Number 55 – Fall 2020 NEWSLETTERAlumni PatriciaEichtnbaumKaretzky andZhangEr Neoclasicos rnE'-RTISTREINVENTiD,1~1-1= THEME""'lLC.IIEllMNICOLUCTION MoMA Ano M. Franco .. ..H .. •... 1 .1 e-i =~-:.~ CALLi RESPONSE Nyu THE INSTITUTE Published by the Alumni Association of II IOF FINE ARTS 1 Contents Letter from the Director In Memoriam ................. .10 The Year in Pictures: New Challenges, Renewed Commitments, Alumni at the Institute ..........16 and the Spirit of Community ........ .3 Iris Love, Trailblazing Archaeologist 10 Faculty Updates ...............17 Conversations with Alumni ....... .4 Leatrice Mendelsohn, Alumni Updates ...............22 The Best Way to Get Things Done: Expert on Italian Renaissance An Interview with Suzanne Deal Booth 4 Art Theory 11 Doctors of Philosophy Conferred in 2019-2020 .................34 The IFA as a Launching Pad for Seventy Nadia Tscherny, Years of Art-Historical Discovery: Expert in British Art 11 Master of Arts and An Interview with Jack Wasserman 6 Master of Science Dual-Degrees Dora Wiebenson, Conferred in 2019-2020 .........34 Zainab Bahrani Elected to the American Innovative, Infuential, and Academy of Arts and Sciences .... .8 Prolifc Architectural Historian 14 Masters Degrees Conferred in 2019-2020 .................34 Carolyn C Wilson Newmark, Noted Scholar of Venetian Art 15 Donors to the Institute, 2019-2020 .36 Institute of Fine Arts Alumni Association Offcers: Alumni Board Members: Walter S. Cook Lecture Susan Galassi, Co-Chair President Martha Dunkelman [email protected] and William Ambler [email protected] Katherine A. Schwab, Co-Chair [email protected] Matthew Israel [email protected] [email protected] Yvonne Elet Vice President Gabriella Perez Derek Moore Kathryn Calley Galitz [email protected] Debra Pincus [email protected] Debra Pincus Gertje Utley Treasurer [email protected] Newsletter Lisa Schermerhorn Rebecca Rushfeld Reva Wolf, Editor Lisa.Schermerhorn@ [email protected] [email protected] kressfoundation.org Katherine A. Schwab Miquael Williams, Student Assistant [email protected] Secretary Janne Sirén History of the Institute Johanna Levy [email protected] Rebecca Rushfeld, Chair [email protected] [email protected] Committees: Alumni Reunion The editor extends a special Alicia Lubowski-Jahn, Chair thank you to her predecessor, Student-Alumni [email protected] Martha Dunkelman, for much Gabriella Perez, Chair William Ambler valued guidance. [email protected] [email protected] Matthew Israel 2 Letter from the Director New Challenges, Renewed Commitments, and the Spirit of Community underrepresented groups. We are grateful to over the course of the spring and summer, Graeme Whitelaw for his generous gifts that they demonstrated the power of virtual media have endowed the Harriet Grifn Fellowship. to expand our audiences to people across the Tis fellowship, named in honor of Graeme country and around the world. Many of our Whitelaw’s wife, along with the Institute of alumni have let us know how much they have Fine Arts Fellowships, have already enabled us enjoyed these and other online lectures, many of to provide full or partial tuition fellowships to which will be posted to our website. Much of our MA students. Other transformative gifts made academic year programming and the next edition during the past year, from Rachel and Jonathan of the (virtual) Great Hall Exhibition is currently Wilf for a Conservation Center Fellowship, and being planned by our students, so stay tuned for from the Helen Frankenthaler Foundation for future announcements. We hope you will join PhD fellowships, provide much appreciated us and stay connected to the Institute via our support. We are also immensely grateful for the many webinars, lectures, book launches, student- gifts of two other alumnae; one will fund student curated online exhibitions, and other events research travel to Italy, and the other will support throughout the year. Christine Poggi, detail of a photo by Louisa Raitt summer museum internships. I also want to take this opportunity to Although no school or institute can cover thank all of you who responded to our call Dear all, all art historical or conservation felds, we aspire for emergency support for our students. Your Tis past year will be remembered for the to a curriculum that engages a multiplicity of generosity, along with that of our Board of many challenges and crises it brought to our traditions and media across the globe, one that Trustees, faculty, staf, Connoisseurs Circle community, and to the entire world. Te highlights cultural and geographical exchanges, members, and several students, allowed us to give Covid-19 pandemic disrupted our lives in and new ways of conceiving curatorial work and stipends to over 60 MA and PhD students who numerous, unforeseen ways; it caused NYU to public humanities. To this end, we have joined faced serious fnancial hardship this past summer. end in-person teaching and access to libraries, the new NYU Public Humanities Initiative that Just recently, we also gave modest