Art History

Mya Bailey '22

Mya graduated with a degree in Art History and a minor in History. They are currently pursuing an MA in Decorative Arts, Design History, and Material Culture from the Bard Graduate Center in New York City. They want to utilize objects, concerned with both their materiality and display, to explore the intricacies of Black history and Afrofuturism, as well as intersections of horology, pedagogy, and designs of oppressive systems. Mya also holds a visitor experience position at Cooper Hewitt, the Smithsonian Design Museum.

Steve Baltsas '23

Steven earned a BA summa cum laude in Art History and English in May. This past summer, he relocated to northern Delaware to begin his graduate studies in the University of Delaware’s Winterthur Program in American Material Culture. Outside his classes, he spends most of his time on-site at the Winterthur Museum, Garden and Library studying its renowned collection of 17th–early 19th century decorative arts and engaging with visitors. In October, part of his undergraduate research was published in The Hudson River Valley Review. His article, “Windridge, Bengenone, and Architect George E. Harney’s Early Career around Newburgh Bay, 1863–1873,” provides an overview of two country houses and their designer’s career beginnings in the Hudson Highlands region. A continuing project, Steven first presented this work at the 2021 SUNY New Paltz Undergraduate Art History Symposium.

Debra (Kramer) Branitz '73

Debra, who graduated with a BS in Art Education and a minor in Art History, is currently exhibiting her oil paintings at The Posh Gallery and The Heart of Delray Gallery, both in Delray Beach, FL. Her work is also included in Vol. 8 of International Contemporary Masters.

Elizabeth Calhoun '92

After graduating from New Paltz with an Art History major, Betsy attended SUNY Albany for graduate coursework in Public History. Concurrent with her New Paltz enrolment she worked at state and local history sites, then as museum registrar for Roosevelt-Vanderbilt National Historic Sites, and as a board member of Friends of Historic Kingston. She returned with her husband to their home state of Michigan in 1995, where she was Assistant Director/Education Director of the Plymouth Community Arts Council for five years and president of the Cobblestone Farm [museum] Association in Ann Arbor for a number of years.

Betsy is currently Chair of the Historic Preservation Commission of Livonia (member since 2018), and founding member (2015) of the Greenleaf Commission on Sustainability (because historic preservation IS sustainable!). She serves as vice president of the Livonia Youth Symphony Orchestra, and is an active member of Friends of Livonia Arts. Betsy finally returned to visit old sites and friends in the Hudson Valley in 2018 (including Art History Professor Emeritus Bill Rhoads) with her husband and two children in tow. Coming full circle, her oldest child just graduated from college in 2023 with her sights set on working in museum collections!

Charlotte Calmer '22

Charlotte graduated with a BA in Art History in 2022, and is currently pursuing an Masters in Library Science at Queens College. Over the summer, she was the Archives Intern at the Brooklyn Museum, which worked out so well that she was hired for the full-time position of Library and Archives Assistant there!

Brooke Cammann '23

In May Brooke graduated summa cum laude with a dual degree in Art History and Chemistry and a minor in Italian Studies. In her final semester at New Paltz, she completed and presented her Honors thesis entitled, "Evolving Methodologies: The Conservation of Ancient Bronzes in China and Italy," which encapsulated her interest in art conservation. Brooke was also recognized as a Distinguished Senior in Student Affairs and an Outstanding Graduate in both the Chemistry and Art History Departments. For six weeks during the summer, Brooke returned to the Poggio Civitate Archaeological Project in Tuscany, Italy, to work in the conservation lab for six weeks. Brooke is working towards entering a graduate program for art conservation.

Jennie (Enright) Castillo '07

Since graduating from New Paltz with majors in Art History and Photography, Jennie furthered her academic pursuits with an MA in Art History at Queens College and now has her dream job as Curator of the University Art Collection and Gallery Director at Villanova University.

New Paltz was where Jennie's passion for art history started, marked by internships at the Samuel Dorsky Museum of Art and the Center for Photography at Woodstock. While pursuing her masters, she worked her way up to the role of director for a private art dealer on the Upper East Side where she worked for almost a decade. During that time, she also contributed as a researcher for the television series, Art Attack with Lee Sanstead, hosted by a former New Paltz art history adjunct professor of Greek art. Following that she found herself at an art technology start-up called ARTDAI.

For the past two and a half years, Jennie has been at Villanova University organizing five to six exhibitions a year, trying to get a community of students interested in art, and protecting a collection of almost 10,000 art objects. She is always interested in connecting or brainstorming and can be reached at jennie.castillo@villanova.edu.

Gabriel Chalfin-Piney '18

Gabriel, who graduated New Paltz with a BA in Art History and minor in Studio Art and went on to earn a master in Arts Administration and Policy from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, was hired in 2023 as the Senior Instructional Program Manager at Urban Gateways. In this position Gabriel works collaboratively with in- and out-of-school and community-based programs to play an instrumental role engaging in dynamic arts experiences for Urban Gateways participants in Chicago. Gabriel works closely with artists providing support, care, professional development, and resources to ensure their success. Additionally, Gabriel supervises artist recruitment, onboarding and community partnerships. In 2023, Gabriel founded the Jewish Museum of Chicago. Follow @jewishmuseumchicago or email jewishmuseumchicago@gmail.com for updates.

