons," an homage to his advisor, art historian Anne M. Wagner, that was written on the occasion of her retirement from the University of California, Berkeley.

Lush mountain landscape with pockets of fog

Savage and Thomas to Speak at Museum of the Cherokee People

Kirk Savage and Elizabeth Thomas will present "William Holland Thomas: A New Perspective and a History Retold" at the Museum of the Cherokee People in Cherokee, NC on January 9. The talk distills years of research -- done in consultation and collaboration with the Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians -- on Elizabeth's ancestor Will Thomas, a white man adopted by the Cherokees in the early 19th century, and his adoptive father Yonaguska (Drowning Bear), headman of the only Cherokee tribal group to elude removal and remain on their ancestral homeland.

Painting by Camille Pissarro, The Garden of Les Mathurins

Fava-Piz Prepares Major Exhibition of Impressionist Painter Camille Pissarro

The Denver Art Museum has announced it will present the first U.S. retrospective of the "first impressionist" in Fall 2025, a project to be co-curated by Pitt alum Clarisse Fava-Piz, Associate Curator of European and American Art before 1900 at the Museum.