Newsletter of the History of Art Department at the Fashion Institute of Technology Volume 4, Spring 2022
Letter from the Chair It has been a momentous year, with the return to the classroom and to museums and galleries, as well as the retirement of our long-serving Department Coordinator Carmen Valerio and the start of our new one, Jennifer Fantozzi. Carmen was a vital part of our department and an always-welcoming, kind presence; we miss seeing her in the office. After her start in January, Jen has quickly integrated into the department and we appreciate all her hard work and dedication to ensuring the smooth running of our department. This year we conducted a successful search for a new tenure-track faculty member and are excited to be welcoming Dr. Andrea Vázquez de Arthur in the Fall. Andrea has a PhD in Art History from Columbia University and works on pre-Columbian and Latin American art; she is interested in Indigenous philosophies and aesthetics and the social life and materiality of ritual objects. Faculty also continued to diversify and expand our course offerings, creating five new courses including HA 318: Repositioning Ancient Egypt and Rethinking Egyptology; HA 319: Art History and Conservation; HA 320: Animals, Architecture, and Aesthetics; HA 385: Racism and Antiracism in Public Art and Architecture of the United States; and HA 321: Ecovisions in Art and Design.
We have begun a project to revise our curriculum as well, retitling and renumbering courses and reconsidering their prerequisites. As part of that rethinking, we have undertaken to write and offer a new global survey course (likely the first of several) that will explore key moments in global cultures across the world from 1450-1750. The Art History and Museum Professions program has continued to flourish under the direction of Professor Alex Nagel; for updates check out their active Instagram page and their new blog. The Fashion History Timeline continues to attract thousands of visitors a day and its Instagram recently passed 30k followers. Molly Schoen, our Visual Resources Curator, and Department Technologist Nanja Andriananjason have been invaluable in this tumultuous time, which has brought new challenges but also opportunities. I will be on sabbatical for the next academic year, but the department will be in good hands with Professor Amy Werbel taking over as acting chair. I look forward to seeing what the future holds. Associate Professor Justine De Young, PhD Chair, History of Art Department
A Heartfelt Farewell… After 27 years working at FIT, our Department Coordinator, Carmen Valerio, retired in November 2021. We will forever be grateful to Carmen for all she has done for the History of Art department. In addition to overseeing the day-to-day operations of the department and major program, Carmen also put her green thumb to use by growing a wide variety of houseplants in the office reception area. We all appreciate the cheerfulness and fresh air these plants continue to provide!
…And a Warm Welcome! Jen Fantozzi joined the HA department as our new Coordinator in January 2022. She worked in the FIT Admissions office for 15 years before transferring to History of Art. In her spare time she loves playing bartender and creating new drinks for her family and friends, hanging out with her niece and nephews (who are triplets) and playing with her dog Lucas.
Student Artwork: On the cover, detail: Kai Liguori, Cove, 48” x 60” Oil paint This work titled Cove is an abstracted scene that used a 5 square inch box full of cut-up paper and images as reference. It is currently exhibited at the SUNY Global Abstraction exhibition at the H. Carl McCall SUNY Building in Albany. Kai Liguori is currently a Fine Arts major at the Fashion Institute of Technology and creates works utilizing abstract shapes and forms to describe subjects. His works focus on the effects of light using a saturated palette, and he mainly works in painting, printmaking, and drawing. Instagram: @kaisarting
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Student Artworks Curator’s Statement
Trends in art come in cycles. I believe that it is important to realize the difference between an art style like modern art and a subgenre like “Black art” or “Asian art.” For example, “black art” also known as “The Black Aesthetic,” is defined in reference to ideologies and perspectives of art that center on Black culture and life. “Asian art” can tie into the perspectives that center around Asian culture as well. It is important to know the difference between this versus an Asian artist doing Modern Art or a Black Impressionist
Artist. All art created does not need to be centered around the race of the person and culture of that person, though the culture is still important to that person, but is not spoken about in the artwork. As the Curator of this installation of Art History Insider, I acknowledge this. The selected artworks focus on this very concept: the idea that an artist can create art surrounding their culture, or the artist can just be. — Joi Desiree Berry (AHMP ‘23) joidesireeberry.weebly.com/ @joidesireeberry
News from the AHMP Program What an exciting year for AHMP it has been! With a series of new positions accepted and filled by recent AHMP graduates; inspiring virtual and in-person events on our campus; collaborations and partnerships with museums, art galleries and institutions in New York; exhibitions curated and field trips organized by current AHMP students, distinguished awards given and a new blog the 2021-2022 year has been nothing short of great energy and enthusiasm for the creative work of those in art galleries and museums. Thank you to each and everyone who supported our students and the program! In summer 2021, Darnell-Jamal Lisby (AHMP ‘16) joined the Cleveland Museum of Art as Assistant Curator of Fashion. AHI had featured him in our 2021 issue. Natalie DeJesus (AHMP ‘19) was named the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s Research Assistant for the Michael C. Rockefeller Wing, Art of the Ancient Americas in Fall 2021. Natalie will be involved in preparing the installations for new displays scheduled to open later in 2023. Angelica Pomar (AHMP ‘21) accepted a prestigious position as the Education and Public Programs Coordinator at the Bronx Museum, which celebrates its 50th anniversary in 2022 (see p. 14). Shameekia Shantel Johnson (AHMP ‘21) continues to inspire, write and curate amazing work. Together with Jazsalyn and Yvonne Mpwo, Shameekia curated the major exhibition black beyond [a^3] at The New School. She also became Gallery Assistant at Harper’s in 2021 and contributed to the book series Forgotten Lands (2022). Natalie Przybylski (AHMP ‘21) began as Client Service Representative at Christie's. After working for Pace Gallery, Emma Ike (AHMP ‘20) is now a Learning and Engagement Programs Associate at Carnegie Hall (see p. 14). Jiyun Kim (AHMP ‘20) is now a Graduate Research Assistant and MA student at Hongik University in Seoul
in South Korea. Faith Cooper, whom we were sad to see leaving the Museum at FIT after many years working there, won a prestigious Fulbright Scholarship which will enable her to go to Taiwan in Fall 2022. Faith was back on campus as part of the Social Sciences faculty, teaching “Cultural Expressions of Non-Western Dress and Fashion” in Spring 2022. In addition, she also accepted a position with the internationally operating Committee of 100. Many congratulations, everyone! After many months of remote learning it was great to be back again on the campus. Early in the Fall semester in our first in person (hybrid) event, Oleg Mindiak (AHMP ‘20) and Angelica Pomar provided insights into their lives and careers after AHMP in our first alumni talk as did Katrina Dumas (AHMP ‘11) who works full time as Registrar at the Brooklyn Museum and joined us in the classroom and during a visit at the Brooklyn Museum in March 2022. Katie Prior, Richard Montanez, Liana Arkay, Zoe Klipstein and AHMP Senator John Paul Jang (all AHMP ‘22) partnered with the Morgan Library and Museum to assist in the preparation of their annual College Night event. Working with the Morgan Library and Museum Education team, they created an exciting costume competition [Figs. 2- 3]. Chrysa Tasioula (AHMP ‘22) moderated a conversation with Daphne Vitali, Curator at the National Museum of Contemporary Art in Athens in Greece for our Globally Connected at FIT series, in collaboration with the FIT Office of International Programs and the Cultural Fellows at FIT in September 2021.[Fig. 1] Fig. 1
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News from the AHMP Program continued from page 3
Figs. 2-3