Robert Randolf Coleman ‘70

Graduating from New Paltz with a BA in Art History, Dr. Coleman earned his MA and PhD from the University of Chicago. He is Professor Emeritus of Renaissance and Baroque Art History at the University of Notre Dame in Indiana.

His scholarship focuses primarily on Italian art from the sixteenth through the eighteenth centuries. He has written on the art of sixteenth-century Lombardy and Piedmont, and has worked extensively on Italian old master drawings, including those in the collection of the Snite Museum of Art, University of Notre Dame, published in A Corpus of Drawings in Midwestern Collections: Sixteenth-Century Italian Drawings. 2 vols., 2008 and 2010. He co-curated, The Art of Disegno: Italian Prints and Drawings from the Georgia Museum of Art, with Babette Bohn, an exhibition that was shown at the Snite Museum of Art in 2009. For the Georgia Museum of Art, he initiated and co-curated, Master, Pupil, Follower: 16th- to 18th-Century Italian Works on Paper, an exhibition of Italian old master drawings and prints (Dec. 21-2019 - Mar. 8, 2020) with accompanying catalog. His monograph, The Ambrosiana Albums of Giambettino Cignaroli (1706-1770): A Critical Catalogue (2011), offers a critical analysis and evaluation of the graphic works of an important eighteenth-century Veronese painter, and he has contributed thirteen catalog essays on diverse Italian Baroque drawings in Seventeenth-Century European Drawings in Midwestern Collections: The Age of Bernini, Rembrandt, and Poussin, edited by Shelley Perlove and George S. Keyes (University of Notre Dame Press, 2014). He is also the author and Project Director of the Inventory-Catalog of the Drawings in the Biblioteca Ambrosiana, Milan, an on-going website inventory with scanned images. The Ambrosiana Project is housed in the Medieval Institute of the University of Notre Dame, which conserves a photographic archive of drawings and manuscripts in the Biblioteca Ambrosiana. Dr. Coleman lectures on the Renaissance in Florence, Rome, Venice, and Northern Italy, as well as on the Italian Baroque. His seminars have focused on Italian Mannerism, Italian drawings (in conjunction with the Snite Museum), and on eighteenth-century European art with special attention given to important centers, such as Rome and Venice.

Dr. Coleman's latest exhibition, 16th to 18th-Century Italian Works on Paper from the Georgia Museum of Art, was on view from June to September 2023 at The Patricia & Phillip Frost Art Museum of Florida International University in Miami.

Christopher Daly '12

Chris, who earned a BA in Art History at New Paltz, had an eventful 2023! In the fall, he finished his PhD in Art History at Johns Hopkins University by successfully defending his dissertation, "Painting in Lucca in the Late Fifteenth Century: A Problem in Artistic Geography," which was granted with distinction.

Chris published an article in the Italian journal, Paragone Arte ("Tra Lucca e Faenza: precisazioni e aggiunte per Michelangelo Membrini, Giovanni Battista Bertucci e Vincenzo Frediani"), plus an entry on a pair of panels by Vincenzo Civitali—co-authored with Riccardo Massagli—in La Raccolta d’Arte della Fondazione Cassa di Risparmio di Lucca, vol. 2 (Lucca: Maria Pacini Fazzi Editore, 2022). Chris spent some time over the summer as Guest Curator at the Indianapolis Museum of Art, researching their Early Italian paintings. After living in Florence, Italy, for the first half of 2023, Chris is now in residence as the David E. Finley Fellow at the Center for Advanced Study in the Visual Arts at the National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C. Chris writes, "While there, I'll develop some research from my dissertation for publication and complete a few additional articles I've been working on—looking forward to what's next!"

Ameya Grant '18

Ameya recently completed her dual MS/MA degree in the Conservation of Historic and Artistic Art Works and History of Art & Archaeology from the New York University Institute of Fine Arts Conservation Center in Spring 2023. She joined the conservation team responsible for the renovation of the Ancient Near East and Cypriot galleries as an Assistant Conservator at The Metropolitan Museum of Art in April. Currently, she is working on the multiband imaging (MBI) of the Assyrian Sculpture Court containing reliefs excavated from the Northwest Palace of King Ashurnasirpal II.

Jorell Herrera '23

Jorell graduated with a BA magna cum laude in History and a minor in Art History. He was awarded the Lifchez/Stronach Nine-Month Curatorial Internship at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, where he has worked in the Egyptian Department. Jorell shares details of his experience at the Met:

“Since starting my internship at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in June of last year, I've undertaken several projects here in the Egyptian Department that will hopefully contribute to the public's understanding of much of our displayed art. I've been working with one of our department curators on creating a shelf list for a gallery consisting of over 2300 objects to aid in the yearly inventory of our collection. I've also been working with my departmental supervisor on the interpretive re-planning of one of our current galleries by proofreading new labels and observing how the public currently engages with the gallery to assess how to better present the objects and their relevant information. I've also contributed two posts to one of the museums Instagram accounts (@metancient) to help drive up digital engagement with our objects.... I've thoroughly enjoyed my time here at the Met and I've learned so much from so many museum professionals from a variety of departments both here and from other institutions. I feel that I have learned and developed a skillset that has helped inform what I want to pursue in the field of museum studies long-term and I will certainly look back on this internship as having been an invaluable source of experience as I eventually move on to other opportunities!"