sums to ten of ofces, and research centers in mid-March. It will launch in fall 2020 with support from the our doctoral students who are currently studying also led to the postponement of our spring 2020 Mellon Foundation. Te Marica and Jan Vilcek for their exams so that they could buy books at events and programs, as well as the cancellation Curatorial Program, inaugurated two years ago, a time when many libraries remain closed. Te of our excavations, many summer jobs, and allows us to invite several curators each year to Alumni Association played a key role in raising internships. We all experienced a great sense of lead seminars in their areas of expertise. We are funds for the Director’s Discretionary Fund (all loss and disorientation as we found ourselves delighted to welcome Italian drawings scholar devoted to student support), and to helping us physically distanced from our friends, peers, and curator Linda Wolk-Simon, who will reach out to others in our network. Institute of colleagues, and family members, unable to make teach our Introduction to Curatorial Practice Fine Arts students have expressed their profound frm plans for the future, or to travel freely. Many seminar this fall. In the spring, we plan to ofer a gratitude for the outpouring of concern and of these changes to our normal routines led to a curatorial seminar on the art of Goya, co-taught fnancial assistance you ofered them. I would pervasive sense of anxiety and disappointment, by Professor Edward J. Sullivan and curator Mark like to acknowledge the work of Jenny Eskin, as well as to serious fnancial hardship, especially McDonald of Te Metropolitan Museum of former President of the Institute’s Alumni for our students. Nonetheless our students and Art; a seminar on medieval manuscripts taught Association Board, and of its ofcers, for their faculty were remarkably resilient and creative, by curator and IFA alumnus Roger Wieck of inspirational leadership during this period. and they found ways to continue their studies Te Morgan Library and Museum; a seminar Te challenges of this past spring and and to care for one another. We celebrated the on a selection of women artists who won the summer, and those that remain as we reopen for achievements and hard work of our students in a Anonymous Was a Woman Award, taught hybrid teaching and virtual programming this virtual graduation in May. by scholar and curator Nancy Princenthal in fall, have shown us the value of our community. Shortly thereafter, we witnessed the vicious preparation for an exhibition to be held at NYU’s Our students, faculty, staf, and alumni have murder of George Floyd in Minneapolis, an event Grey Art Gallery; and a seminar on curating remained committed to our collective welfare that sparked outrage against decades of police cross-cultural exhibitions co-taught by Professor and safety, to our belief in the importance of our brutality against unarmed people of color. Hsueh-man Shen and curator and Egyptologist educational mission, and to the work we must do Te sustained, multi-racial social protest Clare Fitzgerald of ISAW. to ensure that we provide a research and learning movement that ensued has provoked many Our programming, all virtual, will continue environment that allows each of us, and all of us important conversations, and generated a new to address important issues and a wide array of together, to thrive and contribute meaningfully sense of urgency in demands for an end to felds and topics in the coming year. Tis past to the world we live in. Tank you for sharing in police brutality and racial injustice. Cultural summer, we hosted three webinars for the NYU this mission, for the support you provide, and for institutions, museums, and universities across our Alumni Association by our faculty: Professor the sense of community you foster. nation and abroad have begun the hard work of Finbarr Barry Flood, “Healing Dust and Printed rethinking their missions and focusing on how Cures: Technologies of Protection in Medieval With warm regards to all, to make their environments more inclusive and Islam”; Professor Edward J. Sullivan, “Landscapes welcoming to all. of Construction and Extinction: Art and Ecology At the Institute, despite the current hiring in the Americas”; and Professor Tomas E. Crow, freeze, we have renewed our commitment “French Landscape at the Margins of Survival.” to recruiting a more diverse faculty, staf, Tese online lectures each attracted over 300 and student body, and to raising funds for attendees and received extremely positive reviews. Christine Poggi fellowship support for our MA students from Along with other webinars and events ofered Judy and Michael Steinhardt Director 3 Conversations with Alumni The Best Way to Get Things Done An Interview with Suzanne Deal Booth, MA in Art History and Conservation, 1984 Alumna Suzanne Deal Booth, a former Everything I did in Europe had to do with going to graduate school, I was intrigued IFA Trustee, is a philanthropist, art advisor, culture, and it fed my imagination.