In November, Richard Montanez organized a conversation on Black Queer Masculinities in Modern and Contemporary Film. This in-person event featured an important discussion around the highly influential short film Tongues Untied (1989) by Marlon Riggs, winner of a 1987 Emmy Award, and was followed by lively discussions among participants. In collaboration with the Writing and Speaking Studio at FIT, AHMP Senator John Paul Jang organized a series of sessions on cover letter and resume writing, and communication in the Museum and Art History world in general. Earlier in the fall, John Paul was awarded a student award from the FIT Couture Council [Fig. 4]. The Museum at FIT awarded Frida Loyola (AHMP ’22) with a paid 12 week internship for summer 2022. Katie Prior earned great praise for her work as our very first AHMP X Museum at FIT intern (see p. 7). Raleigh Smith (AHMP '23) and Artemis Burgos (AHMP '23) became Museum at Fig. 4 FIT Facilitators in the Fall 2021 semester. Both John Paul Jang and Katie Prior won the distinguished SUNY Chancellor's Award in 2022. Congratulations and thank you, everyone for doing what you do, and inspiring us! Joi Berry (AHMP ‘23) , guest curator for the artwork in this year’s Art History Insider, won a $5,000 grant from the FIT Diversity Council (now FIT Diversity Collective) in September 2021. Joi curated Journey, Journal, Joy at the FIT Art and Design Gallery, Sensible Attraction with Hopsak Galleries in Brooklyn, and Black Futures sponsored by FIT during the academic year. She hosted a panel discussion on “New Curating” with curators in art galleries and museums, and is currently developing more programs. In page 4
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January 2022, Joi became an Art Administration Intern with the Appraisers Association of America. Later in the spring, Joi became an intern at the Museum of Contemporary African Diasporan Arts (MoCADA), and in Summer 2022, Joi will be the very first AHMP student intern at the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, D.C. In October 2021, Adjunct Assistant Professor Jennifer Miyuki Babcock and I invited Edward Bleiberg, curator emeritus of Egyptian art at the Brooklyn Museum, and Omar N’Shea of the University of Malta for a discussion, “Gender, Body and Masculinity in Ancient Egypt and Mesopotamia.” AHMP also supported a conversation on museum ideologies with Columbia University’s Center for the Ancient Mediterranean, “Nebuchadnezzar in East Berlin: Peoples, Exhibitions and Ideologies in the Vorderasiatisches Museum” in November 2021. Students Liana Arkay and Natalia Orestis (AHMP ‘22) enjoyed a private visit to an exhibition on looted and soon to be repatriated antiquities with the Italian Consulate in New York City in February 2022 [Figs. 5-8]. They also met with members of the FBI Art Crime team and Homeland Security’s Immigrations and Customs Enforcement team. Figs. 5-8
As always, all our classes continue to feature many guest speakers and visits, allowing students to learn from close experience and networking. We are so very grateful to all of our amazing guests and supporters. Throughout the academic year, students from AHMP were able to meet with many staff members of the Museum at FIT, including Director Valerie Steele and conservator Ann Coppinger. They were also able to engage with Matthew Yokobosky, Senior Curator of Fashion and Material Culture at the Brooklyn Museum of Art, who gave us a special behind-the-scenes tour through the Christian Dior: Designer of Dreams exhibition[Fig. 9]; Heba Abd el Gawad and conservators at the Egyptian Museum in Cairo; Jaafar Jotheri and Haidar Almamori from Babylon in Iraq; Katya Berbash, Curator of Egyptian Art at the Brooklyn Museum of Art; Smithsonian Institution curator Tsione Wolde-Michael; Daira Szostak, Collections Manager at the Department of Ancient Near Eastern Art at the Metropolitan Museum of Art; Olvia Pohl, Executive Coordinator and Board Liaison at the Bronx Museum of Art; Ola Baldych, Director of Design & Exhibits at Poster House; and Sally Morgan Lehman, owner of the nearby Morgan Lehman Gallery. With support from the Dean of Liberal Arts and Sciences and the FIT Diversity Council, the senior museum exhibition continued on page 5
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News from the AHMP Program continued from page 4
Fig. 12
Fig. 9
seminar class curated a fantastic exhibition on the legacy of Greek fashion writers, illustrators and designers, which was showcased at FIT’s Gladys Marcus Library, and we collaborated an entire semester with curator Carli Beseau and her team to work on the reinstallation of a major exhibition at the Brooklyn Navy Yard Building 92 by the East River [Fig. 12].
Fig. 10
And, we have our very first AHMP Association Arts Club! (see p. 19) Thank you, John Paul, for all your efforts to make it happen, and thank you, Liana and Zoe for taking on leadership responsibilities and to everyone involved! AHMP is grateful to each and everyone participating, speaking up, and being actively engaged in the many events and activities in the world of art galleries and museums in New York City and beyond.▪ Assistant Professor Alex Nagel, PhD Chair, Art History and Museum Professions Program (AHMP)
Fig. 11
The FIT Art History and Museum Professions Program acknowledges that it is located on Lenapehoking, the ancestral homelands of the Lenape people. We recognize the continued significance of these lands for Lenape nations past and present; we pay our respects to the ancestors, as well as to past, present, and emerging Lenape leaders. We also want to recognize that New York City has one of the largest urban Indigenous populations in the United States. We believe that addressing structural Indigenous exclusion and erasure is critically important and we are committed to actively working to overcome the ongoing effects and realities of settler-colonialism within the institutions where we currently work. page 5
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Reinventing Narrative Art: Comics, Ancient Egypt, and the Digital Age Adjunct Assistant Professor Jennifer Miyuki Babcock, PhD What do comics and Egyptian art have in common? Sometimes, quite a lot! Scott McCloud, an American cartoonist, and comics theorist, was one of the first to trace the history of comics back to prehistoric and ancient times.[1] However, recognizing an “ancient comic” can be difficult. When writing his seminal book, Understanding Comics: The Invisible Art, McCloud struggled to find examples of what he called “juxtaposed pictorial images in deliberate sequence”[2] or “sequential art”[3] when looking at ancient Egyptian culture. How we read, and experience images often have cultural foundations. For instance, in the United States, we read comics from left to right, then top to bottom, but in Japan, people typically read comics from top to bottom and then right to left. Traditionally comics have their panels organized according to the direction of whatever writing system is being used. Furthermore, even in textless comics and images, we want to read pictures in the same direction that our eyes are trained to read words. Eventually, McCloud found an example of ancient Egyptian sequential art, or “comics.” In Understanding Comics, McCloud shows the reader one of the walls from the tomb of Menna, which belonged to an 18th Dynasty ancient Egyptian high official. McCloud explains that initially he did not recognize the visual narrative represented on Menna’s tomb wall.[4] This is because, in Menna’s tomb, one reads the images in a zig-zag pattern, and from bottom to top, rather than how McCloud and other Americans are used to reading comic panels.[5] The fluidity of Egyptian writing, which can be read in multiple directions,[6] is one reason why the sequential order of Menna’s tomb is less straight-forward to modern audiences. However, McCloud never explained how a visitor experiences the entirety of the tomb chapel in Understanding Comics. I imagine that if McCloud had access to Menna’s tomb or any actual Egyptian tomb, he would have not only considered visual narratives page 6
as they are expressed on a singular wall but also how narratives unfold and relate to the other walls of the tomb chapel. Current technology has made viewing distant monuments and artworks more accessible than in 1993 when Understanding Comics was published. Now, one can virtually visit Menna’s tomb thanks to the digitization projects of the American Research Center in Egypt (ARCE) and Egypt’s Ministry of Tourism and Antiquities.[7] This virtual platform is an invaluable tool for the public, and I use this and other tomb tours in my classes so that students can better understand the scale of these spaces and how the images throughout the tomb are arranged. In 2000, McCloud wrote the sequel to Understanding Comics, which was called Reinventing Comics: How Imagination and Technology Are Revolutionizing an Art Form. In this book, he focuses on the future of comics. He talks about how to make comics and the comics industry more diverse and inclusive, and finally, how artists can use new technology to redefine the comics medium. While Reinventing Comics is to some extent outdated– something that McCloud himself predicted would happen due to how rapidly technology advances– it records a pivotal moment in comics history: the birth of the webcomic. In the final chapter of Reinventing Comics, entitled “The Infinite Canvas: Digital Comics,” McCloud advocated that webcomic artists take fuller advantage of digital media. At the time of his writing