In November, he traveled outside of the U.S. for the very first time to go on an institution-funded study trip to Italy where he spent a week visiting numerous archaeological sites and museums to broaden his understanding of how cultural heritage institutions outside of the U.S. organize/curate their collections.

Julie Maresco '12

Julie got her BA in Art History from SUNY New Paltz in 2012 and her MA in Public History and Historic Preservation from Middle Tennessee State University in 2017.

While studying for her master’s degree, Julie worked in collections management at the Albert Gore Research Center, the Parthenon Museum, Traveller's Rest Historic House Museum, and the Tennessee State Archives in Nashville. She also presented her work at the Tennessee Association of Museums conference in Knoxville and the Oral History Association conference in Los Angeles.

She moved back to New York after finishing graduate school and worked as a Historical Interpreter at Olana State Historic Site in Hudson. She then worked in development at the Berkshire Museum.

Julie is currently employed with the New York Office of State Parks, Recreation, and Historic Preservation and is also a Correspondent Docent for the DAR Museum in Washington, D.C., giving remote and in-person presentations on their collections and exhibitions.

Aisha Muhammad '12

Since graduating with a double major in Art History and History, Aisha completed an MA in Modern and Contemporary Art History, Theory and Criticism at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago in 2015. Aisha is currently a sixth year PhD candidate in the Department of Art and Art History at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, where her research focuses on contemporary Congolese art, particularly within the context of landscape and ruination.

Danielle Pastore '17

Danielle, who earned a dual degree in Visual Arts Education and Visual Arts with a minor in Art History reports: “I am in my sixth year of teaching art (five years in the New York City Public Schools). I love incorporating art history into my lessons. Since graduating, I have also travelled the world and taken selfies with a lot of famous artworks. Seeing artworks in person that I once learned about in my art history classes at SUNY New Paltz is always an incredible experience!”

Anne Rich '13

Anne earned her BA in Art History from New Paltz in 2013. During her tenure as the Art History Association’s Lecturer Liaison, she was introduced to the Thomas Cole National Historic Site, where she subsequently served as a Cole Research Fellow. Her research concentrated on the environmental influences shaping Thomas Cole’s artistic expressions, particularly his adept use of editing techniques to craft an "ideal" landscape. In 2015, Anne assumed the role of Development and VIP Sales Associate at Museum Hack, a distinguished tour company and museum consultant. During that time, Museum Hack's NYC tours reached #11 on Tripadvisor's Things to do in NYC list.

Driven by reflection and renewed commitment to public service, Anne enrolled in the Master of Arts in Teaching Program at Binghamton University, from which she graduated in December 2019 with a Dual Teaching Certification in Social Studies 7-12 and Visual Arts K-12. Transitioning into the education sector, Anne joined Maine-Endwell School District in 2019, where she currently imparts knowledge as an eighth-grade Social Studies teacher and school musical director. Go Spartans, and go Hawks!

Dawn Ruhren '23

Dawn was a 2023 President's Award recipient and an Outstanding Graduate in Early Childhood Education, with an Art History Concentration, and a minor in Studio Art with summa cum laude honors. She now works in School and Family Programs at the Brooklyn Museum giving gallery guided tours for school groups, and working on other programmatic responsibilities. Dawn writes, "Specifically, I provide support and create programming for Sunday Art, Family Art Magic, and Meet the Museum aimed at young children and their families. On top of this, I am in the process of developing the museum's first-ever family guide with the rest of the family programs. Along with the development of the guide, I am researching how incorporating universal design principles into activities for the family guide affects the experience for neurodiverse individuals visiting BKM. My findings will be presented in June 2024 to the entire Museum."

Tenzing Sedonla Ukyab Lama '17

Tenzing Sedon graduated with a degree in Art History and Public Relations. Her family background in antiquities and her long-standing interest in Himalayan Art led her to work with various creative communities and organizations such as the Rubin Museum of Art, Tibet Museum, Machik, and various collectives/art studios in Lhasa. In 2021, she co-founded Zeeba Space, an online art initiative highlighting perspectives on art and culture. She also worked as a curatorial assistant for the Kathmandu Triennale 2077 and the Nepal Pavilion for the 59th Venice Biennale. Currently, she is a PACC Fellow at the Association of Art Museum Curators (AAMC) Foundation and is also pursuing her MA at the University of British Columbia in Critical Curatorial Studies. Born in Nepal, Sedon's education and experience span Nepal, India, China, and the USA.

