IFA Alumni Newsletter 2017
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Number 52 – Fall 2017 NEWSLETTERAlumni Published by the Alumni Association of Contents From the Director ...............3 The Institute of Fine Arts Alumni Updates ...............20 in the Aftermath of the A Wistful ‘So Long’ to our Beloved May 4, 1970 Kent State Killings ....8 Doctors of Philosophy Conferred and Admired Director Pat Rubin ....4 in 2016-2017 .................30 Thinking out of the Box: You Never From Warburg to Duke: Know Where it Will Lead .........12 Masters Degrees Conferred Living at the Institute ............6 in 2016-2017 .................30 The Year in Pictures ............14 Institute Donors ...............32 Faculty Updates ...............16 Institute of Fine Arts Alumni Association Officers: Advisory Council Members: Committees: President William Ambler Walter S. Cook Lecture Jennifer Eskin [email protected] Jay Levenson, Chair [email protected] Susan Galassi [email protected] [email protected] Yvonne Elet Vice President and Kathryn Calley Galitz Jennifer Eskin Acting Treasurer [email protected] Susan Galassi Jennifer Perry Matthew Israel Debra Pincus [email protected] [email protected] Katherine Schwab Lynda Klich Secretary [email protected] Newsletter Johanna Levy Anne Hrychuk Kontokosta Martha Dunkelman [email protected] [email protected] [email protected] Debra Pincus Connor Hamm, student assistant [email protected] History of the Institute of Fine Arts Rebecca Rushfield, Chair [email protected] Alumni Reunion Alicia Lubowski-Jahn, Chair [email protected] William Ambler 2 From the Director Christine Poggi, Judy and Michael Steinhardt Director Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Frick varied program. It will include occasional Collection, Museum of Modern Art, and a collaboration and co-sponsorship of exhibitions, diverse range of other museums. Although events, and performances with our colleagues this process is still in an early phase, we are across the University. Our students will already able to offer a Curatorial Studies continue to play a major role in all of the seminar this fall. Titled “rethinking the British exhibitions. Decorative Arts Galleries at The Met: A Case- Study in Curatorial Practice,” this seminar One of the ideas I brought to the interview allows students to analyze every aspect of the process was that of sponsoring a series of reinstallation of the British Galleries devoted to Institute Forums in which one or more Institute decorative arts and sculpture, scheduled to open faculty members would organize a series of at the Met in mid-2019. As we work toward a lectures, panels, a conference, or other events newly configured and truly exciting Curatorial in collaboration with one or more colleagues Studies program, we plan to involve some of from other departments, schools, or institutes From the Director our alumni, given that so many of you have at NYU. this first, experimental phase of the Christine Poggi gone on to distinguished careers as curators Institute Forum will last three years. Although and conservators, or as museum and gallery it is too early to tell how this will work out in Having assumed the role of Director of the professionals. What are the most important practice, I am optimistic that it will yield highly Institute of Fine Arts, I am delighted to express issues and topics that such a program should engaging discussions on topics of importance in my gratitude for the warm welcome I have address? If you are interested in sharing your the highly volatile world in which we live. received. It has been a pleasure to begin working thoughts, please contact me or Professor Sullivan. with so many wonderful individuals, including Some Institute students have expressed their members of the faculty, board, administration, In response to student interest, we are also in interest in more occasions for informal, social and staff, as well as students and alumni. I the process of establishing an online student- gathering. To this end, we have begun to host would like to offer special thanks to Patricia run, peer-reviewed publication. Students a monthly happy hour on Friday afternoons. Rubin, the former Director, for her assistance will have the ability to take an active role in Alumni are warmly invited to attend this with the transition process. I am also grateful to publishing their scholarship in a respected happy hour when they can. Bringing students, Edward J. Sullivan for accepting my invitation journal, with a wide distribution. The online faculty, and alumni together in this way can to serve as Deputy Director, a position that platform will allow students to explore a range strengthen our sense of community and it will carries many important responsibilities. The of creative formats, and, we hope, to shorten give me a chance to talk with those of you I Institute is indeed a very unique place, with the usual publication timeframe. Please stand have not yet met. Please