ALUMNI NEWSLETTER 2019-2020 Dear Alums, The 2019-20 academic year has been an unusual one at the GC, as elsewhere, particularly this spring. We've faced considerable challenges from the coronavirus and the economic difficulties suffered by New York during this time, and it's clear that more are still to come. We've also suffered losses from COVID-19, including alumnus Maurice Berger and Professor Emeritus William Gerdts. At the same time, I have been extraordinarily impressed at how creatively, compassionately, and effectively our faculty and students have risen to the challenges of our current situation. I've seen first-year teachers deal masterfully with the transition to online learn- ing; students and faculty create astonishing shared resources for those taking orals; and our first two 'digital defences' occur in the last few weeks. Even as I rage at the circumstances we face, I feel proud and grateful for our GC community. This fall, we welcomed our 2019 cohort of nine students and they have settled in nicely. They've bonded over Methods and Peda- gogy, participated very enthusiastically in Rewalds, and even created a weekly check-in, allowing them to stay connected despite being now in multiple time zones and continents. For more details on our 2019 cohort, please see the introduction to them later in this newsletter. We have just finalized our incoming class of 2020. They're a tough-minded and gutsy group, interested in everything from representations of medieval sex workers to diversifying museum collections. We're thrilled to have them, and can't wait to see what they teach us. Stay tuned for our student profiles of them in next year’s alumni newsletter. Our current students have had a busy year — I know, I always say that, but this year, even more so! Courtesy our grant from the Mellon Foundation, student Debra Lennard organized a show this fall at the James Gallery, "Notes on Solidarity: Tricontinentalism in Print." Visually stunning, it was also a fascinating investigation of how self-determination movements represented themselves in works of paper, from Havana to Hanoi. Also in the fall, we hosted a student-organized conference, "Un-Fair Trades: Artistic Intersections with Social and Environmental Injustices in the Atlantic World." Students Caroline Gillaspie and Alice Walkiewicz and faculty adviser Katherine Manthorne put together two very full and exciting days of talks about how artists have engaged with issues of oppression and exploitation in the transatlantic world; I learned a tremendous amount. Our planned spring conferences were largely postponed, but we did have a very pertinent and fascinating online seminar, "Art Work Place," addressing the current moment as it affects museums and their workers; this was co-organized by student Michelle Millar Fisher and attracted about 350 individuals. Very impressive! For announcements about these events, and many others, you can follow not only our listserv, but also our Facebook page https://www.facebook.com/GCArtHistory/, our Twitter account (@GCArtHistory), and our Instagram feed (@GCArtHistory). All are maintained by our Social Media Fellow, Kaegan Sparks, who has done an extraordinary job this year. Please follow us online, and also send updates on your own doings to [email protected]. Over the course of the 2019-20 academic year, our students have completed seven dissertations, on topics ranging from perfor- mance for camera under the Brazilian dictatorship, to photographs of the tea industry in colonial India and works on paper in post- war Pakistan. We’re going to miss them, but are proud of their accomplishments and of the exciting positions they have landed, including a postdoctoral curatorial fellowship at the Morgan Library and an assistant professorship at California State University at San Francisco. We’re also extremely proud of the banner year we’ve been having in external fellowships. Samantha Small won a Fulbright to Ger- many for her work on Symbolist Franz von Stuck, and will be heading to Bavaria whenever the State Department lets her. Saskia Verlaan, by contrast, will be a fellow at the Menil Drawing Institute in Houston, studying works on paper in postwar Italy. Janine DeFeo, whose topic is performances dealing with eating and food, will be heading to DC for a Smithsonian Institution Fellowship, while Ana C. Perry will be closer to home with an Inter-University Program in Latino Research Fellowship for her work on Latinx art- ist Raphael Montañez Ortiz. The number and variety of the fellowships our students have won testifies to the exciting, out-of-the- box work they are doing; we are extremely proud of them all. We've also been fortunate in receiving several large foundation grants this year. The Mellon Foundation awarded