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Reinventing Narrative Art: Comics, Ancient Egypt, and the Digital Age continued from page 6 in the late 90s, digital artists often thought of the computer screen as a window for singular pages of a traditional print book.[8] One would click a button labeled “next” to “flip” to the next page. Essentially, artists were trying to recreate familiar comic reading experiences rather than experiment with what digital space could do that print comics could not. McCloud provided an alternative way to think of monitors and screens: as a potentially unending papyrus scroll, or as he coined it, an “infinite canvas.”[9] Though McCloud revisits Menna’s tomb in Reinventing Comics, he does not explore beyond the one wall he highlighted in Understanding Comics. Thus, his understanding of how narrative is represented in Menna’s tomb is limited because he only sees it as being expressed on a flat, two-dimensional space. He does not realize the ways that Menna’s tomb is in some sense using the “infinite canvas” structure because of its three-dimensionality.[10]
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McCloud sought to elevate comics by linking them to ancient artistic traditions. While I am hesitant to call ancient Egyptian narrative art “comics,” I think it could be useful to consider the language and perspectives of comics art studies and theories when looking at some ancient Egyptian art. Especially as comic narratives and structures become much more fluid because of digital technologies, we can find new ways to think about and talk about ancient Egyptian narratives, and vice-versa.▪
[1] McCloud, Scott, Understanding Comics: The Invisible Art (New York: HarperPerennial, 1994), 9–10. [2] McCloud, Scott, Understanding Comics: The Invisible Art (New York: HarperPerennial, 1994), 9. [3] Eisner, Will, Comics and Sequential Art (Tamarac: Poorhouse Press, 1985). [4] McCloud, Scott, Understanding Comics: The Invisible Art (New York: HarperPerennial, 1994), 13. [5] McCloud, Scott, Understanding Comics: The Invisible Art (New York: Harper-
One of the greatest potentials of the “infinite canvas,” McCloud explains, is that it allows artists to break away from linear, sequential narratives. Though McCloud may not have realized it, the “infinite canvas” could be used to recreate how one truly experiences the paintings in an Egyptian tomb, such as Menna’s. For instance, even if a specific linear structure were designed on a particular wall or a series of walls when you’re in a tomb, you are also free to break away from moving linearly from wall to wall. Instead, you may move dynamically around the space by crossing from one side of the chapel to the other. Hyperlinking panels of a digital comic would allow you to do this as well.
Perennial, 1994), 14. [6] Allen, James, Middle Egyptian: An Introduction to the Language and Culture of Hieroglyphics, (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000), 3–4. [7] ARCE, Ministry of Tourism and Antiquities, Tomb of Menna (TT69) in the Theban Necropolis, https://my.matterport.com/show/?m=vLYoS66CWpk. [8] McCloud, Scott, Reinventing Comics: How Imagination and Technology Are Revolutionizing an Art Form (New York: Perennial, 2000): 222. [9] Ibid. [10] McCloud, Scott, Reinventing Comics: How Imagination and Technology Are Revolutionizing an Art Form (New York: Perennial, 2000): 217.
AHMP x MFIT This past fall, I had the honor of
exhibitions. It was incredible getting to see how the two legs
working with The Museum at FIT’s
of the AHMP program (art history and museum studies)
Education Department as the first
come together daily within a place like The Museum at FIT.
AHMP x MFIT Intern. I was able
My internship duties included sending out event reminders,
to observe up close exactly how the
organizing documentation for museum accreditation, helping
museum’s various projects come
prepare items in the Study Collection for visiting classes, and
to fruition, from idea to execution,
overseeing the semesterly AHMP Museum Facilitators program
and all the knowledge necessary to
by charting visitor interaction numbers and comments. My
make them come to life. Most importantly, though, I was able to
favorite part of this internship was being surrounded by the
get hands-on experience on what it’s like to work in a museum.
museum staff—they were each so knowledgeable and passionate
The museum doesn’t just put on fantastic exhibitions, they
about their areas of expertise, and I learned so much that I’m
also provide educational programs to the public, assist fashion
going to carry into my future!
history researchers, and produce publications on upcoming
–Katie Prior, AHMP ‘22 page 7
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Back on Campus:Wariness,Weirdness and Relief Professor Richard Turnbull, PhD
When faculty, staff and students returned to the FIT campus in August 2021, there were probably as many emotions, reactions and wild mood swings as there had been when we fled campus in March 2020 in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic. I’m sure the predominant mood last August was relief and a sense that our work at the college was returning to normalcy, however one chose to define the term. Normalcy in one sense meant encountering our students as three-dimensional presences again (albeit masked presences) and not as pixelated images or avatars on our laptop or desktop screens. It also meant returning to offices and corridors and classrooms that seemed long abandoned, interacting once again with colleagues face to masked face in corridors and common areas (but at a safe distance, if possible), and roaming the college’s neighborhood to see which eateries and coffeehouses had survived and which had vanished. There was excitement colored by wariness, relief tinged with weirdness, a sense that college business-as-usual was anything but usual. As if returning for the first time in over a year to the campus wasn’t strange enough, Hurricane Ida hit New York City during the very first week of classes and prevented many of us from even reaching campus late in that week. From the vantage of the spring 2022 semester, that early period of returning to FIT now seems strangely remote and almost antiquated, as if it belongs to some archaeological Before-Time. (One could make the same argument that the early months of the pandemic, overlaid with a near-constant ambient anxiety nourished by multiple additional anxieties, also seems historically and perhaps personally distant.) We were fed lists of students who had not complied with college COVID testing policies and who were not to be allowed in our classrooms (though why faculty were designated the front-line enforcers for these policies was never explained), just as later in the fall 2021 semester we were fed lists of students who had tested positive for COVID as the Omicron variant rolled through the Northeast. The in-person fall semester ended early; the spring semester began a week late. Many of us were relieved that all meetings remained virtual throughout the academic year. This meant fewer face to face interactions with colleagues and administrators and, for some of us, a chance to nest in our offices with the door closed, as this was the only college-approved manner in which we could remove our increasingly uncomfortable masks. (For some, this discomfort increased even more when we returned to campus in late January for the delayed start of the spring semester, now wearing more effective N95 and KN95 masks as the Omicron variant spread.) Lecturing in the classroom while masked, though perhaps effortless for a lucky few, also required adjustments in volume, projecpage 8
tion, and breathing. Faces were damp and hot long before the end of a three-hour class. Sometimes we stood in the corners of our classrooms taking a quick sip of water or coffee, facing the wall as if we had been disciplined, all in the name of social distancing and minimizing theoretically unsafe behavior. Speaking with colleagues in hallway conversations, I found that some observed their students to be more emotional this year, and some had heard of fellow faculty members being reduced to tears. I didn’t see much of this in my own classes and instead witnessed levels of engagement and creative thinking that I hadn’t seen for several years. (This was particularly so in my Oceanic Art and Civilization class and my Presidential Scholars class, Architecture and Faith: Ancient and Islamic Cities. Students in the latter produced some of the best work I have yet seen at FIT.) It’s true that there was some periodic skittishness about and even resistance to assignment deadlines, and I deduced from the number of emails about absences, illnesses and family situations that many students continued to face pandemic-born obstacles and difficulties. Faculty were asked to be lenient and even empathic, and I think most of us did what we could while still trying to maintain the rigor and structure of collegiate learning.
