Art & Archaeology Newsletter
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department of Art Archaeology & Newsletter fall Dear students, colleagues, and friends: Inside Welcome to the 2013–14 academic as well, again at the junior level. Although depleted in these areas of our curriculum, we welcome a year! new colleague in Renaissance art and philosophy, Our most important news is the arrival of Susanna Berger, who comes to us through the Soci- Faculty News Charles Barber, a distinguished Byzantinist, who ety of Fellows in the Liberal Arts. comes to us from the University of Notre Dame, Th e 2012–13 academic year featured another where he taught since 1996. His Figure and Like- series of stimulating lectures, most of which were Graduate Student News ness (2002) and Contesting the Logic of Painting cosponsored by the Institute for Advanced Study. (2007) are already classics in the fi eld of Byzan- In the fall, the Kurt Weitzmann Lecture was deliv- tine art and aesthetics, and Charlie is at work on ered by the esteemed Byzantinist Anthony Cutler, two further volumes that will carry his inquiry into who spoke about gift exchange from Late Antiq- Undergraduate News icon and iconoclasm into the 16th century. With uity through Early Islam, and, in the spring, his appointment, Princeton becomes a Sybille Ebert-Schiff erer, director of the premiere place for Byzantine studies. Bibliotheca Hertziana, lectured on Seminar Study Trips Very gratifying, too, is that Chika Caravaggio as a case study in art- Okeke-Agulu, our Africanist, was historical methodology. Other promoted to tenure, which makes highlights included Jacqueline permanent this key aspect of our Lichtenstein of the University of Lectures, Conferences, curriculum. More good news is Paris–Sorbonne on 18th-century Workshops the enthusiastic reappointment art theory and David Joselit of of Nathan Arrington, our archae- Yale on “How to Occupy an ologist of ancient Greece, whose Image.” Th e year was capped Tang Center dig (which has produced a by a lecture by Martin Kemp, popular summer course) is thriv- professor emeritus at Oxford, ing. Our 19th-century expert, on problems of attribution in Bridget Alsdorf, published her fi rst Leonardo. Our Robert Janson-La Marquand Library book—on the group portraiture Palme Visiting Professor last spring, of Henri Fantin-Latour—to rave Martin also led a graduate seminar reviews, and our new colleague in on Leonardo. contemporary art, Irene Small, a Like other humanities depart- Visual Resources Latin American specialist, is off to ments, Art and Archaeology faces Collection an excellent start. challenges. In partial response, we We have also had losses. With have simplifi ed distribution require- the retirement of John Pinto after ments—from six areas to three—and Index of Christian Art 25 years of service, the University loses a fi gure of have reduced course requirements for majors who distinguished scholarship and international reputa- combine art history and studio art. We have also tion, inspired teaching and committed mentoring, revived our basic “History of Architecture” and compassionate collegiality and utter fair-mind- “Introduction to Archaeology,” which should Excavations edness. Th e Howard Crosby Butler Memorial serve as feeder courses to the department. Further Professor of the History of Architecture since changes in the curriculum will be taken up in 1996, John is irreplaceable; nevertheless, we will an internal review this year. Our plan is to make News from Alumni search for a junior scholar in his fi eld of early certain that the Department of Art and Archaeol- modern art and architecture. Our medievalist, ogy is the epicenter of art history and visual studies Nino Zchomelidse, has also departed, for a post at on campus. Johns Hopkins, and so we will search in this fi eld Hal Foster, acting chair Fellow Men Fantin-Latour and the Problem of the Group Faculty News in Nineteenth-Century French Painting Bridget Alsdorf published Fellow Men: Fantin- delivered the keynote address, “From the Public Latour and the Problem of the Group in Nineteenth- Cemetery to the Individual Mind: The Memory Century French Painting (Princeton University of the War Dead in Ancient Athens,” at “Spatial Press, 2012). Focusing on the art of Henri Fantin- Interactions: Exploring the Artistic Environment,” Latour and his colleagues Gustave Courbet, Edgar a graduate student conference at the University of Degas, Edouard Manet, Frédéric Bazille, and Pierre- Toronto. After teaching the new summer excavation Bridget Alsdorf Auguste Renoir, the book argues for the importance course, he returns to campus this fall as the Class of of the group as a defining subject of 19th-century 1931 Bicentennial Preceptor. French painting, offering new insights into how Rachael Z. DeLue completed her second book, French painters understood the shifting boundaries Arthur Dove: Mind, Matter, World, forthcoming of their social world and revealing the fragile mascu- from the University of Chicago Press, and began Bridget