Art History

• Jennie Castillo '07
• Emily Finan '17
• Hannah Karkari '19
• Robyn Turk '15
• Beth Wynne '19

Welcome Back Students—Come to a Networking Soirée, hosted by the Department of Art History. Business casual dress is encouraged.

This is Art History's third Soirée, happening on Thursday, September 18th at 6:30 PM.

This year, Art History students will meet at 6:30 PM in Smiley Art Building, Room 118A, for some remarks from Department Chair, Professor Keely Heuer.

Then at 7:00 PM the students will walk to the McKenna (College Theatre) Patio to join our guests for a Reception.

We've invited members of the local arts community, Art History alumnx, and faculty and campus staff from a variety of disciplines and administrative offices to join us. They want to afford our students a rare opportunity to engage in the kinds of conversations they'll certainly have going forward. Practicing networking now can build skills to spark meaningful professional relationships and expand connections in the real world later!

Remember, business casual dress is encouraged.

For any accessibility questions or necessary accommodations, please contact Department Chair, Keely Heuer, at (845) 257-3829 or heuerk@newpaltz.edu.

The final presentation of The Art History Association's 2024-2025 Lecture Series, focused on the connections between Art History and Disability Studies, continues with a discussion between Victoria St. George of SUNY New Paltz's Department of Communication Disorders, and Reva Wolf, Department of Art History.

These scholars will come together to discuss some of the fascinating ways deaf artists have created “visual sound.” They explore connections between art that evokes sound and the histories of sign language and of hearing artists’ conceptualizations of sonic imagery.

Reception ❖ Refreshments ❖ Free and Open to All

American Sign Language interpretation will be provided.

The Art History Association's 2024-2025 Lecture Series, focused on the connections between Art History and Disability Studies, continues with a presentation entitled,

"Down Below: Leonora Carrington's Journey Into Madness and Back” by Dr. Susan L. Aberth of Bard College

Dr. Aberth, who is Edith C. Blum Professor of Art History and Visual Culture & Coordinator of The Theology Program at Bard College in Annendale-on-Hudson, will discuss how the British Surrealist artist Leonora Carrington found herself alone in France after her partner, the artist Max Ernst, was taken away in 1940 to a camp during World War II. While journeying to Lisbon with friends, she suffered a psychotic break and was placed in a mental asylum in Santander, Spain. There, Carrington suffered a series of traumatic events and treatments. When released into the guardianship of her family, she escaped in a dramatic manner to New York City. This lecture relays her experiences and the visionary artwork and writings that followed, in particular, the written account of her descent into madness, Down Below, one of the first of its kind recorded by a woman. Dr. Aberth will also discuss the Surrealists’ ideas around madness, female hysteria, and the art of the “mentally ill."

In this talk, world-renowned scholar, author and curator, Dr. Gannit Ankori, examines how Frida Kahlo’s physical disabilities and her exceptional creative abilities, enabled Kahlo to powerfully transform trauma and loss into inspiring and pathbreaking art.

Please join the Department of Art History, Professor Reva Wolf, and students from our capstone course, Art History: Theories and Approaches, for a guest lecture by Daniel Belasco. Dr. Belasco, Executive Director of the Al Held Foundation and former curator at The Samuel Dorsky Museum of Art, will discuss his fascinating new book, Women Artists in Midcentury America: A History in Ten Exhibitions (University of Chicago Press, 2024), and its exciting contribution to the methodology of feminist art history.

We look forward to seeing you!

Choice Review

Women Artists in Midcentury America is a timely and essential contribution to art historical knowledge of women artists and the wide variety of institutions that supported them with all-women shows from 1943 to 1962.... it also puts many new artists, works of art, and exhibition venues on the scholarly radar.... Highly recommended.

Apologies. Due to a family emergency, Col Bogdanos's talk has been canceled. We hope to reschedule at a later date.

Thursday, October 10th at 7PM in SAB 118A, the Department of Art History is hosting its annual Internship Workshop! You'll learn all the tips and tricks YOU need to land a great internship in art history and related fields such as museums (all aspects), libraries, archives, galleries and more.

You don't have to be a declared Art History major/minor/or concentrator to come; there's lots of valuable information for all students considering an internship.

We'll hear from several of our current students and alumni about their experiences seeking out and landing internships. as well as Natalie Aguilar, the Manager of the Internship Program at the Brooklyn Museum, about how museums select student applicants for internship opportunities.

Refreshments will be served too!