Professor's Turnbull's HA 252-History of Russian and Soviet Film class
There were, of course, disappointments. Faculty and staff put so much time and effort into mastering remote learning systems during the previous year-plus that it seemed insulting when we were told we could not fold any of these hard-won pedagogies into our in-person classes, that all classes were now expected to be fully face to face, that only with special permission in exceptional circumstances would we be allowed to use remote and asynchronous tools. This seemed to many of us—at least in the liberal arts—like a great lost opportunity to transform our classrooms into hybrid spaces where learning could take place anywhere and at any time.
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Back on Campus: Wariness, Weirdness and Relief continued from page 8 Despite the commonalities of our collective pandemic experiences, when colleagues reconnected on campus and shared stories of pandemic survival, adaptation, and loss, everyone’s personal narrative remained singular in the end. Some faculty tried to make sense or purpose out of disrupted sabbaticals. Some adapted to conditions of family togetherness (or solitary isolation) that they likely had not imagined would ever be possible or necessary. If we had safer and less crowded spaces to flee to in March 2020, we fled (although perhaps temporarily relocated is a gentler phrase to use here). We stood on long lines at grocery stores and encountered the same shortages as everyone else (toilet paper one month, meat the next, most strangely yeast and flour when everyone decided they needed to bake their own bread); we tried to find masks and wipes and thermometers; we devised (ultimately unnecessary) systems for sterilizing groceries and mail; we treated every person in every public space as a possible vector of contagion. There are lasting repercussions to this last, of course, especially on returning to a huge metropolis; eroded trust in your fellow citizen cannot be rebuilt automatically or instantaneously and there remains a lingering wariness in any crowded space that someone close to you has the virus and may be transmitting it, unknowingly or not. Much of 2020 was an annus horribilis for reasons that extended beyond pandemic anxiety. (Remember the long build-up to that year’s national election and aftermath if you dare.) Introverts did report that they were perhaps less uncomfortable with lockdown conditions than their opposites. Those of us in search of ever more solitude and quiet may have found it during the pandemic. It seems wrong, in the face of collective grief and loss, to feel that certain intervals of pandemic-time were actually pleasurable, but some were undeniably so. In my own experience, ending an evening class after 9 PM and having to face neither a crowded grocery store nor a mass transit journey back home was pleasurable. Brewing a coffee in my own kitchen during the break in a three-
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hour class (and not having to go out into the streets and pay five dollars for it) was pleasurable. I took walks in the woods between afternoon and evening classes and sometimes before afternoon classes as well. I shared slightly blurry photos with my students of bobcats and vultures that had been outside my home just minutes before class. (And the students in turn shared views of Colorado mountains, Florida parks, and bedrooms in New Jersey, wherever they happened to be during one of our remote classes.) I explained exactly how cold a western Massachusetts winter could be (and how undependable a western MA spring). I encouraged students to remain after official remote class time ended in case they wanted to chat, discuss or unload. I encouraged them to stop by my office at FIT once classes were finally face to face again so that we could meet in real, three-dimensional time. In the end I think the pandemic has been a time of extraction in every sense of the word, as the familiar and the given were pulled from us. The pandemic is with us still (it’s a mistake to claim otherwise), as is its shrill fallout, but we are back in the classroom, doing our important work, reminded again and again of its importance, reminded as well how much we enjoy the presence, comradeship, energy, and engagement of students, peers, and co-workers. We all work anew, interrupted and distracted for over a year but now perhaps less so, at last. ▪
FIT students Ameer Mussard-Afcari (Direct and Interactive Marketing ’22) and Ethan Gonzalez (Advertising and Digital Design ’23) delivering their papers (on Egyptian architect Hassan Fathy and early Filipino mosque architecture, respectively) at the 2022 SUNY New Paltz Undergraduate Student Symposium, held virtually on April 8, 2022. Their research originated in Prof. Richard Turnbull’s HA 398 class, Architecture and Faith: Ancient and Islamic Cites, in the fall 2021 semester.
I minored in Art History because… To me, a minor in Art History is not just a minor part of my edu- intended the piece to be. FIT’s History of Art minor examines cation. My field, art conservation, requires not only technical art history through the ever-changing visual cultures dating art skills and an understanding of chemistry, it also requires a from the prehistoric to the contemporary. This strong foundadeep understanding of the historical significance of a work of tion aids not just the creative minds at FIT but also helps me in art. Having an art history minor has given me the tools needed my conservation studies. This minor will serve as a strong leadto examine a work of art from a historical, social, and theoretiing piece on any resume, and is absolutely necessary when it cal lens. When pieces are damaged and the artist's intent is not comes time to apply to graduate school for any art or history-reclear, in situations when the artist is deceased, we turn to history lated degree. books and archives to discover what the artist might have –Diana Paterno, Fine Arts ‘22 page 9
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AHMP Association Trip to Washington DC
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The George T. Dorsch Awards
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The George T. Dorsch Awards in the History of Art Department were established with funds bequeathed to the department by one of its founding members, George T. Dorsch. An esteemed member of the department and of the FIT community, where he taught for 32 years, Professor Dorsch passed away in September 2000, leaving the farsighted and gracious legacy of an annual gift to support faculty and student professional achievement.
Announcing the 2022 winners The George T. Dorsch Endowed Fellowship (faculty) award goes to Eveline
This year’s recipient of the George T. Dorsch Endowed Scholarship (student) award is Cat Trzaskowski (Photography and Related Media ‘23).
Baseggio-Omiccioli, PhD.
Many congratulations to Cat and Eveline!
For more information, visit the George T. Dorsch Awards page on our website.
