d e p a r t m e n t o f Art Archaeology & Newsletter s p r i n g 1 Dear Friends and Colleagues: The past year has had its moments faculty. Next year we will welcome two young Inside scholars, specialists in 19th-century European of tension, mainly about the depart- and Byzantine/medieval art. ment’s financial situation in a period Danny Ćurčić’s magnificent exhibition faculty news “Architecture as Icon” at the Princeton Univer- of an economic baisse. sity Art Museum has become a major magnet Some painful decisions had to be made— 1 for visitors. Drawing on objects from eight graduate student news from staff reduction to cuts in research funds countries, the show offers fascinating examples for faculty—with the goal of preserving fund- of symbolic representations of architecture in ing in vital areas of undergraduate teaching and the context of Byzantine ritual and pilgrimage. 15 graduate student support. Thanks to the careful This successful exhibition is just one result of undergraduate news planning of my predecessor Hal Foster and our the close alliance between the department and department manager Susan Lehre, we emerged the museum. Since the arrival of James Steward from the crisis relatively unscathed. as the museum’s new director last fall, the The transformation of the department department and museum have intensified their seminar study trips over the last few years continues with the collaboration in both teaching and exhibi- retirement of three of our esteemed tions, and James will teach a course on colleagues—Pat Brown, Willy Childs, 18th-century British painting next year. and Danny —who will leave a lectures, conferences, Ćurčić­ Scholarly discourse and interchange symposiums gap not only as eminent scholars of continued this year with a dense Renaissance studies, Greek archaeol- schedule of lectures and confer- ogy, and Byzantine studies, but also as ences. In October, former students 4 friends who will be missed. of our retiring Classicists Willy tang center But there is good news as well. Next Childs, Hugo Meyer, and T. Les- fall we will welcome Nathan Arrington lie Shear organized a conference in 6 as our new expert in Greek art history their honor. Bridget Alsdorf and the marquand library and archaeology. After studying at Institute for Advanced Study’s Yve- Oxford, Nathan received his Ph.D. Alain Bois co-organized the lecture from Berkeley with a stunning thesis series “Art and Its Audiences” that 8 on the public cemetery and collective brought to campus John Baines, Visual resources collection memory at Athens after the Persian Okwui Enwezor, and Kaja Silver- Wars. An experienced excavator, he man, among others. This year’s will continue the department’s long Weitzmann Lecture by Elizabeth 3 tradition of Classical field archaeology Bolman revealed the painted wonders index of christian art at a new site. of the early Byzantine Red Monastery in Upper Beginning in September, archaeology in the Egypt. Our graduate students organized a high- department will also extend to the Americas: 3 caliber conference on the theme “Horizons and excaVations Christina Halperin, a brilliant young Meso- Horizontality.” A symposium honoring Danny american archaeologist with her own site in Ćurčić and the conference “The Egyptian Guatemala, will join us for three years, teaching Image in Context,” organized by postdoctoral 34 courses on Mesoamerican material culture and fellow Debbie Vischak, closed out this lively news from alumni Mayan archaeology. The department will also academic year. continue to offer two postdoctoral fellowships in fields that are underrepresented by regular Thomas Leisten, chair Faculty News Bridget Alsdorf presented papers at various ven- the Program in Hellenic Studies and the Depart- ues in Princeton and beyond, including a major ment of Art and Archaeology, to Athens and symposium on 19th-century French painting at Rhodes during the fall recess (see page 20). the Clark Art Institute; a symposium on Chinese Brown continues to explore the coastline documentary photography at the Tang Center and islands of the Mediterranean for her book for East Asian Art; a conference “On Accident” on the artistic and cultural geography of the at the Princeton School of Architecture; and a Venetian empire. Last summer she traveled to panel on “The Renaissance of the Baroque” at Cyprus and Croatia, with a side trip to Prague, the 2010 annual meeting of the Renaissance with Tracy Cooper *90. In June she will fly to Society of America in Venice, Italy. She chaired Istanbul for a week, meeting up with Princeton a panel on “Modernism and Collectivism” at the alumni Blake de Maria *02, Alessandra Ricci Bridget Alsdorf et al., Andrea 2010 annual meeting of the College Art Asso- *09, Deborah Walberg *04, and Omer Ziyal ’08, Hornick, Recent Work: 1460–1865 ciation in Chicago, and, with Yve-Alain Bois of before a month of research in Venice. the Institute for Advanced Study, co-organized a Brown presented a paper at the symposium year-long