Students - Come to a Networking Soirée, hosted by the Department of Art History. Business casual dress is encouraged.

Looking to meet new people? Practice networking and polish your conversation skills? You can do it - all in a relaxed no-judgment zone with other students.

Plus, we've invited members of the local arts community, Art History alumnx, and faculty and campus staff from a variety of disciplines and administrative offices to join us. They want to afford you a rare opportunity to engage in the kinds of conversations that you'll certainly have going forward. Practicing your networking skills now can help you spark meaningful professional relationships and expand your network of connections in the real world later.

Refreshments will be served!

For any accessibility questions or necessary accommodations, please contact Department Chair, Keely Heuer, at (845) 257-3829 or heuerk@newpaltz.edu.

Dinner for students followed by a virtual panel of recent Art History Alumnx.

• Abby Duckor '11 (Art Conservator in LA)
• Emily Harr '18 (Accessibility Associate at The Metropolitan Museum of Art)
• Rose Ingerman '14 (Librarian)
• Aisha Muhammad '12 (PhD student in Art History)
• Em Wallshein '17 (Lawyer)

Please join Erin Grant (enrolled member of the Colorado River Indian Tribes) and Assistant Curator of Native American Art at the Portland Art Museum in a conversation about her experience navigating Indigenous community outreach and museum-wide repatriation efforts in her new role. The discussion will cover Erin's outreach methodology, relationship building and community collaboration for the contemporary Native American art exhibition Jeffrey Gibson: They Come From Fire, and her work in the repatriation of Indigenous sacred and cultural items.

As Native / Indigenous peoples and their artistic expressions and voices become more of a national and international interest during this DEAI era, many museums and galleries are renovating or creating space for this necessary inclusion. Opening nearly thirty-five years ago, the Eiteljorg Museum of Indianapolis, Indiana, has prioritized its mission to share the stories of Native / Indigenous peoples of the U.S. and Canada. Indiana, a home to several tribes and a site of relocation for others, is not typically considered a Native or Indigenous space. Who defines what or where is Native / Indigenous space? And what makes the Eiteljorg so special?

About the Speaker

Dorene Red Cloud is an enrolled citizen of the Oglala Sioux Tribe. She received her Master of Arts in American Indian Studies at the University of California, Los Angeles, Bachelor of Fine Arts in Ceramics at the University of Michigan, and Associate of Fine Arts in Museum Studies at the Institute of American Indian Arts. Red Cloud worked at the National Museum of the American Indian, Smithsonian Institution as a Repatriation Research Specialist from 1999-2003. After a number of years spent working outside the museum field, she joined the Eiteljorg Museum as assistant curator of Native American art in October 2016 but since July 2022, she is the curator of Native American art. Originally, from Chicago, IL, Red Cloud currently resides in Indianapolis, IN, and when not working, she is either creating a new art piece or pursuing mid-century treasure hunts at a local yard sale or antique store.

Kathryn Bunn-Marcuse is Associate Professor of Native Art in the Division of Art History and Curator of Northwest Native Art at the Burke Museum at the University of Washington

Abstract:  Using buttons and beads sewn on wool and calico, Kwakwa̱ka̱’wakw women fashion the robes and aprons essential to ongoing expressions of inherited prerogatives and rights. Shifting the scholarly focus from the carved traditions in Northwest Coast art, this talk recenters the textile arts within a holistic culturally-focused context while addressing issues of gender, the effects of colonial practices, and the damage wrought by salvage anthropology as it fragmented cultural information across archives. Kwakwa̱ka̱’wakw women’s artistic productions embody long-held technical and aesthetic knowledge connected to oral histories and cultural practices.

Learn how to find and successfully apply to the right graduate programs for you!

The Department of Art History is holding its 2nd Annual Internship Workshop! You don't have to be a declared Art History major/minor/or concentrator to come, but it couldn't hurt!

Students who participated last year applied to summer and year-long internships and were wildly successful! You'll learn all the tips and tricks YOU need to land a great internship in art history and related fields such as museums (all aspects), libraries, archives, galleries and more!

We'll hear from several of our current students and alumni about their experiences seeking out and landing internships as well as feature the exciting opportunities available through the Global Engagement Program, which includes an internship component. An Art History alum participated in this program in 2016 and interned at the Rubin Museum of Art.

Light refreshments will be served too!