Miquael Williams '16

Miquael, who graduated with a BA in Art History from New Paltz, and later earned an MA in Art History from the Institute of Fine Arts at New York University, has recently completed her first semester of law school at the University of Michigan. While she is not currently engaging her art historical practice professionally, she does employ the skills learned while a student at SUNY New Paltz in class everyday and on trips to the University of Michigan Museum of Art and Kelsey Archaeology Museum. Both institutions are conveniently located right next to the Law Quad!

Beth Wynne '19

Beth graduated in 2019, majoring in English with a concentration in creative writing and minors in Art History and Studio Art. In May 2023, Beth completed a year-long fellowship as a Cole Fellow at the Thomas Cole National Historic Site in Catskill, NY. There she conducted research on the property’s history of enslavement and the people who labored in the building of the 1815 Main House that would become Thomas Cole’s home and studio, resulting in the project, “Cedar Grove Foundations: Demerara Exploits, and Catskill Beginnings.” Along with her research, Beth worked closely on interpretive and educational projects for the museum. Beth notes,

“I was able to continue to shape research I developed in the year prior while working at the Site as a museum educator and researcher, which delved into the histories of mental health, Black life, and labor in the 19th century. The fellowship provided a window to engage more deeply with reparative research practices and to honor the histories of the many people who lived and labored at the historic home.”

Beth is now the Youth & School Outreach Coordinator at the Thomas Cole Site and helps to build teacher, youth, and community relationships.

Lori (Troise) Youngblood '07

Lori, who graduated with a major in Art History and a minor in German, has been serving as Vice President, Operations and Strategy, at the National Building Museum in Washington, D.C., since her appointment in June 2022.

Madelyn Colonna '23

Madelyn graduated summa cum laude in December with a dual BA degree in Art History and Anthropology and was recognized as an Outstanding Graduate by both departments. Maddy also had a transformative experience over the summer as a full-time Peter A. Krueger Intern at the Copper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum in New York City. Maddy writes:

"I was honored to work at the Cooper Hewitt as a Curatorial Intern beginning in June 2023. I was invited to return as a virtual intern, that became an Independent Study in the fall semester. During my time at the Cooper Hewitt, I assisted the curators on the exhibition, An Atlas of Es Devlin, which opened this past November and will be on view until August 2024. This monographic exhibition centers on British artist and stage designer, Es Devlin, who is renowned for large-scale installations and sculptures that transform audiences across theater, music, architecture, and activism. As an intern, I archived over 3,600 images for this exhibition, created object overview decks, wrote image descriptions and alt text, and spearheaded the development of the digital exhibition platform—coming soon! I worked with a fantastic mentor, solidified my career goals, and learned so much about how to make my way in the New York art world."

Jazmyne Daily-Simpson

Jazmyne is a Graphic Design major with an Art History minor who anticipates graduating in 2025. Last summer, she was awarded a Summer Undergraduate Research (SURE) grant to research the connection between the imagery found on ancient Greek coinage and modern branding concepts. While working on the project, she travelled throughout Greece for the month of June, where she was able to visit many museums including the Numismatic Museum of Athens. She presented her findings at the beginning of the fall semester during the SURE Program’s Showcase. This original research allowed Jazmyne to combine her major and minor studies, which is something that she hopes to do more of in the future.

Ben Kuhn

Ben, an English Major with a concentration in Creative Writing who is double-minoring in Art History and Philosophy, is excited to report that they have joined the Art History Association's E-Board as the new Social Media Coordinator! Ben notes, "Since I was a speaker at the 2023 SUNY New Paltz Undergraduate Art History Symposium, I will be joining my fellow E-board members as a reader/moderator for 2024; I'm eager to experience what it's like being on both sides of organizing and participating in events like these."

Also in 2023, one of Ben's poems, "Another Anxiety Story," was published in the 2023 edition of the Stonesthrow Review, a publication of SUNY New Paltz's English Creative Writing Department.

Taylor Lannon '23

Taylor, who graduated summa cum laude with a BFA in Ceramics and a BA in Art History, was an Outstanding Graduate recognized by the Departments of Art and Art History in December 2023. From December 1-5, 2023, Taylor held her senior thesis show, I’ll Carry You With Me at the Samuel Dorsky Museum of Art. She works with figurative ceramics and self-portraiture to discuss topics of self-reflection and evolution. Taylor describes her work in ceramics as follows, “I use clay to create permanent monuments of myself to mark a moment on a timeline of my ever-changing body and mind and to both appreciate the past and capture the feeling of hope for the future. I am incredibly grateful to have studied under the irreplaceable educators who make up the SUNY New Paltz Art History Department and carry many fond memories of my time here. Studying art history has been heavily influential in how I think about my own artistic practice. I would like to thank all of my past professors and peers for making my time at SUNY New Paltz so lovely. I wish my fellow graduates nothing but the best in their future."