lecture series on the theme “Art and Its “Sound, Space, and Object: The Aural, the Visual, Audiences” (see page 22). and the Tactile in Early Modern French and Ital- Alsdorf was invited to join the editorial ian Music Rooms,” in the Centre for Research in board of 48/14: La Revue du Musée d’Orsay, the Arts, Social Sciences, and Humanities at the where her article “La fraternité des individus: les University of Cambridge in July 2009, and she portraits de groupe de Degas” will appear in the delivered the Denys Hay Memorial Lecture at the spring/summer 2010 issue. “Femininity and National Gallery of Scotland, sponsored by the Animality: Portraits of a Lady Exposed,” an essay University of Edinburgh’s Centre for Medieval on the work of contemporary artist Andrea and Renaissance Studies, in April 2010. Hornick, appeared in an exhibition catalogue Her most recent publication is “Là où published by David Krut Projects, New York, in l’argent coule à flots: Le mécénat dans la Venise September 2009. She also completed two other du XVIe siècle,” in Titien, Tintoret, Véronèse... articles: one on Paul Cézanne’s late still lifes Rivalités à Venise, edited by Vincent Delieuvin slated to appear in Word & Image this fall, and and Jean Habert (Musée du Louvre, 2009), the Patricia Fortini Brown et al., one on Henri Fantin-Latour’s destroyed Homage catalogue for the Paris venue of the fine exhibi- Titien, Tintoret, Véronèse . to Truth (1865), forthcoming in the Getty tion curated by Frederick Ilchman ’90 at the Rivalités à Venise Research Journal. She is currently finishing an Boston Museum of Fine Arts. article on Félix Vallotton’s crowd scenes and their William Childs will retire at the conclusion relationship to his novels, which was invited for of the spring semester after 36 years of teach- a special issue of Word & Image on artists’ writ- ing at Princeton. He will continue as director ings in the modern period. of the department’s excavations at Polis Chryso- This spring she greatly enjoyed teaching a chous, Cyprus, site of the ancient city of Marion/ new freshman seminar, “The Artist as Idea, from Arsinoe, working on the final publication of the Leonardo to Warhol,” for which she co-curated excavations, as well as on an international loan the exhibition “The Artist as Image” at the exhibition on Marion/Arsinoe tentatively sched- Princeton University Art Museum, with Calvin uled to open at the Princeton University Art Brown, associate curator of prints and drawings. Museum in the fall of 2012. She will spend her upcoming sabbatical year in New York, with a Chester Dale Fellowship from Slobodan Ćurčić gave the keynote lecture at the the Metropolitan Museum of Art. international colloquium “Serbien und Byzanz” at the Universität zu Köln in December 2008, Slobodan Ćurčić, Architecture Patricia Fortini Brown taught her two last where he spoke on “Architecture in Byzantium, in the Balkans from Diocletian to classes—one old and one new—last fall, before Serbia, and the Balkans through the Lenses of Süleyman the Magnificent, retirement at the end of this academic year. Modern Historiography.” In February 2009, he ca. 300–ca. 1550 Along with the venerable Art 210, “Italian gave a paper titled “Some Further Thoughts on Renaissance Painting and Sculpture,” that she the Architecture and Art of the Cappella Pala- has taught almost yearly for more than 20 years, tina in Palermo” at the conference “Overlay of she co-taught a one-time-only seminar with John Plans: The Palace Chapel of the Norman Kings Pinto: “Rhodes and Malta: Art, Faith, Warfare.” in Sicily” in Tübingen. The proceedings of both The course, with nine undergraduates and three conferences are currently in press. graduate students, featured a trip, sponsored by 2 s p r i n g ­ 1 Ćurčić spent the spring 2009 semester, the last segment of his phased retirement plan, in Thessaloniki, Greece, working on the major international loan exhibition “Architecture as John Blazejewski Icon: Perception and Representation of Architec- ture in Byzantine Art,” a joint project of the European Center for Byzantine and Post- Byzantine Monuments in Thessaloniki and the Princeton University Art Museum, with gener- ous support from the department and the Program in Hellenic Studies. The exhibition, which brings together 79 objects from lenders in 10 countries, was shown in Thessaloniki from November 2009–January 2010 and opened at the Princeton University Art Museum on March 6; it will remain on view until June 7, 2010. The richly illustrated 350-page catalogue, published in both Greek and English editions, demon- strates that representations of architecture are Department faculty. Front row, left to right: Esther meaningful, active components of Byzantine art. da Costa Meyer, Chika Okeke-Agulu, Nino Ćurčić was the guest curator of the Princeton Zchomelidse, Anne McCauley, Andrew Watsky; back exhibition and, with Evangelia Hadjitryphonos, row, left to right: Thomas Leisten, Rachael DeLue, co-editor of the catalogues.