2020 News
December
November
Advanced PhD Candidate Antawan Byrd's book was selected by the New York Times as one of the Best Art Books of 2020
October
Graduate student Olivia Dill and affiliate faculty member Marc Walton’s paper is published by the J. Paul Getty Trust
Graduate student Bethany Hill named winner of the 2020 Schiff Foundation Fellowship for Critical Architectural Writing for "Off the Grid: Race, Space, and the Future Imaginary of June Jordan’s ‘Skyrise for Harlem’ "
Read the 2019-20 department newsletter
September
Prof. Robert Bird (University of Chicago), husband and collaborator of Prof. Christina Kiaer, who has worked with a number of our graduate students, passed away on Labor Day
July
New Faculty Member
We are pleased to announce the hire of Alicia Caticha for our position in Global 18th/19th-Century Art. Dr. Caticha will begin teaching in Winter 2021.
Alicia Caticha is an art historian specializing in eighteenth-century sculpture and decorative arts, with a particular focus on the intersection between Enlightenment aesthetic theory and artisanal production outside of the academic sphere. Her book project, tentatively titled “Sculpting Whiteness: Marble, Porcelain, and Sugar in Eighteenth-Century Paris,” takes up the career of the eighteenth-century French sculptor Étienne-Maurice Falconet and the replications and reverberations of his work in marble, porcelain, and sugar.
June
Meghan Considine, Art History major and recent graduate, awarded Kaplan Humanities Writing Prize
Meghan Considine, was awarded the Dolores Kohl Kaplan Writing Prize in the Kaplan Humanities Institute competition for 2019-20. She submitted a paper she wrote for a Humanities course titled "Contemporary Middle Eastern Performance."
https://www.humanities.northwestern.edu/undergraduate/undergraduate-prize/
Shalini Le Gall (PhD 2009) named Chief Curator to the Portland Museum of Art
Four Art History Students elected to Phi Beta Kappa Society
Congratulations to the four undergraduate Art History students elected to Phi Beta Kappa: Luke Cimurasti, Elizabeth Hawley, April Peng and Louis Tauber. Each spring, the Northwestern chapter of Phi Beta Kappa elects juniors and seniors in Weinberg College. Students are elected on the basis of numerous criteria, including GPA, the selection of courses, and instructors' recommendations.
April
Graduate student Alissa Schapiro co-curated Life Magazine and the Power of Photography exhibition at the Princeton University Art Museum
Life Magazine and the Power of Photography debuted at the Princeton University Art Museum on Feb 22. Graduate student Alissa Schapiro participated in the opening lecture with her co-curators and contributed to the exhibition's book.
March
Kevin Lam (PhD 2018) named Associate Curator to the Hong Kong Palace Museum
Kevin Lam joins the Hong Kong Palace Museum, opening in mid 2022, as associate curator. Lam received his PhD specializing in Chinese art from Northwestern University, beginning his curatorial career as a research fellow at The Cleveland Museum of Art. He has worked with several art and cultural organizations in Hong Kong, most notably the City University of Hong Kong exhibition gallery, and joins the Hong Kong Palace Museum from Tai Kwun. His scholarly interests include the art and visual culture of 20th century China.
This announcement appears in Orientations 51 no. 2 (March/April 2020). Image courtesy of the Hong Kong Palace Museum and the West Kowloon Cultural District Authority.
February
Graduate students Tamar Kharatishvili and Jake Leveton marry on February 15
‘Modernisms’ reveals artistic responses to the 20th-century’s ‘crisis in humanity’
Graduate Student Maryam Athari awarded 2020 Rhonda A. Saad Prize for Best Paper in Modern and Contemporary Arab Art
Maryam Athari was awarded 2020 Rhonda A. Saad Prize for Best Paper in Modern and Contemporary Arab Art for her article, “Diagnostic Revelation: Rifat Chadirji's Street Photography.”