Posted by vrcvanderbilt on Thursday, May 17, 2018 in Events, HART, News, Student/Alumni, Vanderbilt University, VRC.

Kevin Murphy, professor and chair of Vanderbilt’s History of Art department, and HART faculty and staff honored our majors and minors and their families at the department’s annual reception for graduating seniors on Thursday, May 10, in the atrium of Cohen Memorial Hall. Following Murphy’s warm welcome and introduction of the faculty and staff, awards were presented and outstanding students recognized for their accomplishments.

Tracy Miller, associate professor of history of art, introduced Ellen Dement who was awarded highest honors for defending her undergraduate honors thesis, “A Poem in Stone: The Nashville Customs House and William Appleton Potter’s Government Architecture.”

Sheri Shaneyfelt, senior lecturer and director of HART undergraduate studies, presented the Cooley Prize ($250) to Samantha Smith for the highest grade point average in the history of art.  Ellen Dement, Kenneth Frye, and Sarah Taylor each received an honorable mention award of $100.

The Department of History of Art congratulates our graduating majors: Lillian Claire Boyle (English and History of Art); Ellen Chambers Dement, cum laude, Highest Honors in History of Art (History and History of Art); Brant Alexander Feick (Economics and History of Art); Kenneth Donald Frye (Civil Engineering and History of Art); Gabrielle Leigh Levitt, cum laude (History of Art); Cecilia Stefania March (French and History of Art); Rose Marie Milnes, cum laude (Classical Languages and History of Art); Samantha Campbell Smith, summa cum laude (History of Art); Nicholas David Swerdlow (History of Art); and Sarah Madeline Taylor (History of Art and Political Science).

Graduating seniors introduced themselves at the reception, and among those present several of our majors shared their future plans. Lillian Boyle will remain at Vanderbilt to earn a master’s degree in the history of art from HART’s 4+1 graduate program. Ellen Dement will pursue a master’s degree in architecture, architectural history, and theory at the University of Washington—Seattle. Kenneth Frye is a transportation engineer for WSP USA, a private engineering consultant firm in Nashville.

Cecilia March has an internship at a Jewish museum in New York and ultimately plans to enroll in a master’s program. Rose Milnes will attend graduate school at the University of Georgia in the department of classics. Samantha Smith will work in the New York office of AlphaSights, a worldwide information services company. Sarah Taylor will remain in Nashville and work for Cigna, an insurance company.

The Vanderbilt Fine Arts Gallery was also open for our graduates and their guests to view the current exhibition, America Creative: Portraits by Everett Raymond Kinstler, which showcases the works of America’s foremost portrait painter. Kinstler’s career has spanned more than 70 years, and he has rendered portraits of more than 2,000 individuals, including eight US presidents.

Prior to the HART reception, graduating seniors attended Amal Clooney’s Senior Day address where the international human rights attorney called on Vanderbilt’s 2018 graduates to “be courageous; challenge orthodoxy; stand up for what you believe in…. My advice isn’t that you have to be Gandhi or Mandela or Martin Luther King or that you should be a human rights activist or get jobs where the salary decreases at every turn,” she said, then quoted poet Robert Frost. “There will be moments in your life where two roads diverge in the wood, and when that happens, be courageous.”

*Amal Clooney addressing 2018 graduates on Senior Day (Joe Howell, Vanderbilt)