Art History

Welcome To New Faculty Member, Dr. Elizabeth Lee!

For Fall 2024, the Department of Art History is thrilled to welcome Dr. Elizabeth Lee, our newest faculty member who will teach courses in Asian art. She completed her PhD in East Asian art history and archaeology, as well as her Master of Arts, from NYU's Institute of Fine Arts; and her bachelor of arts degree from the University of Notre Dame. Most recently, she was a post-doctoral teaching fellow in the school of Liberal Studies at NYU. She also has served as a visiting research scholar at the Dunhuang Academy in Gansu, China; a curator to a private gallery in Seoul, South Korea; and as a volunteer research associate at the National Palace Museum in Taipei, Taiwan.

Dr. Lee's research specialization is East Asian Buddhist art with a focus on medieval stone sculpture from Korea and China. Her work incorporates digital humanities methodologies and new materialism frameworks. She is deeply invested in promoting interdisciplinary pedagogies and community engagement in the arts. 

Christopher Daly Among SUNY New Paltz's 40 Under Forty

Christopher Daly ’12 was honored as one of 2024's 40 Under Forty list by the Office of Alumni Relations. Daly is currently the 2021-24 David E. Finley Fellow at the Center for Advanced Study in the Visual Arts, National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C. After graduating from New Paltz in 2012 with a BA in art history, he completed an MA in art history at Ohio University (2015) and a PhD in art history at Johns Hopkins University (2023).

As an art historian, Daly specializes in Italian Renaissance painting, primarily the artists and workshops of late 15th-century Tuscany. His research has been supported by the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Walters Art Museum, and the National Gallery of Art, and has appeared in several international journals. Daly also recently received a post-doctoral fellowship from the Metropolitan Museum of Art for 2024-25.

"Chris is a wonderful person as well as a gifted and dedicated scholar with a unique talent that has been recognized through his having been awarded highly competitive fellowships and his publication record, remarkable for someone at this early stage in their career and a manifestation of the respect he has earned of his colleagues," wrote Professor Reva Wolf in her nomination of Daly to the 40 Under Forty list. "His career up to now provides a vivid example of how the opportunities of a public university can make a positive difference in a student’s future."

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April 11 through April 14, 2024—6th Annual SUNY New Paltz Undergraduate Art History Symposium

From Thursday, April 11 through Sunday, April 14, The Department of Art History and The Art History Association invite you to join us for the 2024 SUNY New Paltz Undergraduate Art History Symposium! This event has grown from its origins as a one-day get-together in 2019 to a four-day celebration of forward-thinking scholarship by the rising generation of art historians. Over 150 student-scholars will share their work with us this year, representing colleges and universities from across the globe.

We have such an exciting line-up of sessions, including an incredible keynote address on Thursday, April 11 at 7:00 PM (ET) by Corine Wegener, director of the Smithsonian Cultural Rescue Initiative, as well as a workshop to help student-scholars publish their work in undergraduate journals!

For more information, go to the website at 

https://hawksites.newpaltz.edu/2024arthistorystudentsymposium/

or view the PDF of the Full Schedule for 2024 SUNY New Paltz Undergraduate Art History Symposium.

Professor Kerry Dean Carso discusses ornamental architecture in early America for “The Academic Minute”

Listen to Carso's ”Academic Minute” in its entirety at this link.

Kerry Dean Carso, Professor in the Department of Art History, became the latest SUNY New Paltz faculty member to share research with radio audiences on the nationally syndicated program “The Academic Minute.”

Carso’s segment draws on her studies of “Follies in America”: small architectural structures that were popular among English and American aristocrats in the 18^th and 19^th centuries.

“Designed to mimic the architecture of the past, follies sparked reveries about history and the passage of time,” Carso says in the broadcast. “The name ‘follies’ derives from the apparent uselessness of these buildings in that they were primarily garden ornaments and belvederes or lookout towers, allowing their owners to survey the land that comprised their hereditary wealth.”

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Fran Smulcheski Exhibition “Silent Voices Echo” on view through Oct. 14 at the Sojourner Truth Library

As a photographer, Fran Smulcheski ‘87g (Photography & Related Media) seeks to illuminate the social conditions of wherever she travels, and her latest endeavor offers an evocative glimpse into child exploitation practices in Pakistan.

In her new exhibition, SILENT VOICES ECHO: The working children of Pakistan, on view through Oct. 14 at the Sojourner Truth Library, Smulcheski teams with Habbat Shah of Pakistan’s Balochistan University of Information Technology, Engineering, and Management Sciences to showcase photographic documentation of child labor in the region, juxtaposed with historic images of U.S. child labor.