Michaela Lynch

Michaela (Mick), who expects to graduate in 2025 with majors in Art History and French, studied abroad during the Fall 2023 semester. Mick writes,

"I studied abroad in Paris, France, taking courses for both of my majors. My favorite, andthe most influential aspect of my classes, was the opportunity to study French Impressionism and Post-Impressionism in person in Parisian museums. There truly is nothing comparable to experiencing the art you are learning about in real life.... Besides learning more about French art, I was also immersed in the language and culture. I was fortunate enough to explore different historical buildings and monuments from Mont-Saint-Michel to Versailles to the Palais de l’Élysée, as well as attending concerts and going to the theater and opera. I met students from many other SUNY schools and got to become friends with other international students too. I am incredibly thankful for having had the chance to study abroad and for how much it helped me grow as a student and as a person."

Alessandra Papaleo

Alessandra is an Art History major who anticipates graduating in 2025. Last spring, at the suggestion of her professor, Alessandra presented her paper, "The Black Death, the Macabre, and The Three Living and the Three Dead," at the SUNY New Paltz Undergraduate Art History Symposium. Alessandra is also the recipient of the 2023-2024 Owens Family Art Administration Internship, allowing her to intern with Samuel Dorsky Museum Director, Anna Conlan. Alessandra was awarded a Summer Undergraduate Research (SURE) Program grant, for which she explored how the collages and photomontages of the Berlin Dadaists reflected their perspectives on World War I and the Weimar Republic, as well as their connection to the rise of mass media during this period in Europe.

As part of this project, she and her mentor, Professor Beth Wilson, traveled to archives at the Metropolitan Museum of Art and the Museum of Modern Art to see works by the Berlin Dadaists, Hannah Hoch and Raoul Hausmann. She presented her findings at the SURE Program's Showcase in September. Alessandra noted how much her research skills improved as a result of this program and Professor Wilson's mentorship, and how grateful she is to have been selected to have taken part in the SURE program.

Gloriel Perez '23

Gloriel graduated in December with a BA in Art History. She was also the first recipient of The Alison Wilhelmy ’09 Memorial Art History Scholarship established to support the study of art history abroad. Gloriel spent fall 2023 at Regent’s University London. She enthuses, “This experience has been a game-changer, providing me with a global perspective on art, business, and culture. I experienced various parts of the art world, gaining valuable insights into business, art fairs, art law, museum and gallery studies, and had countless opportunities to connect with industry professionals. Exposure to different perspectives and practices has broadened my understanding of the art world, giving me a diverse skill set for the future.”

Jocelyn Thornton

Jocelyn, an Art History major and Studio Art minor who expects to graduate in December '24, has served on the E-board of our student organization, the Art History Association (AHA), since arriving at New Paltz in fall 2021 and has recently become the group’s president. She previously held other executive board positions for the group including Social Media Coordinator, Secretary, and Council of Organizations Representative. She is very excited to start her new role and cannot wait to see what AHA will do in the upcoming semesters.

Rachel Wenig

Rachel, an Art History major, interned at the Binghamton University Art Museum this past summer. They shared that the experience was amazing, writing, "I helped the preparator mat and frame multiple photo works and prints and eventually she trusted me to prepare works for hanging completely on my own. We also set up multiple exhibits for Binghamton's Fall exhibition…as well as cleaned and fixed many frames, pedestals, pedestal bonnets. We painted walls and moved multiple bronze and marble sculptures for the university's main exhibition. It was a wonderful experience that I'm very grateful for! I feel like this is the type of work I would like to do after graduation, which is one of the main things I was looking for with this internship."

Kerry Dean Carso

Professor Carso's book Follies in America: A History of Garden and Park Architecture (Cornell University Press, 2021) was the inspiration for the summer 2023 issue of the UK publication, Follies: The International Magazine, which featured an article by Professor Carso. Her photograph of Kingfisher Tower appeared on the cover of the magazine. Professor Carso's book review of Gems of Art on Paper: Illustrated American Fiction and Poetry, 1785-1885 was published in H-Material Culture, H-Net Reviews, in December 2023. Professor Carso was featured on The Academic Minute, discussing her book Follies in America, on Oct. 9, 2023. With the fall 2023 issue, Professor Carso has joined the editorial board of The Hudson River Valley Review, “a biannual journal of regional studies published by the Hudson River Valley Institute” at Marist College.

Professor Carso gave several book talks on Follies in America in 2023 at the Society of Architectural Historians (Turpin Bannister Chapter/Albany County Historical Association) in Albany; at the Alice Desmond Center in Newburgh; and at Mohonk Mountain House in New Paltz. She lectured on the Hudson River School at the Studios of Key West in Key West, Florida and at Mohonk Mountain House. She gave an invited lecture on the nineteenth-century American architect Alexander Jackson Davis and the Gothic Revival at the A. J. Davis Symposium: Rural Residences, Etc., on June 16, 2023. The symposium was sponsored by Classical American Homes Preservation Trust in partnership with Locust Grove.

