FALL 2015 from the Chair's Office
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826 schermerhorn COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY DEPARTMENT OF ART HISTORY AND ARCHAEOLOGY MIRIAM AND IRA D. WALLACH FINE ARTS CENTER FALL 2015 from the chair's office Dear Students, Colleagues, and Friends, 826 schermerhorn COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY This is an exciting moment to start my term as department chair. The searches we completed last year bring new faces to DEPARTMENT OF ART HISTORY AND ARCHAEOLOGY Schermerhorn. Meredith Gamer will be joining us as Assistant Professor of European Art, 1700–1900. Meredith earned her MIRIAM AND IRA D. WALLACH FINE ARTS CENTER PhD from Yale with a dissertation on eighteenth-century British art, though her expertise extends to the broader Atlantic FALL 2015 and British colonial worlds. She has already co-curated the major exhibition Figures of Empire: Slavery and Portraiture in 4 16 Eighteenth-Century Atlantic Britain and has worked extensively on the cataloguing of Turner drawings at the Tate Britain. Mapping Mesopotamian Monuments Media Center Offers New Digital Michael J. Waters will be our new Assistant Professor of Renaissance Architectural History. Michael received his PhD from zainab bahrani Framework for Research Projects the Institute of Fine Arts, where he wrote a dissertation on the re-use of ancient building fragments and the transmission of stefaan van liefferinge architectural knowledge. He has published a highly regarded article in the Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians on 6 Renaissance architectural engravings. He will be an anchor to the rebuilding of Columbia’s traditional strength in the history Core Curriculum: Art Humanities 17 at Columbia University’s Global The Bettman Lecture Series of architecture across all periods. Both Meredith and Michael are delaying their arrival by one year in order to complete Center in Paris raymond carlson, emogene cataldo, post-doctoral fellowships, Meredith at Yale’s Institute of Sacred Music, Michael at Worcester College, Oxford University. robert e. harrist jr., holger a. klein, david schneller ioannis mylonopoulos Already with us is Janet Kraynak, the new New Director for MODA director of our MA Program in Modern and 8 janet kraynak Life of a Cathedral: Notre-Dame Contemporary Art: Critical and Curatorial of Amiens 18 Studies (MODA). An authority on Bruce stephen murray Rembrandt’s Changing Impressions Nauman, Janet has also published exten- robert fucci sively on Andy Warhol, Nan Goldin, Do-ho 10 A Virtual Enlightenment 20 Suh, Rosemarie Trockel, and others. She anne higonnet The Wallach Art Gallery Readies comes to us from the New School, where for 125th Street she had taught since 2006. The MODA 12 deborah cullen Critical and Curatorial Studies program, Disclosing New Perspectives on which is about to enter its twentieth year, Hadrian’s Villa Ghosts of the Past: Nazi-Looted Art and Its Legacies has been extraordinarily successful, and its francesco de angelis holger a. klein graduates now occupy major posts both in 13 the United States and abroad. With Janet at Excavation at the Sanctuary of 21 the helm, we look to a still more dynamic Poseidon in Boeotian Onchestos Book Excerpt: Civil / Rights / Act BACK ROW FROM LEFT: Anne Higonnet, Stephen Murray, Stefaan Van Liefferinge, Barry Bergdoll, Ioannis future. ioannis mylonopoulos kellie jones Mylonopoulos, Jonathan Reynolds, Alexander Alberro, Michael Cole, Branden W. Joseph, Jonathan Crary, Francesco de Angelis. FRONT ROW FROM LEFT: Elizabeth W. Hutchinson, Diane Bodart, Rosalind Krauss, Vidya 14 22 Dehejia, Z. S. Strother, Avinoam Shalem, Keith Moxey, Matthew McKelway, Zainab Bahrani, Janet Kraynak, The 2014–15 year featured many memorable Sight of Memory: When Nature Faculty Highlights Noam M. Elcott. Photograph by Emily Shaw and Gabriel Rodriguez. Not included in the picture are: Frederique events. Generous gifts allowed us to contin- Becomes Ideology Baumgartner, David Freedberg, Robert E. Harrist Jr., Kellie Jones, Holger A. Klein, and Simon Schama. ue our annual symposium with Cambridge avinoam shalem Book Excerpt: Leonardo, Michelangelo, and the Art of the Figure University and to host the conferences 15 michael cole “Rethinking Latin American Art and Culture” and “Scribbles and Scribbling in the Early Modern Period”; the conference Scribbles and Scribbling in the we co-organized on Nazi-looted art was standing-room only. Equally distinguished were our activities in more distant places: Early Modern Period 23 Ioannis Mylonopoulos, Robert E. Harrist Jr., and Holger A. Klein inaugurated our new Art Humanities program in Paris, diane bodart Mellon Lectures Stephen Murray took his undergraduates to Amiens, and students participated in the excavations that Francesco de Angelis vidya