Smulcheski, retired faculty (Art History) and staff member in the Dean's Office of the School of Fine & Performing Arts, is hoping the exhibition will invite viewers “to consider the value of labor vs. education in Pakistan…and to acknowledge the exploitation of American children for cheap labor in its historically documented past,” as written in the exhibition statement.

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Digging This Summer: Brooke Cammann ’23 travels to Italy for excavation project

August 16, 2022

Brooke Cammann (Art History; Chemistry) fell in love with Italian art history as a first-year student in the SUNY New Paltz Honors Program, but it took until 2022 for her to fully capitalize on that interest with an international research experience.  

“I saw a flyer on studying art history in Italy, and I was immediately intrigued,” said Cammann, who hails from Croton-on-Hudson, New York. “After doing my own research, I learned that you could pursue a career in conservation with an art history degree. For three years, I waited to study abroad because I knew Italy would be the place to pursue art conservation.”  

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Art History Professor Reva Wolf organizes international Warhol symposium at UPenn

SUNY New Paltz Professor Reva Wolf is the key organizer of an international symposium, “Translating Warhol,” which will serve as a venue for exploring how Andy Warhol’s artistic vision has moved across international boundaries, and how his work has been received outside America.

“Translating Warhol” will be held June 23 and 24 at the Kislak Center for Special Collections, Rare Books and Manuscripts in the Van Pelt-Dietrich Library Center at the University of Pennsylvania. It is supported by a generous grant from the Terra Foundation for American Art. The event is free and can be attended in person or virtually, but registration is required.

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Professor Wolf Organizes "Translating Warhol" Symposium & Exhibition at UPenn

The Penn Libraries is pleased to announce that it will host an international symposium, “Translating Warhol,” supported by a generous grant from the Terra Foundation for American Art. “Translating Warhol” will be held June 23 and 24, 2022, in the Class of ‘78 Pavilion at the Kislak Center for Special Collections, Rare Books and Manuscripts in the Van Pelt-Dietrich Library Center at the University of Pennsylvania.

Andy Warhol is one of the most influential artists of the twentieth century, and a vast global literature about Warhol and his work exists. Yet almost nothing has been written about the role of translations of his words in his international reputation. “Translating Warhol” aims to fill this gap, developing the topic in multiple directions and in the context of the reception of Warhol’s work in various countries. The numerous translations of Warhol’s writings, words, and ideas offer a fertile case study of how American art was, and is, viewed from the outside.

The symposium is free and open to the public, but registration is required. It is an in-person event with the option for audience members to attend virtually. For a full schedule of topics and speakers and links to register for either in-person or online attendance, click here. We hope to welcome many of you to the University of Pennsylvania June 23 and 24 for this exciting program!

From the Penn Libraries Press Release:

The “Translating Warhol” program has been organized by Reva Wolf, Professor of Art History at the State University of New York at New Paltz. Professor Wolf has produced groundbreaking work on Warhol, including the book Andy Warhol, Poetry, and Gossip in the 1960s (1997) and essays on Warhol’s interviews (2004) and books (2013). She has organized, together with her students, two exhibitions of the artist’s work: Andy Warhol: Private and Public in 151 Photographs (2010) and Marking Time: Andy Warhol’s Vision of Celebrations, Commemorations, and Anniversaries (2018). Her recent study, co-authored with Kou Huaiyu, “Cosmic Jokes and Tangerine Flake: Translating Andy Warhol's POPism,” published in Complementary Modernisms in China and the United States (2020) and based on a Terra Foundation-sponsored conference paper, planted the seed for the “Translating Warhol” project.

A complementary exhibition, Translations of Warhol, featuring published translations of the artist’s words, and organized by Professor Wolf, will be on view in the Snyder-Granader Study Alcove at the Kislak Center. A highlight of this exhibition is the distinctive book that accompanied the 1968 Stockholm exhibition, which features a sequence of statements by or attributed to Warhol, side-by-side in English and Swedish—an early and interesting example of the translation of his words.

Read the Full Penn Libraries Press Release with more Events, Exhibitions, and Information Here

Art History Associate Professor Keely Heuer is the 2022 Mentor of the Year

In a time-honored tradition, Associate Professor of Art History Keely Heuer was awarded this year’s Undergraduate Research Mentor of the Year.

Throughout her tenure, Heuer has worked to make the Art History Department into a supportive home for scholars. She helped create and expand the annual Undergraduate Art History Symposium, which has grown from humble origins to become a major international showcase. It is the only undergraduate symposium of its kind based in the United States. 

“I feel so fortunate to be in a place with such fabulous students,” said Heuer. “They make my life so interesting and well-rounded. It’s a joy to have these opportunities to do things with them beyond the standard classroom.” 