Anne Monahan, recipient of the 2021 George T. Dorsch Endowed Fellowship While I mostly teach at FIT about early modern European art and architecture, I focus my scholarship on modern and contemporary art. As that work has taken form in two book projects, Horace Pippin, American Modern (Yale, 2020) and Radical/Chic: Social Realism and Art of the 1960s (in progress), I have become increasingly sensitive to how limited information about the primary markets for artists of African descent has hindered a clear appraisal of the stakes of their interventions and innovations. To help redress that lacuna, I am mapping the commercial and gift exchanges that propelled the celebrated career of Romare Bearden (1911-1988) over the mid-twentieth century. The scope of this project is ambitious because information on his supporters is spotty and anecdotal, his catalogue raisonné is in development, and the records of a primary dealer are closed. As a result, the data must be compiled and, in many cases, unearthed, from an expansive (and expanding) array of archives that I can now visit thanks to the Dorsch Award. By complementing that laborious archival research with rigorous analysis, I aim to highlight the often covert mechanisms by which racial politics have informed a politics of style for modernists in America.▪
Romare Bearden (American, 1911-1988). Cattle of the Sun God, 1979, color screenprint on wove Lana paper, 21 3/16 × 20 in. National Gallery of Art, Washington DC.
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Teaching Business and Labor History to Art and Design Students: Developing a Digital Humanities Project
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Associate Professor Kyunghee Pyun, PhD Since 1999, I have taught art history to college students at many urban universities including the Pratt Institute, the School of Visual Arts, Parsons School of Design, the Cooper Union, and here at the Fashion Institute of Technology. In addition, I have taught at liberal art colleges such as Wagner College in Staten Island, Montclair State University in New Jersey, and Manhattanville College in Purchase, New York.
Art Institute of Chicago, Harvard, Princeton, a few of our fellow SUNY schools, and Ryerson University in Canada; twelve seminar meetings of a group of faculty participants, mostly from FIT, with representatives from Parsons and other SUNYs; four webinars and a website with teaching materials and links; new curriculum, new curricular models, and a new commitment to teach art and design students about business and labor history; international contacts among like-minded teachers of art and design students, built through many conference presentations. I am also in the process of discussing a book project with Routledge’s Studies in Education, Neoliberalism, and Marxism.
Professor Kyunghee Pyun
While I was a graduate student at the Institute of Fine Arts, New York University, I wrote research papers on collectors of medieval art and on the institutional history of major art collections in the United States. During these projects, I realized that the history of technology and the history of art collecting are closely interconnected. When I started teaching Asian American Art and Design in 2017, I also realized that many immigrant artists from Asia were working in the innovative fields of photography, cinematography, advertising, print industries, and medical illustration in addition to aspiring to be professional artists of fine art by exhibiting works in art galleries or teaching at art and design schools.
Managing a Research Project from 2018 to 2021
With a project entitled Teaching Business and Labor History to Art and Design Students, funded by a National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) Grant for Humanities Connections Implementation, I have learned new ways of connecting my research interests to teaching the business history of artists and art institutions. As our three-year grant came to an end in June 2021, I looked back on many accomplishments. These include two conferences full of faculty from such campuses as the Pratt Institute, the School of the page 12
businesshistory.fitnyc.edu Teaching Business and Labor History to Art and Design Students was a multi-disciplinary initiative for research and pedagogy, intended to enhance educators’ knowledge of the labor conditions of artists and designers, including historical perspectives. Professor Daniel Levinson Wilk in Social Sciences and I planned this multi-year project to educate ourselves and to disseminate our learning to a larger community beyond FIT. We hypothesized that artists’ and designers’ career development is related to an inherent drive for self-improvement. Yet it is not easy for an individual to foresee their future in the rapidly changing labor market and volatile business environment of creative industries. We posited that learning about historical precedents of self-improvement and his-
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toricizing the evolution of labor and business conditions with critical perspectives will empower artists and designers as they look ahead. This project sought to create curriculum for art and design students in community college programs that will educate them on the history of working as an artist or designer—how the roles of designing and making became separated, how new technologies and the rise of mass production affected creative careers, the shifts back and forth between direct employment and freelancing, and the evolution of government interventions in creative fields. This additional education, we thought, will better prepare students for the world of work. Teaching them how art and design were done differently in different eras will also empower them to imagine and create better, more profitable, and more enjoyable ways to structure their careers and industries.
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owners are deeply related to art patronage and the invention of new products in advanced technology—whether synthetic textiles, mass-market consumer products, or energy distributions. Before I started Teaching Business and Labor History, I did not realize how many significant art institutions were tied to major industries of fossil fuels, heavy metals, and “Big Pharma.” The more I found ways in which to engage students with the ethics of business both in art and in any given industry they chose to work for, the stronger I felt the need to connect the foundation of wealth in these companies and their philanthropic art projects. These companies also hired a number of artists and graphic designers to raise public awareness of their “new” products (for example, The Lamp, a magazine by Standard Oil).
Looking Ahead
In the fall semester of 2022, I will teach a new course, History of Business in the Visual Arts (HA 309), which grew out of the above concerns. I will focus on the intertwining of artists, industrialists, and their products. Three examples will be: advertisements for fossil fuels, industrial lacquer paint for artists, and fabrication of contemporary art.
Professors Kyunghee Pyun and Daniel Levinson Wilk
For the first two years, 2018-2020, faculty met in evening seminars six times a year, and in webinars twice a year. We read about the business and labor history of art and design careers in many times and places (lithography along the mid-nineteenth century eastern seaboard, portrait photography in early-twentieth century San Francisco, cakewalking waiters in Florida hotels, etc.). We designed and discussed our own new curricula, and put these materials up on our website. In my own research, I survey the development of technology in art and design making in materiality and techniques in juxtaposition with major business enterprises. These companies and their
As Dan and I concluded the project in 2021, two separate groups of the FIT faculty developed their own NEH projects. One is called Shop Girls to Show Girls: Teaching Resources on New York’s Working Class for Community College Students. This was developed by myself and Vincent Quan, professor of Fashion Business Management, who was also a Fellow for Teaching Business History. Shop Girls to Show Girls received a grant of $150,000 for 2021-2024 to create new interdisciplinary curriculum and teaching resources from the NEH Humanities Initiatives Grant for the Division of Education Programs. Another group, advised by Daniel Levinson Wilk and myself, helped Jean Amato, professor of English and Communication Studies, to develop a project called Narrative Mapping for the Study of Home and Homeland: Critical Approaches to Cultural Geography. It is impactful that the project provided opportunities for training and professional development beyond the members of the faculty seminar. ▪
New Course Listings The History of Art Department is pleased to announce the following new classes: HA 318 - Repositioning Ancient Egypt and Rethinking Egyptology - Professor Jennifer Miyuki Babcock HA 319 - Art History and Conservation - Professor Alex Nagel HA 320 - Animals, Architecture, and Aesthetics - Professor Anna Blume HA 321 - Ecovisions in Art and Design - Professor Sandra Skurvida HA 385 - Racism and Antiracism in Public Art and Architecture of the United States - Professor Amy Werbel HA 272 - Islamic Art and Mathematics - co-taught by History of Art professor Richard Turnbull and Mathematics professor Lasse Savola, will also be newly offered in Fall 2022.
