Congratulations to Art Department alumna Jasmine (Fry) Cloud (BA, Art History, 2005) who has just won one of only two Travel Grants from the Italian Art Society, a national academic organization devoted to the study of Italian art from all time periods. Prof. Fry, who is currently a doctoral candidate in Art History at Temple University, received the award to present her paper “Reviving the Heart (of the City): The Renovations of the Churches on the Roman Forum” in the Italian Art Society-sponsored session entitled “Rome Revitalized: A Reassessment". This session will be part of the the Renaissance Society of America annual conference to be held this March 2011 in Montreal Canada. Congratulations, Jasmine!
Art History
Student article accepted for publication
Congratulations to Art History minor Luke Icenogle who just sent us notice that an abridged version of his Truman State University-funded TruScholars research project, "Gender Roles in Post-9/11 Media," will be published in the Fall 2010 Council of Public Liberal Arts Colleges (COPLAC) journal Metamorphosis. TruScholars receive $3000 to work on a research project, with a faculty mentor, during the summer term. Current Truman students intersted in applying for Summer 2011 should check the TruScholars website.
Art & Feasting in London
Dr. Sara Orel sent this picture of French Renaissance ceramics in the Victoria & Albert Museum in London–a great image for the Thanksgiving Break! Travel safely, everyone, and bon appetit!
Art History Society on local architecture tour
Some members of the student club, the Art History Society, recently went on a walking tour of Kirksville architecture with Dr. Cole Woodcox (Chair of the Department of English at Truman), a specialist in architectural history and local and state architecture. They are shown here in front of the Masonic Temple on Harrison St. in Kirksville.
Art History Alumna at Harvard’s Peabody Museum
Congratulations to Art alumna Allison Meadows (BA Art History 2008, shown above exploring the east coast). Allison and her family recently let us know that she was just hired as a Curatorial Assistant at Harvard University's Peabody Museum of Archaeology and Ethnology. Keen readers of the Art Department blog will remember that last year Allison graduated with an MA in Material Anthrpology and Museum Ethnography from Oxford Univeristy. Wonderful news!
Art Historians Outside the Classroom!
This evening, Tuesday, November 2, three senior Art History majors will present on their experiences last summer outside of the classroom. Art History majors are all required, during their time at Truman, to engage in Art Historical activity outside the classroom: a workshop, an internship, study abroad, or lots of other options. In addition, they present that experience to the campus community as a whole in a symposium organized by the Art History Society. This evening, Stephanie Barry, Jaime Chambers, and Michelle Kimberlin will talk about their respective internship or study abroad experiences in Kirksville, Texas, and St. Louis–5:30 p.m. in OP2210. Hope to see you there!
New Course Offerings in Art!
watercolor of a house in Sicily by Prof. Rusty Nelson
A New Twist on a Longstanding Course Offering Provides Students with New Options!!
One of the Art Department’s longtime offerings for the Fine Arts Aesthetic Mode of Inquiry – Introduction to the Visual Arts (ART 203) – is going through a revision, and new course options will be offered for the first time during the Spring 2010 Semester. These courses will continue to meet the University’s Liberal Studies Program (LSP) requirements and due to changes in policy, will now be available to Art Majors in meeting an LSP requirement. The new course offerings will allow students to explore more focused topics and also to engage in studio practice to better understand the artistic process.
The first new option will allow students to explore art through the examination of specific topics through areas of focus such as: Gender and Art, The Landscape in Art, Environmental Art, Images of War, Politics in Art, Popular Art and the Modernist Tradition, etc. The second option will have a studio component that will not only allow students to learn about the material and aesthetic history of an artistic medium, but also gain firsthand insight into the creative process.
This second option further aligns the Art offerings for the LSP with other similar requirements. With few exceptions the Modes of Inquiry courses at Truman ask students to engage in disciplinary activities rather than just “study the practice or history of the discipline.” In other words, students in the Mathematical Mode “do” math, and in the Scientific Modes classes they “do” science by participating in laboratory activities. Our current Aesthetic Modes offerings do an excellent job of engaging students in art historical and aesthetic “practice,” but not in the creative process. By offering students the chance to engage in studio practice, the Art Faculty believes that students might develop an even greater understanding of the creative process.
Pilot offerings for these new options will include a course in drawing and another in watercolor. Beginning with the Spring 2010 Semester all art courses that meet the Aesthetic Mode of Inquiry for the LSP will be open to majors as well as non-majors. This new policy will give art students the chance to explore topics, issues, and media that they might not otherwise have available to them.
Course descriptions for the two Spring Semester offerings are included below:
ART 203 Introduction to the Visual Arts: Watercolor
Course Description: This course is about how watercolor can be used in the making of art based on an understanding of how it has been, and is currently, used.
