Art History

Please join Erin Grant (enrolled member of the Colorado River Indian Tribes) and Assistant Curator of Native American Art at the Portland Art Museum in a conversation about her experience navigating Indigenous community outreach and museum-wide repatriation efforts in her new role. The discussion will cover Erin's outreach methodology, relationship building and community collaboration for the contemporary Native American art exhibition Jeffrey Gibson: They Come From Fire, and her work in the repatriation of Indigenous sacred and cultural items.

As Native / Indigenous peoples and their artistic expressions and voices become more of a national and international interest during this DEAI era, many museums and galleries are renovating or creating space for this necessary inclusion. Opening nearly thirty-five years ago, the Eiteljorg Museum of Indianapolis, Indiana, has prioritized its mission to share the stories of Native / Indigenous peoples of the U.S. and Canada. Indiana, a home to several tribes and a site of relocation for others, is not typically considered a Native or Indigenous space. Who defines what or where is Native / Indigenous space? And what makes the Eiteljorg so special?

About the Speaker

Dorene Red Cloud is an enrolled citizen of the Oglala Sioux Tribe. She received her Master of Arts in American Indian Studies at the University of California, Los Angeles, Bachelor of Fine Arts in Ceramics at the University of Michigan, and Associate of Fine Arts in Museum Studies at the Institute of American Indian Arts. Red Cloud worked at the National Museum of the American Indian, Smithsonian Institution as a Repatriation Research Specialist from 1999-2003. After a number of years spent working outside the museum field, she joined the Eiteljorg Museum as assistant curator of Native American art in October 2016 but since July 2022, she is the curator of Native American art. Originally, from Chicago, IL, Red Cloud currently resides in Indianapolis, IN, and when not working, she is either creating a new art piece or pursuing mid-century treasure hunts at a local yard sale or antique store.

Kathryn Bunn-Marcuse is Associate Professor of Native Art in the Division of Art History and Curator of Northwest Native Art at the Burke Museum at the University of Washington

Abstract:  Using buttons and beads sewn on wool and calico, Kwakwa̱ka̱’wakw women fashion the robes and aprons essential to ongoing expressions of inherited prerogatives and rights. Shifting the scholarly focus from the carved traditions in Northwest Coast art, this talk recenters the textile arts within a holistic culturally-focused context while addressing issues of gender, the effects of colonial practices, and the damage wrought by salvage anthropology as it fragmented cultural information across archives. Kwakwa̱ka̱’wakw women’s artistic productions embody long-held technical and aesthetic knowledge connected to oral histories and cultural practices.

Learn how to find and successfully apply to the right graduate programs for you!

We are delighted to announce a presentation by Nicholas Mirzoeff, Professor of Media, Culture, and Communication at NYU, on Monday, October 23rd in LC 104.

Dr. Mirzoeff's talk, "The Strike Against White Sight is an Anticolonial Strike," is inspired by his most recent book White Sight: Visual Politics and Practices of Whiteness (2023, MIT Press) that discusses how white supremacy is not only perpetuated by laws and police, but also by visual culture and distinctive ways of seeing.

In his presentation, Dr. Mirzoeff will address how this "white sight" was and is a colonial technology, which he calls for a strike against, describing how it has been deployed over the course of white settlement and highlighting numerous forms of strike and refusal. In 2020, the strike against white supremacy made these histories visible, even as it also revealed how removal of racist monuments, repair and reparations are the key tactics for the current moment.

We look forward to seeing you at this insightful and inspiring evening!

For more information about Dr. Mirzoeff, please check out https://steinhardt.nyu.edu/people/nicholas-mirzoeff.

The Department of Art History is holding its 2nd Annual Internship Workshop! You don't have to be a declared Art History major/minor/or concentrator to come, but it couldn't hurt!

Students who participated last year applied to summer and year-long internships and were wildly successful! You'll learn all the tips and tricks YOU need to land a great internship in art history and related fields such as museums (all aspects), libraries, archives, galleries and more!