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Alumni News
f ahmpFIT l ahmp_fit what’s not yet possible because we are not holding a sense of inevitability about who and what we are… Often it is making plans in a space that does not yet exist.” While Thelma is, indeed, referencing a capacity for agility in her work at The Studio Museum, her words resonate as a vivid evocation of what the pandemic has required of many recent graduates. I continue to try and make open plans in such imagined spaces, and am grateful for the intellectual tools which the AHMP program granted me. Emma Ike Class of 2020
Soon after graduating from FIT, I joined Pace Gallery as a Gallery Assistant and was later promoted to work as a Research and Archives Associate. The latter role focused on providing all aspects of reference and research as it pertained to the gallery’s curatorial, exhibition, and sales operations. One of my very first research projects focused on the origins and developments of Rosalind Krauss’ seminal essay, “Grids,” a text which I had first encountered in AHMP’s Western Theories of Art course. In October 2021, craving the more personally meaningful space where the arts engage with the broadest public, I transitioned into the role of Learning & Engagement Programs Associate at Carnegie Hall, where I currently oversee a global, orchestral music education program. While this work may seem at odds with my college studies, I have found that there are many conceptual frameworks that are shared between the museum and other non-profit arts organizations, such as the concert hall. When I reflect on life after graduation, I am reminded of the following quote from Thelma Golden, Director and Chief Curator at the Studio Museum in Harlem: “I think the ground from which we plan is different. It involves being able to imagine page 14
As the Education and Public Programs Coordinator for the Bronx Museum of the Arts, I oversee many of the museum’s educational programming from in-school partnerships to group tours, family, artist, and exhibition-related programs. This includes the day-to-day coordination of these programs while also being a part of their planning and production. The Bronx Museum of the Arts recently marked its 50th anniversary since the opening of the institution in 1971, a moment of celebration towards the museum’s dedication to its community in the Bronx. The Bronx
Museum’s primary focus is on the intersections of contemporary art, social justice, and equity, which is reflected through its exhibitions and programming. Though I was just hired at the Bronx Museum a few months ago, already I’ve been fundamental in coordinating key public programs surrounding the closing of The Fifth AIM Biennial: Bronx Calling, an exhibition featuring 68 artists who were former fellows of the AIM Fellowship program, which is an artist career management program that offers fellows the opportunity to access to seminars on artist sustainability and building artist communities. During the closing, I was essential in helping curate and coordinate a series of in-gallery workshops, performances with various AIM artists inspired by their artworks on-view, and the closing reception for the exhibition. I also helped organize a workshop with Gina Goico, a multidisciplinary, Bronxbased Dominican artist. For this, participants created their own self-soothing LovingSUIT, a mini version of the artist’s weighted pillow sculpture, from upcycled materials, natural herbs and essential oils. Excitingly, the workshop was led in both Spanish and English so bilingual
Photos courtesy Angelica Pomar
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Alumni News participants were able to participate, a very important factor towards access for the Bronx community, which comprises a large Spanish-speaking population. Most recently, I organized the opening reception for the exhibition Jamel Shabazz: Eyes on the Street. It was a tremendous effort of
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Visit the AHMP website meticulous coordination for the highly recognized street photographer, and it ended up being so rewarding with the amount of press and praises that were received from those who attended, including Laurie Combo, Commissioner of NYC Department of Cultural Affairs. Overall, I’m
thrilled to have joined the Bronx Museum in this time of growth and potential for art within the Bronx community! Angelica Pomar Class of 2021
Student Artwork: Jada Hairston, The Tapestry, 69” x 29”, Embroidery, fabric, acrylic paint, gesso, beads on fabric
Jada Hairston is an artist from Brooklyn, New York, and is currently studying at the Fashion Institute of Technology. She mainly works in embroidery, sewing, and doll making. Her work tends to explore themes of feminism and childhood. Instagram: @mysterious_artist_j
A Generous Gift from Christie’s Education to FIT When the auction house Christie's decided to restructure its education division, closing its master's degree programs in 2021 and moving its online and non-degree courses into other divisions, it also needed to deaccession its graduate studies library. Christie's Education Academic Director Véronique Chagnon-Burke reached out to FIT's Chairperson of Art Market Studies, Natasha Degen, who was a fellow colleague in the International Art Market Studies Association, and offered to donate the collection to FIT's library. This was a tremendous gift, especially for Art Market Studies and Art History & Museum Professions students. FIT's Head of Acquisitions and Metadata Services Leslie Preston and Christie's Education Librarian Karen Maguire worked together on the donation, which was completed in the 2020-2021 academic year. The Christie's Education collection comprised approximately 5,500 titles, including monographs, exhibition catalogs, and art history texts. Reflecting the focus of the former MA programs, the donation has increased the depth of resources on the art market (auctions, dealers, collectors, and the business of art) and modern and contemporary art. Of particular interest for Art History & Museum Professions students are the catalogues raisonnés, such as those of Georgia O'Keeffe and Jackson Pollock, that are now available in our library. –Paul Melton, PhD, Associate Professor of Art Market Studies page 15
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Art History Moments 2021-2022 Assistant Chair ALEXANDER NAGEL published “Techniques of Art and Architecture” for A Companion to the Achaemenid Persian Empire, the article “Past Panoramas and Qatabān Legacies: New Work on South Arabian Archives and Materials in Washington, D.C.,” for the volume Contacts Between South Arabia and the Horn of Africa from Bronze Age to Islam, “Achaemenid Persian Art and Architecture in the Vorderasiatisches Museum in Berlin,” for Achemenet. Vingt ans après. Hommage à Pierre Briant, “Preserving the Achaemenid Persian Legacy: Aspects of Conservation, Technology, Polychromy, and Material Culture in Persepolis,” for The Art of Empire in Achaemenid Persia, and a chapter on the Smithsonian Institution’s collections from Greece in Legacies of Ancient Greece in Contemporary Perspectives. He published on buildings from the site of Persepolis for several exhibition catalogs including Die Perser – Am Hof der Großkönige, and co-organized the 3-day conference Working on Stones in the Achaemenid Empire: Methods, Theories and Techniques, with the German Archaeological Institute and the Iranian ICHTO. He gave talks on the exhibition Western Civilization at the Smithsonian Institution in Athens in Greece, on the history of models of Persepolis on display (“Achaemenid Persian Landscapes and the Modern Mind - Great Games of Reconstructions”), on aspects of the heritage and preservation of caves in a conference in Madrid, on pigments from Persepolis at the Art University of Isfahan in Iran, and on stolen antiquities from Yemen in Amman, Jordan. He received the Advisor of the Year 2022 Award from FIT’s Department of Student Life. ALEXANDRA SCHWARTZ was awarded a
National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) Exhibition Grant for 52 Artists: A Feminist Milestone at the Aldrich Contemporary Art Museum. She was the curator and lead author of the exhibition Garmenting: Cospage 16