us a $650,000 grant, extending our "New Initiatives in Curatorial Training" program for an additional five years. We've also received a $500,000 endowment from the Helen Frankenthaler Foundation, which will provide a fellowship each year for a student engaged in disserta- tion research that resonates with the work of Helen Frankenthaler. Our first awardee, Maya Harakawa, starts this fall. Though these grants are considerable, even a small donation can make a great difference to our needy students. Particularly in the current fund- ing climate, with widespread cuts to public higher education, your assistance is very helpful; any amount is welcome. Best, Rachel Kousser DEPARTMENT NEWS DEPARTMENT WELCOMES NEW STUDENTS The Department welcomes our newest cohort of students We would also like to extend a warm welcome to our up- who began their studies at the GC in Fall 2019. coming cohort of students who will begin their studies at the GC this Fall 2020. • Elizabeth Akant (BA, Oberlin College) • Flora Brandl (MA, Goldsmiths/ NYU) • Kiki Barnes (MA, NYU) • Isabel Elson (MA, Courtauld Institute) • Cortney Berg (MA, Arizona State) • Jacqueline Edwards (MA, UT- San Antonio) • Kerry Doran (MA, Courtauld Institute) • Monica Espinel (MA, Hunter College) • Beatrice Grenier (MA, Columbia Univ.) • Alexandra Foradas (MA, Williams College) • Naoimy Guerrero (BA, DePaul Univ.) • Taylor Hartley (MA, Univ. of Iowa) • Cathryn Jijon (BA, Univ. of Chicago) • Khushmi Mehta (BA, Art Instit. Of Chicago) • Emily Mangione (MA, Univ. College London) • Terra Warren (MA, Georgetown Univ.) • Victoria Nerey (MA, University of Houston) • Suzanne Oppenheimer (MA, Courtauld Institute) • Quinn Schoen (BA, Brown University) • Jin Wang (MA, NYU) RECENT FACULTY AND STUDENT EVENTS Photo taken at the Schomburg Center from Katherine Manthorne’s Fall 2019 class Race, Politics & Ethnography in Photography: The New York Public Li- brary Collection, co-taught with Elizabeth Cronin, Assistant Curator of Pho- tography at the NYPL and Graduate Center Alum. Students giving presentations at the NYPL on January 30th, 2020 as part of the event “NYPL Hidden Gems: Race, Politics, Photography. Students are (left to right) Anna Orton-Hatzis, Khushmi Mehta, Isabel Elson, and María-Beatriz H. Carrión. Students organize Sessions in Art and Practice: Writing in Tempo series Sessions in Art and Practice is an annual series of workshops and talks led by artists, curators, scholars, and writers on topics in art, research, and writing. In 2020, the program developed the theme of “Writing in Tempo” to explore how writing might keep pace with its objects through interpretive, descriptive, and critical approaches to historicity, working within and against the grain of the rhythms and urgencies of the present. This program is organized by Jack Crawford, Mia Curran, Kirsten Gill, and Rachel Valinsky, and co-sponsored by the Ph.D. Program in Art History and the James Gal- lery / The Center for Humanities, with support from the John Rewald Endowment of the Ph.D. Program in Art History and the Doctoral Students ’Council at The Graduate Center, City University of New York. Further sessions including Renée Green and Claudia Rankine were planned, but postponed as a result of COVID-19. Jennifer Doyle: America Out of Iraq Graduate Student Workshop: For this workshop, Jennifer Talk: As we move towards the summer Olympics in Tokyo, Doyle took the publication of Anti-fascism/Art/Theory, a the IOC issued the latest of its directives to athletes con- special issue of Third Text, to stage a conversation about sidering making gestures of protest within the space of critical practice in our contemporary political moment. the sport spectacle. Sports, they claim, are neutral. Politi- Participants read Angela Dimitrikaki and Harry Weeks's cal gestures are banned and protesting athletes, they "Introduction to What Hurts Us" and explored the articles promise, will be disciplined. In this talk, Jennifer Doyle in the issue. Participants explored different modalities and drew from theorizations of war to reconsider the iconicity expressions of racism in contemporary art practice, and of the figure of the resistant athlete. Drawing from the institutional responses and non-responses to that racism. work of contemporary artists inspired by Tommie Smith In addition, they explored the relationship between liberal, and John Carlos (who raised their fists in protest at the inferential racism (as manifested in work by white artists 1968 Olympics) and by Younis Mahmoud (the Iraqi na- which have become art "controversies") and the overt rac- tional soccer team captain who, on winning the 2007 Asia ism of the far right, as encountered in and around art (and Cup told media "I want America out of Iraq now"), Doyle