We'll hear from several of our current students and alumni about their experiences seeking out and landing internships as well as feature the exciting opportunities available through the Global Engagement Program, which includes an internship component. An Art History alum participated in this program in 2016 and interned at the Rubin Museum of Art.

Light refreshments will be served too!

You are invited to an Art History Coffee Party with the faculty and staff and your fellow students at the home of Professor Emeritus, William B. Rhoads, next to campus. We are so grateful to Professor Rhoads for generously offering to host us! 
RSVP: Please respond by Monday, September 4 using this form: https://forms.office.com/r/9SdLCBKrxt

Space is limited! While primarily for art history majors, minors, and early childhood education concentrators, we encourage interested students from other majors to also attend!

Questions?  Please contact Susan Smutny at demaios@newpaltz.edu. If you have accessibility questions or require accommodations to fully participate in this off-campus event, please contact us as soon as possible.
We hope you'll join us!
Keely Heuer
Chair, Department of Art History

We are very grateful for the financial support of Campus Auxiliary Services that has made this important event possible. Please feel free to contact Art History Chair, Keely Heuer, at heuerk@newpaltz.edu or x3829 if you have any questions or if you wish to request accommodations.

Everyone is welcome to a fascinating demonstration of the tintype photographic process by photographer Tom DeLooza from preparation of the plate, to exposure, to development, and fixing.

This event is organized by Professor Beth E. Wilson in conjunction with her History of Photography class.

If you have accessibility questions or need accommodations to fully participate, contact Prof. Beth E. Wilson at wilsonb@newpaltz.edu or x 3896 as soon as possible.

Greetings everyone!

I am so delighted to welcome you to the fifth annual SUNY New Paltz Undergraduate Art History Symposium, which has again exceeded our wildest expectations since the event’s inception by the SUNY New Paltz Art History Association in 2018.

The response to 2023’s call for abstracts was astounding, and the leaders of the Art History Association, who selected this year’s papers through a blind review process, had quite the challenge, ultimately doubling the number of papers that were accepted for the Symposium in 2022.

To accommodate so many worthy student-scholars, we doubled up the sessions during many of our usual time slots and added a fourth day to the event.

The Presenters’ pages have links to the individual papers on their respective day’s schedule. Session Recordings will be availalbe from the Symposium website at the end of April 2023.

Òur Keynote Speaker was Dr. Aaron M. Hyman, Assistant Professor of the History of Art at Johns Hopkins University. He works on northern European art and the art of the Spanish Empire from a global perspective, with a focus on the long seventeenth century. His first book, Rubens in Repeat: The Logic of the Copy in Colonial Latin America (2021) explores the transmission of northern European prints to the Spanish Americas and the varying ways colonial artists engaged these materials. His talk for the Symposium is connected to his current book project—Formalities: The Visual Potential of Script in Art of the Early Modern Spanish World—that discusses the unusual quantity of written words on works of art created from c. 1540-1700 across the transatlantic Spanish Empire. Dr. Hyman has received many prestigious fellowships and awards for his scholarship, and we were delighted to have him share his innovative and exciting work with us.

The Symposium would not exist without our wonderful student presenters and their incredibly supportive faculty, family members, and friends. I am so grateful to all of you for making it possible to celebrate so much scholastic achievement. I also wish to express my deep appreciation for our excellent student moderators and for Susan Smutny, who provides us with such spectacular technical support. We truly had a memorable weekend, filled with thought-provoking ideas, engaging discussion, and many new friendships!