You are invited to an Art History Coffee Party with the faculty and staff and your fellow students at the home of Professor Emeritus, William B. Rhoads, next to campus. We are so grateful to Professor Rhoads for generously offering to host us! 
RSVP: Please respond by Monday, September 4 using this form: https://forms.office.com/r/9SdLCBKrxt

Space is limited! While primarily for art history majors, minors, and early childhood education concentrators, we encourage interested students from other majors to also attend!

Questions?  Please contact Susan Smutny at demaios@newpaltz.edu. If you have accessibility questions or require accommodations to fully participate in this off-campus event, please contact us as soon as possible.
We hope you'll join us!
Keely Heuer
Chair, Department of Art History

We are very grateful for the financial support of Campus Auxiliary Services that has made this important event possible. Please feel free to contact Art History Chair, Keely Heuer, at heuerk@newpaltz.edu or x3829 if you have any questions or if you wish to request accommodations.

Everyone is welcome to a fascinating demonstration of the tintype photographic process by photographer Tom DeLooza from preparation of the plate, to exposure, to development, and fixing.

This event is organized by Professor Beth E. Wilson in conjunction with her History of Photography class.

If you have accessibility questions or need accommodations to fully participate, contact Prof. Beth E. Wilson at wilsonb@newpaltz.edu or x 3896 as soon as possible.

Greetings everyone!

I am so delighted to welcome you to the fifth annual SUNY New Paltz Undergraduate Art History Symposium, which has again exceeded our wildest expectations since the event’s inception by the SUNY New Paltz Art History Association in 2018.

The response to 2023’s call for abstracts was astounding, and the leaders of the Art History Association, who selected this year’s papers through a blind review process, had quite the challenge, ultimately doubling the number of papers that were accepted for the Symposium in 2022.

To accommodate so many worthy student-scholars, we doubled up the sessions during many of our usual time slots and added a fourth day to the event.

The Presenters’ pages have links to the individual papers on their respective day’s schedule. Session Recordings will be availalbe from the Symposium website at the end of April 2023.

Òur Keynote Speaker was Dr. Aaron M. Hyman, Assistant Professor of the History of Art at Johns Hopkins University. He works on northern European art and the art of the Spanish Empire from a global perspective, with a focus on the long seventeenth century. His first book, Rubens in Repeat: The Logic of the Copy in Colonial Latin America (2021) explores the transmission of northern European prints to the Spanish Americas and the varying ways colonial artists engaged these materials. His talk for the Symposium is connected to his current book project—Formalities: The Visual Potential of Script in Art of the Early Modern Spanish World—that discusses the unusual quantity of written words on works of art created from c. 1540-1700 across the transatlantic Spanish Empire. Dr. Hyman has received many prestigious fellowships and awards for his scholarship, and we were delighted to have him share his innovative and exciting work with us.

The Symposium would not exist without our wonderful student presenters and their incredibly supportive faculty, family members, and friends. I am so grateful to all of you for making it possible to celebrate so much scholastic achievement. I also wish to express my deep appreciation for our excellent student moderators and for Susan Smutny, who provides us with such spectacular technical support. We truly had a memorable weekend, filled with thought-provoking ideas, engaging discussion, and many new friendships!

With warmest wishes,

Professor Keely Heuer
Chair, Department of Art History
SUNY New Paltz

Abstract:

Around 1608, Peter Paul Rubens produced an oil sketch of the face of a Black man, a head study that the Flemish artist would ultimately mobilize in a large painting of the Adoration of the Magi. To make the initial sketch, he reached for a sheet of merchant paper scrawled with a list of transactions—sums exchanged for goods received and shipped. It would be easy to wave this away as a case of simple, frugal reuse: the artist reached for what was at hand, readily and cheaply available. This talk, instead, argues that the sheet mattered quite a bit more and shaped not only Rubens’s aesthetic choices but also the thematic resonances that accreted around a figure that would play a large role in the artist’s career and pictorial imaginary.

About Dr. Hyman

Dr. Hyman, Assistant Professor of the History of Art at Johns Hopkins University, works on northern European art and the art of the Spanish Empire from a global perspective, with a focus on the long seventeenth century. His first book, Rubens in Repeat: The Logic of the Copy in Colonial Latin America (2021) explores the transmission of northern European prints to the Spanish Americas and the varying ways colonial artists engaged these materials. His talk for the Symposium is connected to his current book project—Formalities: The Visual Potential of Script in Art of the Early Modern Spanish World—that discusses the unusual quantity of written words on works of art created from c. 1540-1700 across the transatlantic Spanish Empire. Dr. Hyman has received many prestigious fellowships and awards for his scholarship, and we were delighted to have him share his innovative and exciting work with us.