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Saving Art, Theme of The Art History Association's 2021 Fall Lecture Series, Begins October 21

October 15, 2020

The theme of this year’s talks – which will be held on Oct. 21, Oct. 26 and Nov. 2 – is “Saving Art: Conservation, Ethics, and Activism.” All three guest speakers are New York City-based professionals and educators working in art history and conservation. Read more

Art History Association Inaugurates Programming for 2019-2020 on the theme "Art and Fashion" with talk, The Globetrotting Chinese Shawl

Our active, innovative student group, The Art History Association, inaugurates its programming on the theme, "Art and Fashion," for the 2019-2020 academic year, with a talk by Hunter College scholar, Tara Zanardi, entitled, “The Globetrotting Chinese Shawl: Embroidering Identity in Spain and the Americas.”

The mantón de Manila, an embroidered silk shawl made exclusively for export, traversed the globe from China to the Americas and Spain beginning in the late eighteenth century. The shawl was incorporated into Spanish, Mexican, and Peruvian female dress, and, by the 1830s, became a staple garment in nineteenth-century imagery, from paintings and prints to posters, postcards, and advertisements. As an object on the move, the Chinese shawl transformed sartorial customs in Spain and the Americas. That artists depicted female types wearing the mantón, highlighting it as fundamental to their visual construction, implicates this global traveler as a vital ingredient in the formation of women’s identity. As a material embodiment of cultural contact and global commerce, the mantón offers a rich opportunity to consider shifts in visual constructions of femininity and the complexities of modernity.

Tuesday, November 19^th at 7 PM in the CSB Auditorium – Tara Zanardi of Hunter College

Free and Open to All.

Professor of Asian Art at UPenn to Speak on Chinese Architecture

Professor Nancy Steinhardt, Professor of Asian Art at the University of Pennsylvania will give a talk entitled, The Borders of Chinese Architecture. The talk is free and open to all and will be held, Wednesday, October 30 at 5 pm in Science Hall, Room 181.

Chinese architecture is found not only in China, Korea, Japan, and Mongolia, but much farther West. This lecture defines what a Chinese building is, investigating structures that look like Chinese buildings to explore why so many seem so similar. The subject is explored through a tomb structure found from Gansu to Korea, through paintings of Chinese buildings in tombs built for non Chinese occupants, and through a few decorative motifs that appear in murals and textiles across Asia.

Sponsored by the Art History Department and the Asian Studies Program, with generous financial support from Campus Auxiliary Services.

If you have accessibility questions or require accommodations to fully participate in this event, please contact the event organizer Elizabeth Brotherton at brothere@newpaltz.edu prior to the event.

Art History professor discusses ancient Greek ceramics on “Academic Minute”

August 22, 2018

Assistant Professor Keely Heuer was the latest SUNY New Paltz faculty member to share her research and insight with national radio audiences on the syndicated program, “The Academic Minute.”

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Professor Reva Wolf Awarded CASVA Fellowship

Reva Wolf has been awarded the Ailsa Mellon Bruce Visiting Senior Fellowship from the Center for Advanced Study in the Visual Arts at the National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C. The two-month residential fellowship includes housing, office space and support, and a $7000 stipend. Professor Wolf will be in residence at CASVA between June 15 and August 15, 2017, where she will work on her ongoing project about Francisco de Goya and Freemasonry.

2017 Art History Association Symposium on African Art

The Art History Department is delighted to present the Media Site recording of the Art History Association's 2017 Spring Symposium, Studies in African Art: A Symposium Commemorating Hugo Munsterberg's Legacy. We hope that anyone who was not able to attend the event, including the many art and art history alumni who were influenced by and remember Dr. Munsterberg fondly, will enjoy these interesting talks, coordinated with the speakers' PowerPoint slides.

Featured are opening remarks by Professor Emerita Jaimee Uhlenbrock and talks by alumna, Dr. Christine Mullen Kreamer, and Dr. Ikem Okoye of the University of Delaware. Click this link and Media Site will open the event recording in a new window.

Art History Department honors founder at African Art symposium

May 3, 2017

The Art History Association at SUNY New Paltz held its marquee spring event, “Studies in African Art: a Symposium Commemorating Hugo Munsterberg’s Legacy,” on April 6.

The event was the culmination of a year-long programming cycle commemorating the centennial of Hugo Munsterberg (1916-1995), who founded the Art History department and taught courses on world art during the 1950s, ‘60s and ’70s.

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Alumni Invited to AHA Symposium Honoring Hugo Munsterberg

March 17, 2017

The Art History Department is pleased to announce the Art History Association’s spring event, “A Symposium Commemorating Hugo Munsterberg's Legacy.”  This event culminates a yearlong celebration of the life of Dr. Hugo Munsterberg (1916-1995), founder of the Art History Department at SUNY New Paltz, on the 100^th anniversary of his birth.  Many of you will remember Dr. Munsterberg whose classes on Asian art (his specialty) and World art are legendary.  He taught Art History at New Paltz from 1958 to 1978.

