Anneka Lenssen has published Beautiful Agitation: Modern Painting and Politics(UC Press). Based on more than a decade of research, in Syria (until 2011) and elsewhere, the book traces the interplay of vitalist painting theories and the making of Syria as a contested territory between 1900 and 1965. It examines works by such artists as Kahlil Gibran, Adham Ismail, and Fateh al-Moudarres to show how Syrians used the mutability of form to rethink relationships of figure to ground, outward appearance to inner presence, and self to world.
Book cover: Climate Change and the Art of Devotion (Washington, 2019) by Sugata Ray
Congratulations to Sugata Ray on winning an American Academy of Religion 2020 Book Award for Climate Change and the Art of Devotion: Geoaesthetics in the Land of Krishna, 1550–1850 (University of Washington Press)!
Our colleagues in UC Berkeley's Department of Rhetoric invite applications for a pool of qualified temporary instructors to teach undergraduate courses, should a need arise, in any of the following possible areas: History, Theory of Rhetoric, Rhetoric of Law, Rhetoric of Science, Rhetoric of Religion, Political Theory, Rhetoric of Images and Reading and Composition.
Applications will continue to be accepted until January 16, 2021.
More details and application instructions can be found here: https://aprecruit.berkeley.edu/JPF02458
Daniel Marcus (Ph.D. 2017) has been appointed Associate Curator at the Wexner Center for the Arts at the Ohio State University, where he is also a lecturer in the Department of History of Art.
Congratulations, Daniel!
Emma Silverman (PhD History of Art 2018) has been appointed the Mellon Public Humanities Fellow at the National Park Service, where she will be working on a project about racial justice, practices of commemoration, and public monuments.
Congratulations, Emma!
We regret to announce that the Department of History of Art will not accept applications to our graduate program for the 2021 admissions cycle in order to ensure that our department has resources to support our current students and to prepare for future admissions. The decision was not taken lightly. We look forward to reading applications again in the fall of 2021 for the 2022 cohort.
A new monument honoring suffragists Sojourner Truth, Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B. Anthony will be the first monument honoring nonfictional women in New York's Central Park. While designing the work, sculptor Meredith Bergmann consulted with historians Nell Irvin Painter, Margaret Washington and UC Berkeley History of Art Professor Darcy Grimaldo Grigsby, who in turn met with her graduate students Delphine Sims, Vanessa Jackson, Ryan Serpa and Grace Kuipers. Bergmann credits Prof. Grigsby and her students with providing valuable input in regard to the representation of Sojourner Truth.
An unveiling ceremony will happen on August 26 at 8am EST. Go to monumentalwomen.org to watch the livestream of the event and for more information on the Women's Rights Pioneers Monument and the Monumental Women Campaign. A recent NYT article provides details about the campaign and monument.
Aleksandr Rodchenko, “Cover for ‘USSR in Construction’ journal,” December 1933. Courtesy Rodchenko and Stepanova Archive, Moscow
Aglaya Glebova received a Graham Foundation Publication Award for her monograph, Aleksandr Rodchenko and Photography in the Age of Stalin (Yale University Press, forthcoming 2021), which reexamines the alleged end of modernism in the 1930s Soviet Union through the photographic work of Aleksandr Rodchenko (1891–1956), a key figure in European interwar art.
Founded in 1956, the Graham Foundation for Advanced Studies in the Fine Arts fosters the development and exchange of diverse and challenging ideas about architecture and its role in the arts, culture, and society. The Graham realizes this vision through making project-based grants to individuals and organizations and producing exhibitions, events, and publications.
Anneka Lenssen has published Beautiful Agitation: Modern Painting and Politics (UC Press). Based on more than a decade of research, in Syria (until 2011) and elsewhere, the book traces the interplay of vitalist painting theories and the making of Syria as a contested territory between 1900 and 1965. It examines works by such artists as Kahlil Gibran, Adham Ismail, and Fateh al-Moudarres to show how Syrians used the mutability of form to rethink relationships of figure to ground, outward appearance to inner presence, and self to world.
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