With warmest wishes,

Professor Keely Heuer
Chair, Department of Art History
SUNY New Paltz

Abstract:

Around 1608, Peter Paul Rubens produced an oil sketch of the face of a Black man, a head study that the Flemish artist would ultimately mobilize in a large painting of the Adoration of the Magi. To make the initial sketch, he reached for a sheet of merchant paper scrawled with a list of transactions—sums exchanged for goods received and shipped. It would be easy to wave this away as a case of simple, frugal reuse: the artist reached for what was at hand, readily and cheaply available. This talk, instead, argues that the sheet mattered quite a bit more and shaped not only Rubens’s aesthetic choices but also the thematic resonances that accreted around a figure that would play a large role in the artist’s career and pictorial imaginary.

About Dr. Hyman

Dr. Hyman, Assistant Professor of the History of Art at Johns Hopkins University, works on northern European art and the art of the Spanish Empire from a global perspective, with a focus on the long seventeenth century. His first book, Rubens in Repeat: The Logic of the Copy in Colonial Latin America (2021) explores the transmission of northern European prints to the Spanish Americas and the varying ways colonial artists engaged these materials. His talk for the Symposium is connected to his current book project—Formalities: The Visual Potential of Script in Art of the Early Modern Spanish World—that discusses the unusual quantity of written words on works of art created from c. 1540-1700 across the transatlantic Spanish Empire. Dr. Hyman has received many prestigious fellowships and awards for his scholarship, and we were delighted to have him share his innovative and exciting work with us.

Art History is hosting a Networking Soirée for art history majors, minors, and concentrators, this Thursday, March 30th in the Samuel Dorsky Museum of Art Lobby from 7:00-8:30PM!

This event is meant to help our students get over their jitters about talking to folks they do not know and to learn how to make meaningful connections with others that will help them achieve their future goals.

We encourage art history students to bring a friend with them (who does not have to be an art history major/minor/concentrator) to participate. Socialize and polish your networking skills with wonderful colleagues from across the campus., It should be a truly delightful event!

All current and prospective students are welcome to Careers in Art History 2023, an annual virtual panel discussion with young alumnx of the Art History Department at SUNY New Paltz.

Students can explore their career options with five alumnx who will share their experiences, accomplishments, and caveats during an informal, moderated discussion. A Q & A session will follow.

The Zoom meeting begins on Thursday, March 23, at 7:00 PM. Registration is required; use the QR code belor or go to the link on this page to register.

Our 2023 Careers Panelists are:

• Gabriel Chalfin-Piney '18 Arts Administrator, Organizer, & Artist, Chicago Area
• Sarah Fisk '14, Inventory Control Coordinator, UOVO Art Storage, Brooklyn
• Ameya Grant '18, Conservation of Historic and Artistic Works (MSc) and History of Art and Archaeology (MA) Dual Degree Student at The Conservation Center, Institute of Fine Arts-NYU
• Emily Koller-Apelskog '15, Fellows Program Coordinator, National Gallery of Art, Washington, DC
• Elva Rivera '16, Tattooer, Artist, Educator, & Organizer, Poughkeepsie

Student comments from a past Careers in Art History Panel:

• "It was very nice how intimate the event was. Awesome to be able to network beforehand."
• "More, More, More...please & Thank you!"
• "Very refreshing and innovative!"
• "It was definitely inspirational hearing the stories and careers of the alumni. It made me feel even more driven to pursue my passion of AH.

The Art History Association is pleased to announce the start of its spring lecture series, which focuses on Latin American and Latinx visual and material culture. We are kicking things off with a fantastic virtual talk by Dr. Anna Indych-López, Professor of Art History at the CUNY Graduate Center at 6:30 PM on Thursday, March 2nd via Zoom (Registration Required).

Dr. Indych-López’s talk, "Marías, Pachucas, Cholas: Judy Baca’s Chicana Tough Girls," will focus on Las Tres Marías, a performative work for the first known group exhibition of art made by Chicanas, held at the Woman’s Building in Los Angeles. In the nearly life-size mixed-media triptych, she invoked the figures of the pachuca (the 1940s Mexican American woman zoot suiter known for her distinctive style and resistance) and the chola (her 1970s streetwise counterpart).

