Number 50 – Fall 2015 NEWSLETTERAlumni INSTITUTE OF FINE ARTS Published by the Alumni Association of 1 From the Director Contents Patricia Rubin, Judy and Michael Steinhardt Director From the Director ...............3 Remembrance: Daniel Dennehy ................15 One Good Turn (in a Duke House), Deserves Another ...............4 In Memoriam: Regina Trapp ..................16 Art History as Autobiography ......6 experiences, sometimes hair-raising, often research, which has included student projects The Year in Pictures ............17 amusing, and usually formative. I learn about as well as workshops exploring digital tools and At Home In the Ancien Régime: eccentric encounters with learned professors, their applications to art historical inquiry and A Study Tour with William Hood ....8 Faculty Updates ...............19 inspiring moments in the class room, and from this year, the formation of a committee on enduring friendships. Almost daily, I get news digital resources. Chain Reactions: Keywords for the Alumni Updates ...............24 of your impressive achievements and interesting Future of Art History .............9 endeavors, a number of them described here and Over the past year we also looked forward Doctors of Philosophy Conferred others available to you on our website and by by convening an ad hoc strategy committee, Remembering in 2013-2014 .................38 means of the Institute’s social media. We have which met three times in the autumn. The Professor von Blanckenhagen .... 11 in 2014-2015 .................39 launched an Alumni Mapping Project on the committee invited leading arts philanthropists, website, which connects our alumni community Institute Board members, and Institute faculty Curating Chinese Art ...........13 Alumni Donors ................40 across the world. Take a look and make sure to to consider the Institute’s current position and put yourselves on our map! future prospects. What emerged strongly, if From the Director paradoxically, given the level of our activity – in Patricia Rubin The Duke House Diary keeps you posted seminars, in prizes and honors awarded faculty about doings at the Institute, so I will not and students, in publications, in curatorial A grateful boast: the Institute is currently second rehearse the year. Our “event-full” calendar involvement, and in alumni distinction – was a in proportion in alumni giving at NYU. Only of lectures and conferences is largely available “disconnect” between how much we do and how Institute of Fine Arts Alumni Association the medical school is ahead, substantially in to you in the video archives on the website, much is acknowledged in the wider world of the dollar amounts, but only marginally in the which have attracted viewers from across the arts and their promotion and sponsorship. That commitment and loyalty of its graduates. world. A current project, led by Jonathan is a perceptual gap that we must work to repair. Officers: Board Members: Committees: Thank you. Hay, is the design of research portals on the Our institutional influence does not match our website. The portals, created and edited by or your individual achievements. Profile will President Patrick Amsellem Walter S. Cook Lecture Thanks as well to those of you who have become Institute professors, will be collecting points be the buzz word for the coming year. Alumni Jay Levenson, Chair alumni mentors. Current students are eager to for information about topics, publications, and advocacy plays a critical role in spreading the Gertje Utley [email protected] connect to the Institute network and to benefit activities relating to various fields and themes: word and be prepared to be asked to heighten [email protected] Jennifer Eskin Yvonne Elet from your experience and from your contacts. one of them being historiography, which will the volume. Keeping in touch is key, so please [email protected] Jennifer Eskin They have also benefited from the alumni career include a section on the Institute’s history and continue to do so by every means, in person, by Vice-President Susan Galassi Susan Galassi panels, where alumni share stories of how they contribution to art history. Should you like to post, through all of our internet resources, and, Alicia Lubowski-Jahn [email protected] Debra Pincus came to do what they do, and demonstrate that reflect on our colorful past in a most enjoyable of course, by coming to alumni events whenever Katherine Schwab career paths are varied and almost invariably as manner, I suggest you take a look at the short possible. Indeed, I look forward to seeing many [email protected] William Hood winding as they are rewarding. film of Jonathan Brown recollecting his years as of you at this year’s reunion at the annual [email protected] director of the Institute. We are, of course, also College Art Association meeting in Washington Treasurer Matthew