Art History is hosting a Networking Soirée for art history majors, minors, and concentrators, this Thursday, March 30th in the Samuel Dorsky Museum of Art Lobby from 7:00-8:30PM!

This event is meant to help our students get over their jitters about talking to folks they do not know and to learn how to make meaningful connections with others that will help them achieve their future goals.

We encourage art history students to bring a friend with them (who does not have to be an art history major/minor/concentrator) to participate. Socialize and polish your networking skills with wonderful colleagues from across the campus., It should be a truly delightful event!

All current and prospective students are welcome to Careers in Art History 2023, an annual virtual panel discussion with young alumnx of the Art History Department at SUNY New Paltz.

Students can explore their career options with five alumnx who will share their experiences, accomplishments, and caveats during an informal, moderated discussion. A Q & A session will follow.

The Zoom meeting begins on Thursday, March 23, at 7:00 PM. Registration is required; use the QR code belor or go to the link on this page to register.

Our 2023 Careers Panelists are:

• Gabriel Chalfin-Piney '18 Arts Administrator, Organizer, & Artist, Chicago Area
• Sarah Fisk '14, Inventory Control Coordinator, UOVO Art Storage, Brooklyn
• Ameya Grant '18, Conservation of Historic and Artistic Works (MSc) and History of Art and Archaeology (MA) Dual Degree Student at The Conservation Center, Institute of Fine Arts-NYU
• Emily Koller-Apelskog '15, Fellows Program Coordinator, National Gallery of Art, Washington, DC
• Elva Rivera '16, Tattooer, Artist, Educator, & Organizer, Poughkeepsie

Student comments from a past Careers in Art History Panel:

• "It was very nice how intimate the event was. Awesome to be able to network beforehand."
• "More, More, More...please & Thank you!"
• "Very refreshing and innovative!"
• "It was definitely inspirational hearing the stories and careers of the alumni. It made me feel even more driven to pursue my passion of AH.

The Art History Association is pleased to announce the start of its spring lecture series, which focuses on Latin American and Latinx visual and material culture. We are kicking things off with a fantastic virtual talk by Dr. Anna Indych-López, Professor of Art History at the CUNY Graduate Center at 6:30 PM on Thursday, March 2nd via Zoom (Registration Required).

Dr. Indych-López’s talk, "Marías, Pachucas, Cholas: Judy Baca’s Chicana Tough Girls," will focus on Las Tres Marías, a performative work for the first known group exhibition of art made by Chicanas, held at the Woman’s Building in Los Angeles. In the nearly life-size mixed-media triptych, she invoked the figures of the pachuca (the 1940s Mexican American woman zoot suiter known for her distinctive style and resistance) and the chola (her 1970s streetwise counterpart).

Dr. Indych-López is a renowned scholar of modern and contemporary art among Latin American, U.S., transatlantic, Afro-diasporic, and Latinx networks. Her work investigates art in the public sphere, especially in Mexico, as well as Latinx and U.S.-Mexico borderlands contemporary art, focusing on cross-cultural intellectual and aesthetic exchanges, the polemics of realisms, and spatial politics.

All are welcome to attend the talk, but Zoom registration is required. Please register for the Zoom meeting with this QR code or click the link above. We hope to see you at this celebration of Chicana culture!

Following The Thread (2021, 22") provides a critical view of the delicate balance Indigenous communities of fabric makers face as they struggle to maintain age-old artisanal practices in a globalized market economy. Filmmaker Kathy Brew will give a presentation after the screening. A reception will follow the event. For questions and to request accommodations, please contact Chair of Art History, Keely Heuer heuerk@newpaltz.edu (845) 257-3829.

In the Peruvian Andes, textiles are omnipresent in the lives of indigenous people; they are both eminently practical and stunningly beautiful as generations of weavers have applied their creativity to invent techniques and designs found nowhere else in the world. Textiles still form a powerful part of identity. But this identity is at risk. Indigenous people still face racism on a daily basis. And a globalized market economy that produces cheap, machine-made products destroys respect and interest in the hand-made. Infringement on the intellectual rights of native peoples only makes this worse.

The Center for Traditional Textiles of Cusco (CTTC) was established by Andean weavers and their supporters to aid in the survival of Cusqueñan textile traditions and to provide support to the indigenous people who create them. This short film presents some of the communities affiliated with the Center and includes special celebrations and ceremonies, rituals with the animals (llamas and sheep), natural dying processes, weaving and knitting demonstrations, and much more.

