Photo Credit:  Nick Cloud

We just recently heard from and received this picture from Art Department alumna Jasmine (Fry) Cloud (BA Art History 2005).  She had this to say about her time at Truman State University:

"As for Truman, how I loved it!  I graduated in 2005 with the last name Fry.  When I began graduate school, I found that Truman had prepared me exceptionally well for further study, which I didn't quite realize while I was a student there.  The guidance of the art history faculty prepared me both for coursework and for the writing of a Masters thesis, and now a Ph.D. dissertation.  The engagement in the classroom which Truman professors encouraged also put me ahead of many of my peers for graduate seminars.  I believe that much of my success in graduate school can be attributed directly to the preparation which I received at Truman."

Jasmine earned an MA in Art History, in the Italian Renaissance, from the University of Colorado at Boulder and is a currently PhD candidate at Temple University also in Italian Renaissance art.  Last spring, she was offered two prestigious research grants in Art History:  the Samuel H. Kress Foundation's History of Art: Institutional Fellowship that includes residency at the Bibliotheca Hertziana in Rome and a Fulbright doctoral research fellowship to Italy.  Unable by fellowship guidelines to accept both, she ultimately chose to take up the Kress Foundation residency in Rome;  she, her husband, and their two cats moved to Rome this past fall and are settling in and working well!

Her dissertation's title is "Renovation in the Campo Vaccino: The Churches on the Roman Forum from Clement VIII to Alexander VII."  Here is a brief description of her project:  "The study considers the historical resonance of the site for the post-Trent Catholic Church as manifested through a series of renovations of the churches of the Forum.  It also considers the site as part of the greater environment of Rome.  Several popes of the seventeenth century revitalized the city through urbanistic projects and reclaimed areas of the disabitato, of which the Forum is an example, for the modern city of Rome."

Two of Jasmine's articles will be published sometime in the coming year:

“From Cattle Market to Public Promenade: Remaking the Forum in the Seventeenth Century.”  In Perspectives on Public Space in Rome, from Antiquity to the Present Day, eds. Gregory Smith and Jan Gadeyne.  Ashgate, forthcoming 2012.

 “A Shifting Sense of the Past: The Changing Interpretation of the Byzantine Spolia at the Basilica of San Marco.”  In Venice in the Renaissance: Essays in Honor of Patricia Fortini Brown, eds. Blake De Maria and Mary Frank.  Five Continents/Abrams, forthcoming August 2012.

If you are an alum of the Art Department and have news to share with us, please e-mail us at art@truman.edu!