dehejia Repatriating Indigenous Art: continues to direct at Hadrian’s Villa in Tivoli and Ioannis Mylonopoulos at the sanctuary of Poseidon in Boeotian Onchestos. Messages Across Time and Space: 25 Inupiat Drawings from the 1890s Book Excerpt: The Unfinished In the spring, Vidya Dehejia will give the Mellon Lectures at the National Gallery in Washington. And this issue of 826 elizabeth w. hutchinson vidya dehejia Schermerhorn will reach you before the exhibition Rembrandt’s Changing Impressions, curated by our student Robert Fucci, ends its run at the Wallach Art Gallery on December 12. It’s a terrific show that I hope you all have a chance to see — you 16 26 Cambridge-Columbia Symposium Fellowships, Dissertations, may just bump into Art Humanities classes, some of which are taking place in the galleries. While you’re here, please come julia vazquez Undergraduates Awards and Prizes, and visit us in 826. Alumni News Conference: “Rethinking Latin With best wishes for the holiday season, American Art and Culture” 30 nicholas morgan New Advisory Council Members 31 With Thanks Michael Cole Professor and Department Chair Birkleyn, Diyarbekir’s Province, Turkey. Detail of Assyrian relief. Photograph by Gabriel Rodriguez. Mapping Mesopotamian Monuments ainab Bahrani, the Edith Porada Professor of Ancient Near The Mapping Mesopotamian Monuments team of archaeologists is and archaeological sites in Iraq and Syria, the work has taken on a more Eastern Art and Archaeology, established a project called international. It includes participants from the US and Western Europe, urgent nature. The significance of the project, which is a long-term Mapping Mesopotamian Monuments in 2012. In the summer of from Iraq and from Turkey, including colleagues from the State Board work, has been unfortunately borne out by the appalling recent events Z2015 she continues to direct a team that has conducted on site fieldwork of Antiquities and Heritage in Baghdad. The first field season took in Iraq, Syria, and southeastern Anatolia, all of which belong to the recording standing monuments and architecture across Iraqi Kurdistan place in 2013 in Iraq when Professor Bahrani and her team documented area archaeologists refer to as Mesopotamia, the ancient lands of the in Dohuk, Erbil and Suleymaniyeh, and in southeastern Turkey in the ancient Mesopotamian monuments and rock reliefs, early Islamic and Tigris and Euphrates rivers. Heritage sites, historical architecture and region of Diyarbekir and Mardin. Professor Bahrani hopes to contin- early Christian architecture, mosques and madrasas, churches and mon- monuments are in grave danger throughout the region but it is not ue this work in the rest of Iraq, into the south. The survey is focused asteries, Yezidi sanctuaries and shrines, ancient bridges and aqueducts, only antiquity and archaeology that are in peril. As they continue to be specifically on monuments and architecture, and purposefully has no Ottoman era buildings and early twentieth century buildings. The team destroyed as a means of erasing the presence of communities of people historical, cultural, or religious boundaries. The documentation is inclu- uses a range of technologies including photogrammetry, perspectival and their history, the project that began as an archaeological-historical sive because the project aims to record the remarkably diverse history of stills, and 360° immersive panoramic records while mapping things survey, is now an even more urgent record of endangered historical this region, a diversity of peoples and religions that is being deliberately geospatially. For each work the team assesses the condition and state monuments and sites. and violently erased. of preservation, and provides detailed descriptions. Mapping Mesopota- mian Monuments has to date an archive of thousands of images that the zainab bahrani The second season of fieldwork conducted from May to June 2015, Columbia team has made on site. ancient near eastern art and archaeology focused on documenting rock reliefs, historical mosques and monasteries Opposite: Birkleyn, Diyarbekir Province, Turkey. Gabriel Rodriguez from the Media in southeastern Anatolia. The team documented the extensive circuit They are currently curated in a closed archive. The work is funded Center for Art History photographs an Assyrian relief in one of the sources of the walls and towers of Diyarbekir, the ancient mosque with its reused and supported by a multi-year grant from Columbia University’s Pres- Tigris River. Photograph by Zainab Bahrani. above: Dara, Mardin Province, Turkey. Ruins of rock-cut buildings from the Roman fortress of Dara, built c. sixth century classical capitals and columns. They also studied several rock reliefs ident’s Global Innovation Fund, awarded to Professor Bahrani in 2012. CE. Photograph by Gabriel Rodriguez. right: Diyarbekir,