Professor Carso was very happy to return to New York City with her Architecture of New York City students in March 2023 for a walking tour of Manhattan, which included a surprise tour of the Villard Houses with Maurice Legere, a security officer at the Lotte New York Palace. Following the tour, Professor Carso and students from her art history courses visited the Metropolitan Museum of Art. In spring 2023, students in ARH382 American Art enjoyed a special tour of the Dorsky Museum exhibition, The Historic Woodstock Art Colony: The Arthur A. Anderson Collection, with Professor Tom Wolf of Bard College. Students in two of Professor Carso's fall 2023 courses visited Historic Huguenot Street for a tour of the stone houses (as pictured here).

Terence (Ted) Bertrand Dewsnap

Professor Dewsnap's article, "The Plan of Romanesque Lincoln Cathedral: Principles of Design, Geometry, and Metrology," will appear in Gothic Space: Studies in Celebration of Stephen Murray, ed. Katherine M. Boivin, probably in late 2024. He and his wife Anne traveled in Italy over the winter break. They stayed in Rome and then spent time in Naples and the cities buried by the eruption of Mount Vesuvius in 79 CE to study Roman architecture and fresco painting (and eat a lot of good food).

Keely Heuer

Professor Keely Heuer began 2023 with a trip to New Orleans to attend the 124^th Annual Meeting of the Archaeological Institute of America, where she was the co-organizer of the colloquium “Recognizing Cross-Cultural Interactions in Central and Southern Italy Between the 5^th and 3^rd Century BCE” and gave a presentation on her summer 2021 virtual study abroad program in a pedagogical workshop on teaching about the Etruscans. Teaching highlights of her spring 2023 semester included serving as the advisor for Brooke Cammann’s and Rebecca Slavin’s Honors theses, giving guest lectures on South Italian vase-painting at Vassar College and the University of Nebraska at Omaha, and offering a new Honors seminar on food and identity in ancient Greece and Italy that culminated in an elaborate Roman banquet for sixty guests held on campus at The Terrace, featuring authentic ancient Roman dishes, tableware, costumes, and the performance of an original play organized by the students. Professor Heuer was honored to deliver the keynote address at the SUNY Buffalo 2023 Classics Graduate Student Association Spring Symposium, “Renew, Revive, Rasenna: New Perspectives in Etruscan Studies” in April and was simply thrilled by the 143 incredible papers delivered by student-scholars from around the world at the fifth annual SUNY New Paltz Undergraduate Art History Symposium, which she organized with the amazing help of the student leaders of the Art History Association and Susan DeMaio Smutny. In her role as faculty liaison for the Art History Association, she enjoyed assisting with the group’s spring lecture series on Latin American and Latinx art featuring talks by Dr. Anna Indych-López and Dr. Laura Filloy Nadal. 

This past summer, Professor Heuer mentored Art History minor and Graphic Design BFA student Jazmyne Daily-Simpson in her Summer Undergraduate Research Experience project, “Before the Bauhaus: An Exploration of Branding in Ancient Greek Coinage.” She led a month-long private archaeological tour for SUNY New Paltz students and alumnx across Greece, where she spent a further month conducting research on ancient textiles and participating in workshops on ancient marble carving and mosaic production. Her essay on cross-cultural iconographic motifs in the red-figure wares of pre-Roman Italy, “Face to Face: Isolated Heads in South Italian and Etruscan Vase Painting,” was published in Adoption, Adaptation, and Innovation in Pre-Roman Italy: Paradigms for Cultural Change by Brepols. She also contributed a catalog entry on an Apulian bell-krater to the updated Highlights of the Frances Lehman Loeb Art Center that was released by Vassar College in July.

This fall, Professor Heuer continued her exploration of ancient Greek and Roman cuisine by hosting a cooking activity for Welcome Week and the program “Dining with Caesar: Using Visual Culture and Archaeology to Recreate an Ancient Diet” for Alumni Reunion Weekend, which included a six-course luncheon that was prepared with the generous help of many of her students. In her Art of Ancient Rome course, Professor Heuer helped her students curate and design an exhibition on the widespread cities of the Roman Empire entitled “Rome Beyond Rome,” which will be on display in the lobby of the Sojourner Truth Library from mid-January to early March 2024. She was selected to participate in the American Association of State Colleges and Universities’ Department Chair Leadership Institute in August 2024 and wrapped up the year by attending the 28^th annual Convegno Internazionale di Studi sulla Storia e l’Archeologia dell’Etruria in Orvieto, Italy, which focused on the interconnections between Etruria and Magna Graecia, connected to her ongoing book manuscript comparing the similar imagery on Etruscan and South Italian vases, despite being produced by ethnically different groups. Throughout the year, she has taken great pleasure in her role as department chair, which gives her the opportunity to coordinate departmental programming and mentor all our wonderful Art History students.

Jaclynne Kerner

Dr. Jaclynne Kerner was on sabbatical during the 2022-23 academic year. Her sabbatical activities included proposing two new classes, ARH212, Images and Ideas in World Art and ARH445, Encounters with Islam: Art and Appropriation, 9^th-19^th Centuries. ARH212, the Department of Art History’s first “non-Western” survey course, explores the cultural, artistic, and architectural traditions of Africa, the Americas, West Asia, and Oceania from ancient to modern times. Dr. Kerner is teaching three sections of the course, which carries GE-WORLD credit, this academic year. She will teach ARH445, an undergraduate seminar focused on artistic exchange between the Islamic sphere, Europe, and North America, in Spring 2024. Thematically, the course emphasizes the circulation of Islamic objects, techniques, designs, and ideas across cultural, political, religious, and geographical boundaries.