tume as Contemporary Art and its accompanying catalogue at the Museum of Arts and Design; she also co-curated the exhibition Ed Ruscha OKLA at Oklahoma Contemporary and co-edited its catalog. She spoke on a number of panels and received much favorable press on these exhibitions. On April 7, she gave the lecture “Curating Gender” as an invited speaker at Villanova University. At the University of California National Center for Free Speech and Civic Engagement, AMY WERBEL was named a 20212022 Fellow for her research project “Documenting, Analyzing, and Promoting Freedom of Artistic Expression in Academic Museums and Galleries.” She published an article in Panorama: Journal of the Association of Historians of American Art and a Teacher Guide for the First Amendment Watch at New York University. On August 3, she gave a lecture on “The Puritan Gladiator: 115 Years of Life Drawing and Censorship at The Art Students League of New York.” Her professional service included serving as Scholarly Advisor for an event series organized by PEN America and the American Historical Association, book review editor for Panorama, and Peer Reviewer for both Routledge and New York University Press. She also was an on-air commentator for Empires of Excess (The History Channel). ANDREW WEINSTEIN was a speaker at the 14th World Conference on Bioethics, Medical Ethics, and Health Law in Porto, Portugal as well as at the Between War and Mass Murder: 80 Years to Operation ‘Barbarossa’ virtual conference hosted by Western Galilee College in Akko, Israel. He published “Baneful Medicine and a Radical Bioethics in Contemporary Art” in the edited volume
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Recognizing the Past in the Present: New Studies on Medicine Before, During and After the Holocaust. BRONTË HEBDON PATTERSON published the informative “History of Menswear Timeline, 1500-2021” in The Men’s Fashion Book. She also spoke on “Napoleon’s Cultural Corps: A Study of Jacques-Louis David’s Le Sacre” at the Interdisciplinary Nineteenth-Century Studies Association Conference in March. CELIA BERGOFFEN gave the presenta-
tion “3D Modeling in Urban Archaeology: Pros and Possible Cons” at the American Schools of Oriental Research annual conference and won an FIT Faculty Development Grant for Conference Participation. She published “The Pictorial White Painted Handmade Ware I ‘Bird and Palm Tree’ Krater from Enkomi” in All Things Cypriot: Studies on Ancient Environment, Technology and Society in Honor of Stuart Swiny, “The Schnaderbeck Brewery’s Lagerkeller in Williamsburg, Brooklyn” in the journal Brewery History, and “Spotlight on… The Montauk Indian Museum” for the Archaeological Institute of America New York Society News. She completed a Phase IA Archaeological Assessment for a plot of land in Inwood, New York. She was named Research Affiliate for New York University’s Institute for the Study of the Ancient World and served as a Board Member for the Archaeological Institute of America’s New York Chapter. DAVID DROGIN gave the presentations “Bertoldo’s Battle Relief: Fusing Civic and Family Imagery in Medici Sculpture” at the Ninth Quadrennial Italian Renaissance Sculpture Conference and “The Mirror and Illicit Image: A 16th-Century Exemplar” at the virtual conference The Mirror in The-
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ory and Practice: New Perspectives on Old Questions. EVELINE BASEGGIO OMICCIOLI won the
2022 George T. Dorsch Endowed Fellowship, an annual award given by the History of Art Department at FIT, for her research on religious relics in Venice, Italy. In December, IRINA TARSIS was appointed the Director of Legal Affairs at the Artists Rights Society. She published the articles “Deaccessioning at the Time of Covid: From Alpha to Omega” in the New York State Bar Association EASL Section Journal and “Moral Rights of the Artist, not a Trifle but a Token: an Updated US Perspective” in Art Law Review. She presented “The ‘Art’ of Licensing Art: Legal and Business Considerations” at the NYSBA CLE Conference; she was also a guest lecturer at Sotheby’s Institute of Art and at the University of Geneva. JENNIFER MIYUKI BABCOCK’s book, Ancient Egyptian Animal Fables: Tree Climbing Hippos and Ennobled Mice, is currently in production; she is also the co-editor of the forthcoming Rethinking Ancient Egypt. She wrote the articles “The Representation of ‘Humans’ and Gods in the So-Called Satirical Ostraca and Papyri from Deir el-Medina” for the Journal of Ancient Egyptian Interconnections and “Curated Desertscapes in Ancient Egyptian Tombs and Investigating Iconographies of the Wild” in Arts: Animals in Ancient Material Cultures. She was a presenter, organizer, moderator and panel participant in four conferences and received an FIT Faculty Development Grant for Conference Attendance and Travel. She also was invited to speak at the Pennsylvania Chapter of the American Research Center in Egypt with her lecture “Drawing the Line Between ‘Good’ and ‘Bad’: Aesthetic Appreciation in New Kingdom Egypt.” Finally, she served as off-camera Egyptological Consultant for the Discovery+ series High Science, Abstract Reviewer for the American Research Center in Egypt’s Annual Meet-
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ing, Advisory Editorial Board Member for the Journal of the Hellenic Institute of Egyptology, and as a Committee Member of the History of Art Survey Course Review at the Pratt Institute. Department Chair JUSTINE DE YOUNG
was the Keynote Speaker for an event at the Lockwood-Matthews Mansion Museum, with a talk entitled “Daring and Provocative: Art, Fashion & American Glamour in the 1930s.” She was also an invited speaker for a Faculty to Faculty event at the Center for Excellence in Teaching, and for the Nineteenth-Century French Studies Annual Colloquium at Georgetown University. She published “Dressing the Modern Woman: Mary Cassatt and 1890s Fashion” for the exhibition catalog Inside Out: The Prints of Mary Cassatt. She won a Faculty Development Grant for Travel from FIT in October, and she served as a member of the Costume Society of America’s National Abstracts Jury as well as Proposal Reviewer for Bloomsbury Academic Press. KYUNGHEE PYUN
published six peer-reviewed journal articles, a number of catalog / encyclopedic entries, and a book chapter in the past academic year while on sabbatical. She wrote monthly articles for two columns: Kyunghee Pyun’s New York Sketch for the South Korean art / photography magazine Wolgan Sajin and Kyunghee Pyun’s Art and Technology for The Korea Daily. In addition, she both wrote for and co-edited five monographs: Teaching South and Southeast Asian Art (forthcoming); Expanding the Parameters of Feminist Activism (in production); Korean Dress History: Critical Perspectives on Primary Sources (working title, forthcoming); Interpreting Modernism in Korean Art: Fluidity and
Fragmentation; and American Art in Asia: Artistic Praxis and Theoretical Divergence. She was awarded a Humanities Initiatives Grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities, a Fulbright Scholar award, and a Publication Grant from the Academy of Korean Studies. She was an invited lecturer at four virtual events and gave three conference presentations. She served on the Editorial Committee for the Journal of the Korea Association for History of Modern Art, as an International Advisor for the Korean Art Management Association and its journal, and as a Peer Reviewer for Women’s History Review. Visual Resources Curator MOLLY SCHOEN presented on topics related to visual literacy at the annual conferences of both the Art Libraries Society of North America (ARLIS/NA) and the Visual Resources Association (VRA). She served as Chair of the VRA’s Greater New York Chapter for 2021 and also received a Luraine Tansey Travel Award from the VRA. Additionally, she was appointed Copy Editor of the ARLIS/NA journal, Art Documentation. NATALIE NUDELL
continued her work as Co-Principal Investigator for her grantfunded project “The Ruth Finley Collection: Digitizing 70 Years of the Fashion Calendar,” including presentations at the Popular Culture Association Annual National Conference (for which she was awarded a Faculty Development Grant for Travel), Culture Mapping 2022, and the Fashion & Diplomacy Workshop hosted by the University of Oslo. The feature documentary Calendar Girl, which she co-wrote and produced, was released on streaming platforms in March. She was interviewed on a variety of podcasts and publications, and she served as Editor of the Fashion Studies Journal and as a founding member of the Fashion Studies Alliance. page 17
