DEPARTMENT OF ART HISTORY

The department congratulates Professor Clayson, who has been named the Samuel H. Kress Professor at the Center for Advanced Study in the Visual Arts for 2013-14. One of the highest honors in the discipline, this professorship is awarded annually to a distinguished art historian by the National Gallery of Art. During her term at CASVA, Clayson will complete her book, Electric Paris: The Visual Cultures of the City of Light in the Era of Thomas Edison (to be published by the University of Chicago Press), and commence work on a new study of the Modern Interior as Image and Space.

Three members of the department have been awarded prestigious fellowships from the American Council of Learned Societies. Professor Huey Copeland received an ACLS Fellowship to support the project "In the Arms of the Negress: A Brief History of Modern Artistic Practice," and graduate students Jill Bugajski and Faye Gleisser each received a Luce/ACLS Dissertation Fellowship in American Art. Image credit: Meta Vaux Warrick Fuller, Mary Turner (Silent Protest Against Mob Violence), 1919. Photo by Huey Copeland.

Two undergraduate art history majors received research grants during the latest award cycle. Luke Fidler received two Conference Travel Grants, and Sophie Jenkins (left) was awarded an Undergraduate Research Grant for her project "'Quoting from Portraiture': Placing Deanna Lawson's Contemporary Photography in an Art Historical Context."

The exhibition Drawing the Future: Chicago Architecture on the International Stage, 1900-1925, curated by Professor David Van Zanten, has opened at the Block Museum of Art. The exhibition catalogue features an essay by graduate student Ashley Dunn.

Jason LaFountain has received a Terra Foundation Award to help fund the publication of the book A Companion to American Art. Edited by John Davis, Jennifer A. Greenhill, and Professor LaFountain, the volume comprises 36 new essays about the study of American art and will be published by Wiley-Blackwell Press. In addition to co-editing the book, Professor LaFountain will contribute a chapter on multilingualism and American art.

Congratulations to Min Kyung Lee on successfully defending her dissertation "The Tyranny of the Straight Line: Mapping and Constructing Paris, 1791-1889." Dr. Lee is currently a Post-Doctoral Fellow and Visiting Instructor of Art History at Swarthmore College.

Sheila Crane (PhD, 2001) has been awarded the prestigious Spiro Kostof Book Award by the Society of Architectural Historians. Her book Mediterranean Crossroads: Marseille and Modern Architecture was published by University of Minnesota Press in 2011.

Professor Krista A. Thompson has been awarded a prestigious Tremaine Foundation Grant. Her project, entitled "'En Mas': Carnival 21st Century Style" and designed in collaboration with Claire Tancons, explores the intersections between contemporary art and historical masquerade in the Caribbean and its diaspora. The project will be realized in the form of an exhibition at the Contemporary Arts Center, New Orleans, LA, as well as a series of performances and video-based exhibitions.

The Department of Art History co-hosted a reunion reception with the Department of Art Theory & Practice in conjunction with the CAA Annual Meeting in New York. The event took place at the Flatiron Lounge, 37 West 19th Street, on February 14, 2013 from 6:30-8:30.