The symposium will take place on Thursday, April 6, 2017 at 7 pm in the Coykendall Science Building Auditorium...

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Art History Professor Emeritus Gives Talk at Walters Panel Discussion

March 11, 2017

Professor Emeritus William B. Rhoads spoke today in a panel for the Dorsky Museum on Carl Walters, held in the Student Union Building, room 62/63. His subject was the ceramic artist's connection to Maverick-Woodstock Architecture.

Other panelists included Tom Folk, Caroline Hannah, Martin Eidelberg, moderated by exhibition curator, Tom Wolf. The discussion was followed by a brief tour of the exhibition Carl Walters and Woodstock Ceramic Arts, led by Tom Wolf.

Art History Museum Studies Students Involved in Lonnie Schlein Photography Show

February 23, 2017

by Sam Manzella, The New Paltz Oracle

Photojournalist Lonnie Schlein worked as a photo editor at The New York Times for over 35 years, including a tenure as photo editor of the newspaper’s “A Nation Challenged” section in the months following the September 2001 terrorist attacks.

Now, the former photo editor resides in Cuddebackville, New York with his family and photographs heartbreaking social issues on volunteer trips around the world. Schlein’s work is taking center stage in this month’s exhibition at Roost Studios in New Paltz, with a little help from art history students at SUNY New Paltz...

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Roost on Main: College forging new partnerships with village art gallery

February 23, 2017

A new artists’ collective in the heart of downtown New Paltz is emerging as a focal point of creative activity in the region, and students at SUNY New Paltz are taking notice.

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Art History Alumni Fondly Recall Dr. Hugo Munsterberg

October 15, 2016

by Melanie Zerah, The New Paltz Oracle, posted October 20, 2016

A small, pleasantly-lit room in the Samuel Dorsky Museum of Art welcomed passionate alumni brimming with stories to share of the late Hugo Munsterberg, Professor Emeritus of Art History at the SUNY New Paltz from 1958-1979.

On Oct. 15 at 3 p.m., Associate Professor of the Department of Art History Elizabeth Brotherton facilitated a discussion for SUNY New Paltz alumni proceeding the gallery talk, “All Excess Stripped Away: Donations to the Dorsky Museum by Hugo Munsterberg.”

The intimate event was held in the seminar room of the Dorsky, where approximately 20 alumni gathered for some well-described nostalgia.

Brotherton began the discussion by introducing a subject many art historians debate upon: What is a better way of viewing art: through a generalist or formalist lens?

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Hudson Hewn: New York Furniture Now

Saturday, April 16, 2016 - Sunday, August 14, 2016
10 a.m. - 5 p.m.
Boscobel House & Gardens
Garrison, NY

SUNY New Paltz Art History adjunct, Jennifer Carlquist, organized this special exhibition at Boscobel House and Gardens, where she works as Curator.

Hudson Hewn: New York Furniture Now "explores the dynamic and ongoing tradition of making furniture in the Hudson Valley." The recent work will be incorporated "in period interiors throughout the 1804-08 mansion," renowned for its permanent collection of ca. 1810-1820 New York furniture by Duncan Phyfe and his contemporaries.

Read more at the Boscobel Site...

Michael Robbins, “Wickson” chair, 2015, lent by Michael Robbins 
Photo: Robert Penner Photography

Warhola Talk Available Now on Media Site

April 15, 2016

On Thursday, April 14, noted author and illustrator, James Warhola, shared his wonderful stories and personal insights about his uncle, Pop Art artist Andy Warhol. The talk was organized by Warhol scholar, Art History Professor Reva Wolf.

Mr. Warhola graciously spent time speaking with students, faculty and community members who stayed for refreshments, signing copies of his books Uncle Andy's Cats and Uncle Andy's: A Faabbbulous Visit with Andy Warhol. To view the talk in its entirety, go to Media Site.

From Warhola to Warhol

Thursday, April 14, at 5 p.m.

Coykendall Science Building Auditorium

Mr. Warhola will talk about his uncle, Andy Warhol. This event is free and open to all. Co-sponsored by the Art History Association and generously supported by Campus Auxiliary Services.

Art History and FUEL sponsors master class and lecture on ancient figurine puppetry

March 16, 2016

The SUNY New Paltz School of Fine & Performing Art has launched a new FUEL Guest Artist and Scholar Fund, with a mission of connecting students, alumni, faculty, staff and local community members with working artists and experts for on-campus events.
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The Greeks in Ancient Italy: Academic Orientation

March 10, 2016

Professor Keely Heuer recently hosted an academic orientation for her Summer 2016 On-Site Studies in Art History Abroad course, The Greeks in Ancient Italy.
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