Dr. Kerner is currently chairing the search for a faculty member with a specialization in Asian art, to join the Department of Art History in Fall 2024. Together with the rest of the search committee, she looks forward to welcoming a new colleague whose expertise will further broaden and strengthen the New Paltz art history curriculum.

Dr. Kerner continues to work on a two-volume study of the material culture of the Ancient Arabic Order of Nobles of the Mystic Shrine, the appendant body to Freemasonry whose fez-wearing members are commonly known as Shriners. She gave well-received conference papers during the Third European University Institute (EUI) Conference in Visual and Material Culture Studies in May 2022 and the Annual Meeting of the College Art Association (CAA) in February 2023. Her EUI paper, “The Material Dimensions of Shrinedom and its Pilgrimages,” analyzed souvenirs purchased or received during official Shriner outings. Wherever the Shriners traveled en bloc, they did so as self-styled “pilgrims.” Pilgrimages offered unprecedented opportunities for sight-seeing and nearly limitless prospects for souvenir-collecting, which became an American obsession by the late nineteenth century. Banners, medals, and badges, like the “Haji” (Arabic, “pilgrim”) badges issued to Shriners visiting the “Mother Temple” in New York were perennially popular, as were ephemera such as menu cards and programs. Glassware, souvenir spoons, and carved coconuts likewise figure among the keepsakes Shriners collected. Carried home as trophies of their travels, these diverse objects enabled Shriners of fraternalism’s “Golden Age” to integrate their fraternal identities into their quotidian lives. Her CAA paper, “Alterity and Antiquarianism in the Illustrated Sheet Music of the Shriners,” considered illustrated Shriner sheet music as an exponent of the fraternity’s pervasively Orientalized worldview during the so-called Golden Age of Fraternalism (ca. 1870-1930). The fezzes, cameleers, sphinxes, Orientalized lettering, and Zouave-costumed men adorning the covers of Shriner sheet music colorfully expose the ersatz exoticism of America’s most public secret society (see photo). She argued that the visual and textual dimensions of Shriner sheet music mirrored the chivalric medievalism and antiquarian tendencies of the fraternity’s founders as well as the cherished pseudo-Islamic personae of its members. Both papers shed light on the fraternity’s extensive but understudied material legacy, which is rife with appropriations from Islamic and ancient Egyptian history.

Dr. Kerner encourages current Art History students to explore scholarship opportunities by visiting Scholarships | SUNY New Paltz and invites alumni to consider contributing to the Alison Wilhelmy '09 Memorial Art History Scholarship. Established by Professor Ed Lundergan and Carol Lundergan in 2020 in memory of Alison Wilhelmy ’09, this annual scholarship supports non-tuition expenses related to traveling overseas for academic purposes for SUNY New Paltz Art History students studying abroad. To contribute to the fund, visit www.newpaltz.edu/give/ways.html.

Ellen Konowitz

In January, Professor Konowitz presented an invited talk, “Drawing on Glass: Netherlandish Stained Glass Roundels,” at a seminar held by the London gallery, Sam Fogg, in connection with its exhibition, Master Drawings from the Middle Ages, part of Master Drawings Week New York 2023. She taught a new special topics course, “Diversity and Imagery in Renaissance and Baroque Art,” in the spring. Professor Konowitz’s essay “Domestic Stained Glass in Northern Europe” will appear in Routledge Resources On-line: The Renaissance World in the summer of 2024. She will present a paper on sixteenth-century Flemish drawings for stained glass in the session “Recent Research on Drawings in British Collections” in July 2024 at the Historians of Netherlandish Art Conference, to be held in London and Cambridge, UK.

Beth E. Wilson

Beth E. Wilson worked over the summer on a SURE project with Alessandra Papaleo, focusing on Dada photomontages in several different NYC collections. Together, they consulted object files and had specific works pulled from collections at the Met and MoMA, used the research facilities at the NYPL, and made a visit to Ubu Gallery to see an exhibition of Max Ernst montages—and got a terrific behind-the-scenes look at other works in the back rooms of the gallery!

In November, Professor Wilson presented a paper on Luis Buñuel's 1932 film Land without Bread at the International Society for the Study of Surrealism's annual conference in Houston. The paper is a continuation of her research interests in the phenomenon of surrealist documentary between the wars.

Reva Wolf

"Marilyn Mystery," an essay by Professor Wolf that probes the murky history of a group of prints based on a Marilyn Monroe painting by Andy Warhol in the Moderna Museet, Stockholm, was published in the exhibition catalog, Out of Sight: An Art Collector, a Discovery, and Andy Warhol (University of Pennsylvania Press). Also in the catalog is her interview with the collector, Gregory McCoy, who has amassed over 300 of these prints.

