Dr. DeLancey with current students and alumni at her goodbye reception.
We are saddened to say goodbye to Art Historian Dr. Julia DeLancey, who will be moving to Virginia for a new academic position. She has been at Truman for more than twenty years, and although we will miss her, we wish her luck in her new position. A reception was held in the University Gallery on July 20th, in honor of her and her husband, Dr. Peter Kelly, and several students and alumni were able to say goodbye in person.
Art faculty Julia DeLancey, Aaron Fine, Aaron Neeley, and Sara Orel, along with Amanda Langendoerfer, who is the Head of Special Collections and University Museums at Truman, attended a Council of Public Liberal Arts Colleges Summer Institute on Liberal Learning in Asheville from June 8-10, 2017. This year the annual institute focused on art programs. Titled “Adaptations: Working in Art Departments at Public Liberal Arts Colleges,” the program brought together faculty from 18 universities to share ideas and discuss such topics as encouraging undergraduate research in Art, teaching Art History without having major museum collections nearby, and partnering with community arts organizations.
Photograph of participants in the COPLAC Summer Institute, courtesy of Emma Anderson.
Truman Faculty (all in the front row): Aaron Neeley, Julia DeLancey (2nd and 3rd from the left, respectively), Sara Orel (8th from left), Amanda Langendoerfer (5th from right), and Aaron Fine (2nd from right).
At the Institute Truman faculty also had the opportunity to congratulate the incoming Executive Director of COPLAC, our former colleague Cole Woodcox, who has retired from Truman to take the position. (He is the first person on the right in the back row of the photo above).
Assistant Professor of Art Heidi Cook completed her Ph.D. this year in the history of art and architecture at the University of Pittsburgh with advisor Barbara McCloskey. Her dissertation was titled “Picturing Peasants: Maksimilijan Vanka’s Folkloric Paintings and the ‘Croatian Question’ from Habsburg Empire to Croatian Nation-State.” Using the work of Croatian-American artist Vanka as a linking thread, her project explored how the production, circulation, and reception of objects and images related to Croatian folk culture played an active role in imagining a spectrum of competing national and imperial identities in early twentieth-century Yugoslavia. She received an American Councils Title VIII Fellowship, Foreign Language and Area Studies Academic-year Fellowships, and a Mellon Predoctoral Fellowship from the University of Pittsburgh among other grants to fund her research and writing. Her research will continue to focus on visual constructions of nationalisms and other competing political identities in the modern art, architecture, design, and cultural history of Central and Eastern Europe.
Dr. Cook and Dr. McCloskey at the University of Pittsburgh Commencement.
Each year we ask students and faculty to send us pictures of themselves on their midterm break travels. Amanda Matteucci sent us this marvelous picture of herself at Graffiti Park in Austin, Texas:
Professor Laura Bigger has sent us photographs of her exhibition, “Elements,” at the Frontier Space Gallery in Missoula, Montana, installed in early March. Congratulations!
Dr. Julia DeLancey’s current research into melancholy in the Italian Renaissance, perhaps a manifestation of what we now call “depression,” led her to research in New York, at the New York Public Library and the Metropolitan Museum of Art. She has shared these two images taken during the research trip, funded in part by a fellowship established by former Truman State University president Barbara Dixon.
The New York Public Library, photo courtesy of Julia DeLancey.
Visitors to the Metropolitan Museum of Art walk past Albrecht Dürer’s Melancholia I, photo courtesy of Julia DeLancey.
Several Art faculty attended the annual meeting of the College Art Association in New York this past week. Professor Aaron Fine had the launch of his book on color theory (Dialogues on Color), while Dr. Heidi Cook (Truman alumna and now a faculty member here) gave a paper on Croatian art. Dr. Julia DeLancey hosted a reception for art faculty from institutions that are members of the Consortium of Public Liberal Arts Colleges, and Dr. Sara Orel co-chaired a workshop on undergraduate research in Art History with Dr. Alexa Sand of Utah State University. Dr. Cole Woodcox also attended the conference, taking advantage of the wide range of sessions and museums available in New York.
In addition to the Art faculty, several alumnae attended the conference or otherwise participated in the week’s events. Dr. Jasmine Cloud (now a professor at the University of Central Missouri) gave a paper, and we saw Emily Nickel (now an MFA student at the University of Iowa), Lori Nix (an artist working in New York), and Emily Hagen (a graduate student at Penn State). Some of the alumnae and faculty got together for lunch at the conference. Although not shown in the photograph, we have Aaron Fine to thank for the record of the event.
From left to right: Dr. Julia DeLancey, Dr. Cole Woodcox, Dr. Jasmine Cloud, Emily Hagen, Dr. Heidi Cook. Photo courtesy of Professor Aaron Fine.
The Art Department’s series of short faculty presentations — 15 minutes, one professor, one work of art — continues this Thursday, October 17th, with Professor Matthew Derezinski, who teaches in the Design (formerly “Visual Communications”) program. Matt’s talk will begin at 4:45 pm in the University Gallery.
The mini lecture series was featured several weeks ago on Truman’s media network. Talks will continue into the spring semester, with a different faculty member featured every two weeks.
Natural Domestic, the exhibit by the Crescent Collective (including Truman Professor Laura Bigger), is on display in Minneapolis this month.
Truman State printmaking professor Laura Bigger and her two collaborators, Teréz Iacovino (on the left, an artist), and Artemis Ettsen (in the middle, an architect), currently have a solo exhibition in Minneapolis. The trio collectively is known as the Crescent Collective. with my collaborative trio Crescent Collective. The show is called Natural Domestic and is housed at Form + Content gallery. Laura tells us “This work is distinct from my independent work although it thematically overlaps very closely.”
Temporary Assistant Professor of Photography Amanda Breitbach has curated an art exhibit in St Louis at Webster University’s Gateway Campus. “Rendered Visible” is her contribution to the Arcade Comtemporary Art Projects is an exhibition of photographs that address the topic of American incarceration and the justice system.
New Assistant Professor of Painting, Lindsey Dunnagan, is giving this week’s “#15 for Art” talk. Come to the University Gallery on Thursday October 20th at 4:45 pm. These images may give you a sense of her work, but come and see what she talks about on Thursday afternoon.
Professor Dunnagan has a major art series which just had its first public exhibit this past summer. Her The Journey Home Project was featured at Carneal Simmons Contemporary Art in Dallas, TX, from late July to late August, 2016. She describes the process of creation and the work itself:
For the past year, I collected locations from people in North Texas and beyond, including various student groups and a refugee center in Dallas. Now their names and “ideas of home” have been painted onto a large-scale installation that forms a labyrinth.
As visitors walk through the painted translucent walls, they may find a location that holds significance to them while also experiencing other places that are cherished. In this way, the project presents the world as a treasure and a place to discover; it intimates a deep connection we have with each other and the planet.
Lindsey Dunnagan, The Journey Home Project, on display in Dallas, August 2016.
In addition, Lindsey Dunnagan installed a large commissioned work in Fort Worth, TX, at Store #532 of the Kroger Company. Native Treasures is painted and drawn with watercolor, ink, salt, and acrylic on Clear Acrylic. You can see it in Fort Worth at 5241 N Tarrant Parkway.
Native Treasures, 2016, installed in Kroger store #532.
All photographs courtesy of Lindsey Dunnagan.