Israel Newsletter I am always moved as well as fascinated to hear very much oriented to the future in a number of DC in February where we can join together to Lisa Rotmil [email protected] Martha Dunkelman, Editor about the IFA experience from you; or rather ways. One of them is an exploration of digital sound the IFA trumpet. [email protected] Lynda Klich [email protected] [email protected] Edina Adam Secretary Anne Hrychuk Kontokosta Johanna Levy [email protected] History of the Institute of Fine Arts Institute of Fine Arts Alumni Association Mission Statement [email protected] Jennifer Perry Rebecca Rushfield The mission of the Alumni Association of the Institute of Fine Arts is to foster a strong sense of community [email protected] [email protected] among the alumni through social and scholarly events, and through the publication of the Newsletter; to support Debra Pincus Jennifer Perry student research through travel grants with funds raised by the Association; and to preserve the history of the IFA [email protected] Alison West through recording oral histories and the collecting of archival documents. Alison West [email protected] 2 3 One Good Turn (in a Duke House), Deserves Another friends to make; and while the orientation Newport, which is what Doris Duke returned scratch. This wasn’t the case at Rough Point, with you in your desire to redecorate the The large English and family portraits that tour made mention of the donor of the house to in the later 1950s, after 20 years of Rough which had been largely cleared of family, staff, home at Rough Point, which has so much had hung in the lobby and Oak Room, being rattled by Venturi altering her bedroom, Point being “only a tangential part of her and furnishings in the early 1950s, when sentimental value to you.”4 The pair from which were Gimblett’s focus, now occupy I don’t remember giving any thought to where life.”1 Doris tried unsuccessfully to give it to the Duke now hang in the Dining Room at the grand staircase and Great Hall walls at in the house this donor might have been born, Newport Hospital. Rough Point; the three from the NCMA in Rough Point – two of the most prominent or married. Or, in which room her father had Rough Point is a pink granite, Bellevue the upper reaches of the Great Hall. locations in the house. Major pieces of Qing died, windows thrown open to the winter Avenue “cottage” with a Vanderbilt pedigree. Where Shangri La put her squarely in an Dynasty porcelain, Queen Anne and Regency chill, her mother wrapped in a fur coat that It was bought by James B. Duke in 1922 and exotic world of her own making, Rough Most of our knowledge of recent provenance furniture, Persian rugs, and much, much would be, some forty years later, the donor’s was greatly enlarged for the Dukes by Horace Point seems to have offered an opportunity (or immediately prior location) of objects more can also be traced back to Duke House. singular inheritance from that parent. (Any Trumbauer. Doris spent her summers there to reclaim and reshape the familiar, of both at Rough Point comes from the notebooks Gainsborough’s 1781 portrait of Raphael account of the Dukes, I’ve learned, has to have from ages 11 to 23, and just didn’t come recent and distant vintage. As I learn more of longtime estate manager, Phil Mello, Franco, pictured opposite, hung until 1958 a little drama! But that’s it for this one.) back after her marriage to James Cromwell in about the contents of Rough Point, what I but only as we dig deeper into the archives, between the west windows in the Oak Room 1935. The couple ventured off on a yearlong, find particularly intriguing are the stories of primarily at Duke University, are we learning at Duke House. When I returned to Duke House this past round-the-world honeymoon that would Doris’s attachment to specific objects, and about specific conditions or circumstances of January for the first time in many years, include North Africa, the Middle East, India, the importance they had for her well beyond re-acquisition, like that cited above for the In his remarks on the occasion of the this early history of the house was all that I Southeast Asia, and finally awai’i.H The the simple fact of material possession. Clearly tapestries. There are several other original- dedication of the Stephen Chan House in could think of. Since December 2014, I’ve marriage was a disaster, but the experience left nostalgia played a role, but so did simple to-Rough Point furnishings that remain in 1983, Craig Hugh Smyth recalled that in served as Deputy Director for Collections, Doris with a passion for all things Islamic and aesthetic delight. Monetary value and matters the house to this day, not the least being the 1956 “the Institute had decided we needed Programming and Public Engagement another spectacularly sited house, aptly named of authenticity were less significant.