Dr. Indych-López is a renowned scholar of modern and contemporary art among Latin American, U.S., transatlantic, Afro-diasporic, and Latinx networks. Her work investigates art in the public sphere, especially in Mexico, as well as Latinx and U.S.-Mexico borderlands contemporary art, focusing on cross-cultural intellectual and aesthetic exchanges, the polemics of realisms, and spatial politics.

All are welcome to attend the talk, but Zoom registration is required. Please register for the Zoom meeting with this QR code or click the link above. We hope to see you at this celebration of Chicana culture!

Following The Thread (2021, 22") provides a critical view of the delicate balance Indigenous communities of fabric makers face as they struggle to maintain age-old artisanal practices in a globalized market economy. Filmmaker Kathy Brew will give a presentation after the screening. A reception will follow the event. For questions and to request accommodations, please contact Chair of Art History, Keely Heuer heuerk@newpaltz.edu (845) 257-3829.

In the Peruvian Andes, textiles are omnipresent in the lives of indigenous people; they are both eminently practical and stunningly beautiful as generations of weavers have applied their creativity to invent techniques and designs found nowhere else in the world. Textiles still form a powerful part of identity. But this identity is at risk. Indigenous people still face racism on a daily basis. And a globalized market economy that produces cheap, machine-made products destroys respect and interest in the hand-made. Infringement on the intellectual rights of native peoples only makes this worse.

The Center for Traditional Textiles of Cusco (CTTC) was established by Andean weavers and their supporters to aid in the survival of Cusqueñan textile traditions and to provide support to the indigenous people who create them. This short film presents some of the communities affiliated with the Center and includes special celebrations and ceremonies, rituals with the animals (llamas and sheep), natural dying processes, weaving and knitting demonstrations, and much more.

Film Screening, Faculty-Led Discussion (February 8)
AND
Presentation by Tamara Lanier (February 9)

The Departments of Art History and Black Studies are pleased to invite you to an inspiring two-day event highlighting Tamara Lanier’s ongoing struggle to force Harvard University to cede possession of daguerreotypes of her great-great-great grandfather, an enslaved man named Renty. These early photographs, commissioned in 1850 by a Harvard professor to support his racist conclusions regarding the “superiority” of the white race, are emblematic of America’s failure to acknowledge fully the cruelty of slavery and the ongoing issues of racism and white supremacy today. On February 8th at 7 PM, we will offer a screening of the documentary film Free Renty: Lanier v. Harvard (2021, 95"), which was featured at prestigious film festivals across the country in 2022 and outlines Ms. Lanier’s story. This screening will be accompanied by contextualizing commentary from faculty representatives of the Department of Art History and Black Studies. On February 9th at 7 PM, we will have the pleasure of hearing from Ms. Lanier herself, who will give an in-person talk on what has happened in her case against Harvard since the filming of the documentary. Her presentation will be followed with a reception. Both events will be held in LC 104.

We are very grateful for the financial support of Campus Auxiliary Services that has made this important event possible. Please feel free to contact Art History Chair, Keely Heuer, at heuerk@newpaltz.edu or x3829 if you have any questions or if you wish to request accommodations.

The Art History Association and the Department of Art History are very pleased to announce a virtual address on April 7^th at 7 PM by Dr. Renée Ater, Provost Visiting Professor and Director of Africana Studies at Brown University, entitled Memoryscapes of Slavery: The Slave Dwelling as Remains and Commemorative Object.

This talk is the inaugural keynote address of the annual SUNY New Paltz Undergraduate Art History Symposium. The Symposium comprises eleven sessions over the three subsequent days, Friday, April 8^th through Sunday, April 10^th. The SUNY New Paltz Undergraduate Art History Symposium is the largest event of its kind in the United States, featuring talks from nearly one hundred students representing eighty collegiate institutions located across the globe.

The Symposium website schedule page to register for all other sessions as well as the Keynote, may be reached at  https://tinyurl.com/2022SNPUAHS-Session-Register.