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.
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).
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Kale Serrato Doyen Receives A&S GSO Elizabeth Baranger Teaching Award
Kale Serrato Doyen has been awarded the 2024 A&S GSO Elizabeth Baranger Teaching Award that acknowledges excellence in graduate student teaching across the Dietrich School of Arts & Sciences. This award is presented to three graduate students nominated by faculty, fellow graduate students, and undergraduates, and includes a monetary prize of $500. The award is named after Elizabeth Baranger, former Dean and, later, Vice-Provost of the School of Arts & Sciences.
Presentations from HAA community at SECAC 2024
Faculty, alumni and graduate students from HAA feature in the program at the 80th annual SECAC conference held this year in Atlanta.
Villela Balderrama Writes About Incorporating AI Into an Asian Art History Course
Marisol Villela Balderrama's essay "Incorporating AI Into an Asian Art History Course" appeared in AI Bites, the website [blog?] of the Dietrich Graduate AI Innovation and Networking Series (GAINS). It details her pedagogical approach to incorporating AI in a summer 2024 edition of the HAA course "Introduction to Asian Art."
Read the complete essay here: https://www.dsgains.pitt.edu/incorporating-ai-asian-art-history-course
Adriana Miramontes Olivas Curates Exhibition on Democracy and Justice
Featuring works by Doris Salcedo, Rafael Lozano-Hemmer, Teresa Margolles, Carlos Castro Arias, and Oscar Muñoz, Dr. Miramontes Olivas questions dictatorial governments, authoritarian tendencies, censorship, disappearance, and political repression. In artworks by Voluspa Jarpa, Luis Camnitzer, and Regina Jose Galindo the exhibit examines U.S. interventions in other countries and CIA backed-up regimes, while Valaria Tatera and other artists in the exhibit focus on gender violence, racism, and police brutality.
Taylor Participates in Panel on Art in Architecture
On October 1, 2024, the Arts and Humanities Center at the University of Oklahoma will host Alex Taylor in a panel discussion at the Charles M. Russell Center for the Study of Art of the American West.
Titled Art in Architecture: Perspectives from Twentieth-Century American Art History, the event will also feature Joshua Shannon (University of Maryland) and Emily Warner (University of Oklahoma).