introduce yourself to a distinguished history and well-deserved by for the first issue! me if you attend. reputation for excellence and innovation in the teaching of art history, conservation, Over the last few years, students have also In order for the Institute to retain its archaeology, and curatorial studies. It is exciting had the opportunity to organize exhibitions preeminence in the training of art historians, to be able to work collaboratively with so many in the Great Hall and Loeb Room. This curators, conservators and other arts of you to support and expand existing programs is a very worthwhile initiative, which is professionals, we depend upon the engagement and initiatives, as well as to revive or launch currently overseen by Professor Robert and generous support of our alumni. Your new ones. Slifkin. In response to queries about possible continued support allows us to think boldly collaborations from University Trustees, and creatively about what is possible for the I am pleased to announce that the Institute members of the Institute Board, and colleagues Institute, now and in the future. is currently rethinking the Curatorial Studies in various departments and schools at NYU, Certificate Program with curators at the we will now have an expanded and more Institute of Fine Arts Alumni Association Mission Statement The mission of the Alumni Association of the Institute of Fine Arts is to foster a strong sense of community among the alumni through social and scholarly events, and through the publication of the Newsletter; to support student research through travel grants with funds raised by the Association; and to preserve the history of the Institute through recording oral histories and the collecting of archival documents. 3 A Wistful “So Long” to our Beloved and Admired Director Pat Rubin Gertje Utley, ’86 Celebrating Pat Rubin and her role at the Institute of Fine Arts is a great privilege and a very personal pleasure for me. But it is, of course, tinged with the sadness of having to acknowledge a future without Pat Rubin, at the end of her directorship at nYU’s Institute of Fine Arts. And, although Pat will remain with us, teaching her specialty in Italian Renaissance studies, we will lose her touch of animating the intellectual life of the Institute. I am certain that you will all agree how much we appreciate and admire Pat, not only in her capacity as the Director of the Institute, or for her extensive scholarship and experience, but at least as much for being always cheerful, engaged and engaging, brightening the place with her infectious smile. You came away from every meeting with her, however short, revitalized by her vitality and spirit. Pat came to the Institute with a most impressive curriculum vita. Her early years in Pat Rubin at Institute Alumni Reunion with Jonathan Brown, February 2017 Florence at La Pietra left their mark on her work, and Giorgio Vasari and Renaissance Florence became the main focus of her in England, America, and Italy. Moreover, she The list of all her accomplishments, research and publications. She completed her has appeared almost yearly in programs on publications, and honors is truly too long studies at Yale, Harvard, and in London. Her BBC2 and BBC TV. to include here. I only mention what she PhD dissertation, Vasari as Biographer, was herself identified as the greatest honor she later published by Yale under the title Giorgio She has published widely in books, catalogues ever received, a Festschrift of essays by her Vasari: Art and History (1989) and was the and magazines. Her approach in her studies Courtauld Institute students,“Une insalata recipient of the Eric Mitchell Prize. In the is interdisciplinary and fueled by her desire di più erbe”: Festschrift for Patricia Lee Rubin following years she won awards, fellowships to understand the sources of her material. (2011). and grants for each one of her projects. She is particularly interested in the history of collecting as well as in modes of visual It is with this dizzying background as scholar, Pat taught, among other venues, at the perception. Her study on Vasari’s Lives made teacher, and organizer of international Kunsthistorisches Institut in Florence, at her focus in particular on rhetoric, invention conferences that Pat came to the Institute Yale, and at the Courtauld Institute of Art. and the meaning of history. In 1999 she of Fine Arts as Judy and Michael Steinhardt She served as acting Director of the Harvard co-curated, with Alison Wright, the exhibition Director in September 2009. Her first University Center for Renaissance Studies, Renaissance Florence: the Art of the 1470s at the impressions about the Institute came from Villa I Tatti, as well as on several of its advisory National Gallery in London. She followed alumni who told her about the tough committees. She has been a member of endless that with Images and Identity in Fifteenth- academic climate that was propagated by an committees and editorial boards.