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PAUL MELTON published the article “‘I’ll
Be Your Mirror’: Cultural Studies and / as Art Market Studies” in the Journal for Art Market Studies. He also gave the presentation “Instagram Is to the Art Market as Bloomberg Is to the Stock Market” at the IESA Arts & Culture conference at the Université Sorbonne Nouvelle in Paris, France. His professional leadership activities included serving on the 2022 Conference Planning Committee for the Association of Arts Administration Educators, and as Judge for the New York University Entrepreneurs Challenge. Rizzoli Bookstore hosted an author event and book signing for RAISSA BRETAÑA’s book Shoes. She was also invited to speak at the Eustis Estate as well as at the SS United States Conservancy. Her role as host for Glamour magazine’s online video series Would They Wear That? continued, and she appeared on several
video and podcast shows by Turner Classic Movies. Her interviews and writings from the past year were published in Vogue, Vogue Business, BBC Worklife, and W magazine. Additionally, she served as a board member for the Fashion Studies Alliance. RICHARD TURNBULL was invited to speak at Explore New York / Road Scholars, where he gave the talk “Cultural Diversity at the Metropolitan Museum of Art,” and at Zea Mays Printmaking (Florence, MA), where he spoke on “Cultural Appropriation in the 19th and 20th Century.” He participated in four exhibitions in Massachusetts and in New York. He also taught three workshops on subjects relating to artists’ books. SAMUEL ALBERT
was awarded a Fulbright Grant to conduct research in Hungary in Fall 2022. He was an invited conference speaker at the German
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Studies Association conference, where he gave the lecture “Austria at the Saint Louis World’s Fair: Innovation and Disintegration.” He published “Central European Modern Church Design” in The Cambridge Guide to the Architecture of Christianity, and he served as Peer Reviewer for three publishers: Routledge, Taylor and Francis, and Cambridge University Press. SANDRA SKURVIDA
published two peer-reviewed articles: “Barbad Golshiri’s Acts of Alterity” in the journal Art Margins, and “Billowing Grounds and Unrooted Constructions: Aleksandra Kasuba’s Environmental Plasticity” in the book Swamps and the New Imagination: On the Future of Cohabitation in Art, Architecture, and Philosophy.
Student Artworks
Genevieve Puglissi, Free Will, 8.5” x 11”, Digital art, Procreate
Daxian Zhao, Peach Blossom Spring, 18” x 24”, Oil on canvas
I am a Communication Design major from Queens, NY, and I have a history in both fine art and digital. Stemming away from streamlined pieces is often a breath of fresh air to me where the little details matter. Instagram: @gen.pug
Hi. My name is Daxian Zhao, I am a junior at FIT majoring in Fine Arts. This piece was created in the spring during the pandemic. Thus, I wanted Peach Blossom Spring to show the colors of spring and the expectation toward the gorgeous nature. Instagram: @dylanzhao_art
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AHMP Association
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John Paul Jang, AHMP ‘22 Coming back to campus from the pandemic, I barely knew anyone in my major at the beginning of my Senior year. The lack of physical presence in the community led to the absence of connection. I wanted to rebuild relationships and make strong bonds among colleagues through a student club despite the challenging time. I founded The Art History and Museum Professions Association in Spring 2022 to provide an outlet for students to socialize outside of academics and to have vigorous art conversations within the community. The club's mission is to bring awareness, news, and discussions of the contemporary art world to communities; continue rigorous art history-related discussions; and create professional development opportunities for students interested in gallery and museum professions.
tours, invited his colleagues to speak with us, and shared insights on various departments and operations of the museum complex. The group walked upstairs to the "staff-only" offices and had the opportunity to see behind the scenes of the Biological Anthropology Department with Sabrina Sholts, PhD, the Botany Department with Gary Krupnick, PhD, and the Exhibition Development Department with Natalie Rey. I am beyond thrilled to see how the students will bring this club together next year and onward!
On April 1st, the AHMP Association (AHMPA) had its first field trip to the Smithsonian Institution in Washington DC. Professor Alex Nagel, advisor of AHMPA and a Residential Research Associate at the National Museum of Natural History, chaperoned us on
Student Artworks
Obi Agwam, My Magnolia, 11” x 14”, Acrylic on canvas
Kailee Finn, Tyler, the Creator Portrait, 19” x 25”, Chalk pastel on pastel paper Kailee Finn is a sophomore at the Fashion Institute of Technology, majoring in Illustration. Most of Kailee’s artwork is black-centered and political. She specializes in portraiture.
My Magnolia is a portrait of a long-lost lover. The blue in the canvas represents tears, tears of pain and pleasure. I view love as a dichotomy of violence and tranquility. The abundance of magnolias in this painting represents dignity and respect. The flowers cover the body of the subject, blocking the viewer from seeing the subject as a whole. The pink and flowers are all symbols of love and passion. I view the work as a sort of practice piece, a preliminary exploration on the subject of love, and how to express that love through painting. Instagram: @obi.agwam
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Visual Resources News The Visual Resources unit serves the image, technology, and research needs of the History of Art Department. They find, describe, and digitize images, text, and video needed by faculty for teaching and research. These images are hosted on FITDIL, FIT’s Digital Image Library, and represent all major time periods, cultures, media, and geographic regions in the art history canon.
Announcing the Art History Insider Blog! The History of Art Department is pleased to announce the launch of our new blog, also entitled Art History Insider. Since our newsletter is published only once a year, we decided to begin this website to keep our community informed about our activities year round! We welcome anyone interested in contributing to the blog to get in touch with us. https://blog.fitnyc.edu/arthistory/ 955 Essays written 543 Authors contributing 43 Majors represented 28 Classes participating 6000 Visitors a day 5404 Sources in Zotero database
Visit the Visual Resources page
FIT Oral History Project
Are you an FIT alum? The FIT Oral History Project wants to hear from you! Together with Publishing Concepts, Inc. (PCI), the College is collecting stories about the FIT experience and also asking for updated contact information from past students. All of this information is solely for FIT use. We are excited to collect a vault of stories from alumni of all decades! To contribute your story and to update your contact information, please call 1-866-571-0464. If you have any questions, please contact alumnirelations@fitnyc.edu.
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Editorial Committee: Associate Professor Kyunghee Pyun, Assistant Professor Alexander Nagel Editor: Molly Schoen Graphic Design: Nanja Andriananjason History of Art Department SUNY Fashion Institute of Technology 227 W. 27th St. Business and Liberal Arts Center, Room B634 New York, NY 10001
Art History Insider The Annual Newsletter of FIT’s History of Art Department
(212) 217-4640 Visit the History of Art website
Whether you’re an alum with an exciting professional development to share, or a prospective student seeking more information about our Art History and Museum Professions major, we want to hear from you!
Chair: Associate Professor Justine De Young Assistant Chair: Assistant Professor Alexander Nagel Department Coordinator: Jennifer Fantozzi
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