Professor Wolf gave three papers in 2023. She delivered the talk "Banks, Artists, and Freemasons across Borders: The Banco de San Carlos, Goya, and Cabarrús" at the session "Iberian Art in a Global Context" of the College Art Association annual conference, which took place February 15-18 in New York City. At the Eighteenth-Century Scottish Studies Society annual conference, held July 18-21 at the University of St. Andrews, she presented "Visualizing the Eighteenth-Century Scottish Freemason: Portraits of William St. Clair of Roslin," about the authorship, symbolism, and functions of two portraits of the first Grand Master of Scotland. She participated in the symposium, Goya: Grotesco/Coleccionismo at the Universidad Complutense, Madrid, November 16-17, with the paper "Three Early Collectors of Goya, One Common Thread," about the interest in Goya's art abroad during his lifetime as seen in the activities of collectors from Britain, France, and Sweden.

In addition to these three papers, on November 8, Professor Wolf spoke on Inquisition punishment imagery as part of the first virtual colloquium of the Ibero-American Society for Eighteenth-Century Studies (1^o Coloquio Virtual IASECS). This Zoom event was occasioned by the forthcoming interdisciplinary publication, The Black Legend of Spain and Its Atlantic Empire in the Eighteenth Century: Constructing National Identities, edited by Catherine Jaffe and Karen Stolley (Oxford University Studies in the Enlightenment, 2024), for which she wrote the essay, "The Victim as Martyr: The Black Legend and Eighteenth-Century Representations of Inquisition Punishments, from Picart to Coustos to Goya." Professor Wolf will participate in a "project session" about the book at the American Society for Eighteenth-Century Studies annual meeting in Toronto in April 2024.

Professor Wolf also is editor of the anthology, Translating Warhol, forthcoming in Summer 2024 with Bloomsbury Academic, based on a previously published set of journal articles. She revised and expanded her essay for the book and added a thematically arranged bibliography designed to assist anyone interested in pursuing further research on the topic. Like her work on the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, Translating Warhol is a study of inter-cultural exchange. For more details and a table of contents, click here.

In 2023, Professor Wolf completed two other forthcoming works. The essay, "The History of the Artist Interview: Conventions, Conditions, Contexts, Collaboration," for the book, Theorising the Artist Interview, edited by Lucia Farinati and Jennifer Thatcher (Routledge), is a revised and expanded version of a previous article, with new sections on Benjamin Wigfall (who was the first African American professor of art at SUNY New Paltz and used interviews inventively in his work, as she discovered at the 2022 show about Wigfall at the Dorsky Museum of Art), Joseph Grigely (an artist who, deaf, explores conversation through writing), and Pamela Z (who uses recorded interview segments in her multi-media musical compositions). Another essay, "Writing and the Alphabetic Ordering of Culture," will appear in volume 1 of the Bloomsbury Encyclopedia of Visual Culture, edited by Jane Kromm, and focuses on the intertwined histories of visual imagery and alphabetization from the Renaissance onward, including in emblem books, children's ABCs, satire, painting, and more.

Professor Wolf's teaching activities beyond the classroom included serving as a consultant for Madelyn Colonna's Anthropology capstone project about perceptions of A.I.-generated art in the spring. During the 2023-2024 academic year, she is serving as an external advisor on Maria Elena Ferrer-Harrington’s MFA thesis in sculpture, which explores the symbolism and physical properties of poison ivy. In connection with writing assignments, Professor Wolf brought her classes to the Dorsky Museum for tours with the curators of the special exhibitions, Hudson Valley Artists 2023: Homespun and Be Who You Are: Portraits of Woodstock Artists by Harriet Tannin. Students in her MFA course, Art in Contemporary Culture, went to NYC to see Nick Cave: Forothermore at the Guggenheim Museum.

Elizabeth (Lulu) Brotherton

Since her retirement in 2019, Elizabeth (Lulu) Brotherton continues to follow her field of Chinese painting and art history, making use of the plentiful resources in New York City by participating monthly in the Institute of Fine Arts China Project gatherings and in the Columbia University seminar on Neo-Confucianism. In 2023 she reviewed a book manuscript for Brill on Northern Song culture, attended the excellent symposium at Princeton titled, Ritual and Materiality in Buddhism and Asian Religions, joined the newly formed Association for Chinese Art History, and continued her weekly Zoom conferences with former classmates and colleagues in the field of Chinese painting. International trips to Israel and Germany were made chiefly to visit family, but also afforded opportunities to check out the Asian and other art holdings in Tel Aviv and Berlin. (Concerns over the large carbon footprint from these airplane flights were assuaged by pride in having helped facilitate her large apartment building’s switchover from garbage disposal to weekly organic compost pickup.) Late in the year, Elizabeth resumed work on her long-dormant book manuscript, which will occupy her well into the new year and beyond.

William B. Rhoads

Professor Rhoads and Leslie Melvin’s book, Elverhoj: The Arts And Crafts Colony at Milton-On-Hudson (Black Dome Press, 2022), was featured by Eve M. Kahn in the New York Times, May 4, 2023.