News

Cover for the Journal of Film and Video

Vuk Vuković Publishes in the Journal of Film and Video

PhD candidate Vuk Vuković recently published a book review in the Journal of Film and Video. His review of "Encounters in Video Art in Latin America ed. by Elena Shtromberg and Glenn Phillips" examines the complex history of making, exhibiting, storing, archiving, and preserving video art in Latin America.

Kupfer Organizes and Speaks on Brasa XVII Panel

Graduate student Paula Kupfer recently organized and took part in the panel, “Reciprocal Views: Interdisciplinary Approaches to the History of Rio de Janeiro’s Tijuca Forest,” at the Biennial Congress of the Brazilian Studies Association (Brasa) XVII. The panel explored the history of the forest from interdisciplinary perspectives. Read more on the Brasa website.

López to Participate in Voces Oral History Summer Institute

Graduate student Janina López will participate in the Voces Oral History Summer Institute in the Moody College of Communication at UT Austin. This week-long workshop includes training in conducting oral history as well as workshopping of participants’ research. López will continue her dissertation work and prepare to conduct artist interviews this summer. Read more on the Voces website.

Hands-On Encounters With Ed Ruscha’s Artists’ Books

Explore Ed Ruscha’s unusual approach to the book medium and see how he rejected the conventions of sequential narratives, photography, and fine art in general. The event, April 16 1-2:30pm in the Frick Fine Arts Library, will commence with remarks from Grace Marston, student curator of the exhibition of Ruscha’s books on view in FFAL throughout April.

Villela Balderrama Receives ALAA Article Award

Graduate student Marisol Villela Balderrama was recently awarded the Article Award from the Association for Latin American Art (ALAA). Villela Balderrama’s article, “Doves and Machetes: Rina Lazo’s Portable Mural Venceremos (1959) in Guatemala, North Korea and Beyond,” appeared in Art History Vol. 45, issue 5 (November 2022). Read the article here.

Gao and McCoy Receive Collaborative ASC Grant

Graduate student Naren Gao and Dr. Michelle McCoy have received an Evelyn and Thomas Rawski Graduate Student/Faculty Partnership Grant from the Asian Studies Center. Gao will develop an undergraduate course in collaboration with McCoy, and conduct field research in Inner Mongolia, China, this summer. Learn more on the UCIS website.

Patchwork quilt

Wyatt Curates Upcoming AFAM Exhibition

Graduate student Brooke Wyatt curated the new show, Somewhere to Roost, at the American Folk Art Museum. Opening April 12, 2024, the show explores the ways that artists evoke and construct ideas of “home” – from experiences of immigration and incarceration to visions of home that are inventive and unexpected. Read more on the AFAM website.

"May Induce an Epiphany" art exhibit display

Brownlee and Savage Host a Curator Talk on Artists' Books Exhibit

Chrislynn Brownlee and Eli Savage will host a curator talk on their exhibit, "May Induce an Epiphany”: Artists’ Books on the Future." All books on display deal with the imagination of the future. Their creative, ambitious approaches to the idea of the future mirror their manifold approaches to the format of the book, from Julie Chen’s “Space-Time Geometry,” where the accordion fold structure of the book reflects its thesis that time collapses in on itself, to Anne de Vries’ “Deep Scroll,” a traditionally bound book simulating a partly-AI-generated doomscroll session out of a fever dream.

Poster announcement for Neither Here Nor There art exhibition

Larson Curates Studio Art Faculty Exhibition

Ellen Larson (PhD 2022) recently curated the University of Pittsburgh Studio Art faculty exhibition, Neither Here nor There, which opened at the Brew House Gallery on March 21, 2024. Neither Here nor There features recent work by seventeen faculty members of the Studio Arts department whose unique practices underscore shared investments in locating the fluid nature of things in between. 

Ptaschinski Presents at the Royal Netherlands Institute in Rome

On Feb. 22, Claire N. Ptaschinski presented her paper, "Catastrophic Thinking: Picturing Natural Disaster in Quarant’ore Altar Design of 17th-century Rome," at the Koninklijk Nederlands Instituut Rome as part of a two-day workshop on Anthropocentrism and Ecocentrism in the Early Modern Netherlands and Italy. Ptaschinski's paper formed part of a panel addressing flooding's impact on architectural design in premodern Italy and considered how printed designs for ephemeral Baroque altars reveal an ecological vision of human impermanence in the face of powerful climatic agents.

Gallery at the Smithsonian American Art Museum of a neon light lit up map of the United States

Bertagnolli Receives SAAM Fellowship

The Smithsonian American Art Museum has awarded Isaiah Bertagnolli the Douglass Foundation Predoctoral Fellowship. This fellowship will support work on his dissertation "Landscapes of Disarmament: US Antinuclear Arts Activism," which examines the role artists played in the disarmament cause. Bertagnolli will work under the supervision of Dr. Sarah Newman, the James Dicke Curator of Contemporary Art. Read more about the fellowship here. 

Banner for the 2024 Society for Cinema and Media Studies Annual Conference

Vuk Vuković Presents at the Society for Cinema and Media Studies

Vuk Vuković delivered a paper at the 2024 SCMS Conference in Boston, Massachusetts.

Boaz Frankel interviews Dr. Sylvia Rhor at the University Art Gallery

UAG Featured in NEXTPittsburgh

Boaz Frankel, the host of NEXTpittsburgh's popular segment Yinzer Backstage Pass, visited the Frick Fine Arts building for a tour of the Cloister, University Art Gallery, and the Fine Arts Library. Dr. Sylvia Rhor, Gallery Director, shared the history of the building and its unique architecture. She also guided Frankel through the Cloister and the three exhibitions currently on view at the Gallery. The visit concluded with a look at some of the unique objects and artwork in the UAG's collection.

Yoshie Sakai: Grandma Entertainment Franchise art installation

Giordano Contributes to LARB “Short Take” Series

Graduate student Rebecca Giordano recently reviewed an exhibition of the work of multidisciplinary artist Yoshie Sakai at the Vincent Price Art Museum for the Los Angeles Review of Books. Read Giordano’s review, “Grandmas Gone Wild,” on the LARB website.

Painting featuring a black woman holding a cotton plant

Miramontes Olivas Opens New Show at Schnitzer Museum of Art

Adriana Miramontes Olivas (PhD 2022) recently opened her latest exhibition at the Jordan Schnitzer Museum of Art as Curator of Academic Programs and Latin American & Caribbean Art. My Body, My Choice? Art And Reproductive Justice considers bodily autonomy through the work of Nao Bustamante, Judy Chicago, and Alison Saar. Read more on the Schnitzer Museum website.