As a means of visual expression, artists have used watercolor for over 3000 years. The medium’s current artistic use has an historical lineage in the development of materials and processes that dates back over 500 years in Europe and America. Up until the late 18th Century, watercolor was not considered a medium suitable for “finished” works. It was during this time period that artists, especially several key figures in England, began to see the potential of the medium as a primary means of expression. Students will examine both the historical development of the medium and the aesthetic issues related to its use by engaging in research, discussions and lectures coupled with actual studio practice in the medium. As students learn about artists who have used watercolor by examining the art historical context of their work, they will simultaneously engage in the use of the medium in a studio setting. Students will learn basic two-dimensional design elements and principles while having the opportunity to put this studio-based knowledge into practice.
Although this course focuses on watercolor and the requisite knowledge of its history and use, it is also intended to provide a foundation of knowledge that should allow students to better understand other art forms and media from art historical, aesthetic and material perspectives.
For more information on this course, please contact Prof. Garry Gordon at garry@truman.edu. The course will be offered Tuesdays & Thursdays 9:00 – 10:20 a.m.
ART 203 Introduction to the Visual Arts: Drawing
Course Description: This course meets the Fine Arts Aesthetic Mode of Inquiry through the study of the history of drawing as it relates to art and through active participation in drawing studio experiences.
It has been said that drawing has its roots in the very beginnings of human consciousness. The purpose and form of drawing, primarily due to its relation to art and artists in various societies, has changed over many centuries. During the Renaissance in Europe in the Fifteenth and Sixteenth Centuries, drawing played a vital role as a preparatory medium to art making. The increased use of oil painting in the Seventeenth Century saw drawing’s role become less a preparatory medium and more of an artist’s creative investigation (i.e. Rembrandt). Again, in the late Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, drawing was given a new life (role) in both Europe and America. As a result, drawing began to break down divisions between drawing, painting, and sculpture. It was during this time that drawing came to be viewed and displayed as an art form in and of itself.
Students will study the historical development of the role of drawing and how the character of drawing is constantly being redefined by engaging in research, discussions and lectures coupled with actual studio practice.
For more information on this course, please contact Prof. Bob Jones at bobjones@truman.edu. This course will be offered Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays 2:30 – 3:20 p.m.
Ceramics in London
Missouri in London Program student Tory Baillie (Missouri State University) examines a Qing Dynasty dish while Truman State University student Carly Brotemarkle looks on. The soup tureen in the foreground is covered with barnacles from its centuries beneath the ocean.
Dr. Sara Orel's Missouri in London "Non-western Art and Culture" class visited the home of Elisabeth Porter, of The Nanking Porcelain Company Limited, for a discussion of Chinese export porcelain. The Nanking Porcelain Company specializes in pottery recovered from shipwrecks in Asian waters, of ships that were transporting porcelain and other luxury goods such as tea for sale to markets in Europe. Students had a chance to handle objects that were centuries old and ask questions about them as well as what it is like to run an antiques business in modern London.
Elisabeth Porter discusses an example of "clobbered ware," a bowl with relatively simple decoration that was added to by Dutch artists in the 18th century, when the demand for finely-painted brightly-colored ceramics in Europe outstripped the Dutch East India Company's ability to import it.
New Publication in Art History
Dr. Julia DeLancey's article, "Shipping Colour: Valute, Pigments, Trade, and Francesco di Marco Datini" came out last month in a new volume entitled 'Trade in Artists' Materials: Markets and Commerce in Europe to 1700' (eds. Jo Kirby, Susie Nash, and Joanna Cannon, London: Archetype, 2010). The article publishes research Dr. DeLancey conducted in the Archivio di Stato (state archives) in Prato, Italy on the late fourteenth- and early fifteenth-century Italian merchant Francesco di Marco Datini and in particular on what some of the documents in Datini's archive can tell us about the movement of painters' pigments around the Mediterranean. The twenty-eight articles published in the volume were originally presented at an international interdisciplinary conference in 2005 organized by the National Gallery in London and the Courtauld Institute, also in London. Dr. DeLancey's research for this conference paper and article was funded by a summer stipend from the National Endowment for the Humanities.
Truman Egyptomania in London!
Dr. Orel and Dr. Aidan Dodson, who has spoken occasionally at Truman, in front of Late Period sarcophagi in the Egyptian Sculpture Gallery at the British Museum.
Dr. Sara E. Orel presented on the Egypt Exploration Society's Gebel el-Haridi project at the 3rd British Egyptology Congress on September 11th at the British Museum. For more, see this link.
Three friends from graduate school days at the University of Toronto: Dr. Orel, Dr. Julie R. Anderson (Assistant Keeper, Ancient Sudan and Egyptian Nubia, The British Museum), Dr. Carolyn Routledge (Curator of Egyptology and Archaeology, Bolton Museums). Behind them in the case is the Rosetta Stone.