Film Screening, Faculty-Led Discussion (February 8)
AND
Presentation by Tamara Lanier (February 9)

The Departments of Art History and Black Studies are pleased to invite you to an inspiring two-day event highlighting Tamara Lanier’s ongoing struggle to force Harvard University to cede possession of daguerreotypes of her great-great-great grandfather, an enslaved man named Renty. These early photographs, commissioned in 1850 by a Harvard professor to support his racist conclusions regarding the “superiority” of the white race, are emblematic of America’s failure to acknowledge fully the cruelty of slavery and the ongoing issues of racism and white supremacy today. On February 8th at 7 PM, we will offer a screening of the documentary film Free Renty: Lanier v. Harvard (2021, 95"), which was featured at prestigious film festivals across the country in 2022 and outlines Ms. Lanier’s story. This screening will be accompanied by contextualizing commentary from faculty representatives of the Department of Art History and Black Studies. On February 9th at 7 PM, we will have the pleasure of hearing from Ms. Lanier herself, who will give an in-person talk on what has happened in her case against Harvard since the filming of the documentary. Her presentation will be followed with a reception. Both events will be held in LC 104.

We are very grateful for the financial support of Campus Auxiliary Services that has made this important event possible. Please feel free to contact Art History Chair, Keely Heuer, at heuerk@newpaltz.edu or x3829 if you have any questions or if you wish to request accommodations.

The Art History Association and the Department of Art History are very pleased to announce a virtual address on April 7^th at 7 PM by Dr. Renée Ater, Provost Visiting Professor and Director of Africana Studies at Brown University, entitled Memoryscapes of Slavery: The Slave Dwelling as Remains and Commemorative Object.

This talk is the inaugural keynote address of the annual SUNY New Paltz Undergraduate Art History Symposium. The Symposium comprises eleven sessions over the three subsequent days, Friday, April 8^th through Sunday, April 10^th. The SUNY New Paltz Undergraduate Art History Symposium is the largest event of its kind in the United States, featuring talks from nearly one hundred students representing eighty collegiate institutions located across the globe.

The Symposium website schedule page to register for all other sessions as well as the Keynote, may be reached at  https://tinyurl.com/2022SNPUAHS-Session-Register.

Dr. Howie specializes in modern and contemporary art with an emphasis on the history and theory of photography. She co-edited,
with Ann Millett-Gallant, Disability and Art History (Routledge, 2016), which includes her essay “The Dandy Victorian: Yinka
Shonibare’s Allegory of Disability and Passing.”

Registration Required: https://suny-edu.zoom.us/meeting/register/ytuli6BDTwemjo0HtisydA

Abstract: Yinka Shonibare’s Diary of a Victorian Dandy, a series of five large Chromogenic photographs, depicts the revels of a black dandy holding court in a luxurious nineteenth-century manor, admired by ladies, gentleman, and servants alike. The serious subject matter of these charming and delightful images concerns two characteristics, one more visible than the other, that make Shonibare’s dandy quite unusual: the historical unlikelihood that a black dandy would be such a success in the Victorian era, and what is far less visible, the effects of Shonibare’s having contracted transverse myelitis as a teenager. This condition caused partial paralysis, leaving him at times in need of an electric wheelchair or cane, and with his head tipped permanently to the right. Rather than the paralysis and impairment with which he lives every day, Shonibare the dandy displays vigor, strength, fortitude, thwarting a pathological reading. He is the object of admiring gazes, not curious stares. To pass as non-disabled, to disavow a body with limitations, may seem to be a form of complicity with society’s biases. How, then, are we to read Shonibare’s simultaneously singling himself out as unique by appearing as a black Victorian dandy while apparently hiding the disability that is quite obvious in his everyday life? A dandy is the perfect vehicle for the recuperation of the gaze, for an expert managing of the spectacle of disability: the making of the dandy is accomplished through his powers of observation; the dandy’s keen scrutiny has made him who he is. Not only is he observed, but he observes as well, and clearly the importance of looking is emphasized in the Diary. Shonibare is quite deliberately playing with the issues of the gaze, the stare, and disability, and when society does and does not deem sustained looking acceptable. His exploration of dandified passing is not a reinvention of a self that denies another aspect of identity, but instead one that powerfully contests the containments of identity that so often structure how we think about each other.