Alsdorf, Fellow Men: line bonds that made up the avant-garde. Alsdorf work on her third book, tentatively titled At the Fantin-Latour and the Problem of also completed an essay on Félix Vallotton’s prints Limit: Conditions of Picturing in American Art and the Group in Nineteenth-Century for the catalogue of the exhibition The Avant-Gardes French Painting Visual Culture, which will consider the myriad ways of Fin-de-Siècle Paris: Signac, Bonnard, Redon, and that artists and other image-makers from a range of Their Contemporaries at the Peggy Guggenheim disciplines, including the sciences, have confronted Collection in Venice (September 28, 2013–January limits in the production of visual form, including 6, 2014) and continued work on limits of visibility, perception, space, time, medium, a translation of Philippe Lacoue- and species. DeLue taught a graduate/undergrad- Labarthe’s writings on art. She uate seminar on that topic in spring 2013, and she gave several talks, most notably presented portions of her preliminary research at the Robert Rosenblum Memo- Harvard’s Graduate School of Design. She also gave rial Lecture at the Solomon R. lectures on the criterion of simplicity in art and Guggenheim Museum in New mathematics, at the CUNY Graduate Center; on York, where she presented new Samuel F. B. Morse’s iconic painting The Gallery research on Pierre Bonnard and of the Louvre, at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Vallotton. Alsdorf will be on leave Fine Arts; on American landscape painting, at the during the 2013–14 academic Chicago Humanities Festival; and on Arthur Dove year, funded by an Arthur H. and meteorology, at Trinity University in San Anto- Scribner Bicentennial Preceptor- nio, Texas. Two essays by DeLue appeared in the ship. Her research will focus on catalogue of the Museum of Modern Art’s exhi- her second book project: a study bition Inventing Abstraction, 1910–1925: How a of the representation—across Radical Idea Changed Modern Art, and she authored Excavations in progress at Nathan multiple media—of theatrical Arrington’s new summer course in the catalogue essay for Animalicious, an exhibi- audiences and crowds in fin-de-siècle French art. northern Greece tion of work by contemporary artist Mark Steven Nathan Arrington, on sabbatical in 2012–13, Greenfield. She also completed her first year as spent much of the year finalizing permit applica- the reviews editor for The Art Bulletin, and in that tions and laying the groundwork for Princeton’s capacity she commissioned a special series of book new excavation and summer course in northern reviews to celebrate the centennial year of the jour- Greece (see page 31). He also completed his book nal. DeLue also co-taught a new American Studies manuscript, Ashes, Images, and Memories: The Pres- course, “America Then and Now,” with Profes- ence of the War Dead in Ancient Athens, which sors Anne Cheng (English) and Hendrik Hartog is under review at a university press. Arrington (history). This summer, she again participated in the gave talks at the “Potters and Painters III” confer- Freshman Scholars Institute, a program for incom- ence at the College of William and Mary (“Fallen ing Princeton freshmen. She also celebrated the first Vessels and Risen Spirits: The Vision of the Dead birthday of her daughter, Zane Eliza DeLue, and on White-Ground Lekythoi”); at the Sterling and the fifth birthday of her son, Asher. This fall, DeLue Francine Clark Institute (“The Perceptible and completes a two-year appointment as a Behrman Perceiving Dead in Classical Athenian Art”); at Associate Professor in the Humanities and begins Columbia University (“More Than a Name: Private a one-year term as a faculty fellow in Princeton’s Responses to the Public Commemoration of the Society of Fellows in the Liberal Arts. She will also War Dead in Fifth-Century Athens”); at the Rupre- return to her position as the departmental repre- Rachael Z. DeLue et al., Inventing cht-Karls-Universität Heidelberg (“The Emergence sentative, advising undergraduate majors in art and Abstraction, 1910–1925: How a of the Athenian Public Cemetery”); and at a grad- archaeology. In fall 2013, DeLue’s teaching will Radical Idea Changed Modern Art uate seminar at New York University. He also include the methodology seminar for junior majors, 2 fall 1 3 Department faculty 2012–13. Front row, left to right: Anne McCauley, Bridget Alsdorf, Christopher Heuer, Hal Foster and Rem Koolhaas, Hal Foster, Rachael DeLue, Irene Small; middle row, left to right: Kate Liszka, Christina Halperin, Joanna Smith, Junkspace with Running Room Esther da Costa Meyer; back row, left to right: Thomas DaCosta Kaufmann, Jerome Silbergeld, John Pinto, Michael Koortbojian, Brigid Doherty, Andrew Watsky, Cary Liu (not pictured: Nathan Arrington, Robert Bagley, Thomas Leisten, Lia Markey, Katherine Marsengill, Chika Okeke-Agulu, James Steward, Nino Zchomelidse) as well as a graduate seminar inspired by the centen- on world art history at a conference cosponsored by nial of the 1913 Armory Show.