Vanderbilt University History of Art Blog

Barnes & Noble Hosts HART Alumna for Poetry Reading

Alysha Irisari Malo, BA’03, is one of three local writers with Vanderbilt ties reading at 7 pm Friday, October 3, at Lyrical Brew: An Evening of Local Poetry sponsored by Barnes & Noble at 2525 West End Avenue.

Malo is an interdisciplinary visual artist and writer who lives in Nashville. She works in several media, including poetry, photography, painting, drawing and clay. Born and raised in West Virginia, Malo earned a BA in art and art history from Vanderbilt (2003) and received a Merit Award in the Hamblet competition her senior year. She later attended the School of the Art Institute of Chicago where she earned a BFA in studio art with an emphasis in painting and drawing. She is currently the seventh grade art instructor at Brick Church College Prep, a LEAD charter school. Malo was recently selected as a featured poet and artist in One Drop: Art & Kulcha Magazine’s Shadow Issue and given a 12-page spread.

Joining her for an evening of poetry are Max McDonough, an MFA candidate at Vanderbilt, and Alicia Marie Brandewie, who is currently pursuing her MFA in poetry at Vanderbilt.

Posted by vrcvanderbilt on October 3, 2014 in Events, HART, Student/Alumni, VRC

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Alumnus to Lecture on Chinese Funerary Art on October 9

Fan Jeremy Zhang, curator of Asian Art at the Ringling Museum of Art, will present the Department of History of Art Alumni Lecture entitled “Chinese Funerary Art in its Cultural and Architectural Context” on Thursday, October 9, at 4 pm in Cohen 203. The lecture and gallery tour is in conjunction with the student-curated exhibition From Tomb to Temple: Unearthing Ancient China through the Vanderbilt University Art Collection on view in the Fine Arts Gallery through Sunday, October 12.

Zhang earned a master’s degree in art history from Vanderbilt in 2003. His thesis, “Reading Murals in the Eastern Mausoleum: The Qidan Construction of Ethnic Identity,” was done under the direction of Tracy Miller, associate professor of history of art. Trained as an archaeologist in his native China, he received a Ph.D. in art history from Brown University and worked at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the RISD Museum of Art, and the Smith College Museum of Art. Zhang moved to Sarasota, Florida, about a year ago to develop the Ringling’s new Helga Wall-Apelt Center for Asian Art, which will open in 2015.

The lecture and exhibition is free and open to the public. The Fine Arts Gallery is housed in Cohen Memorial Hall, 1220 21st Avenue South on the western edge of the Peabody campus. Parking is available in Lot 95 outside Cohen Hall, off 21st Avenue South on the Peabody campus and across from Medical Center East. Gallery hours are Monday through Friday from 11 am to 4 pm, and weekends from 1 to 5 pm.

Posted by vrcvanderbilt on September 30, 2014 in Events, HART, Lectures, Student/Alumni, VRC

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Rebecca VanDiver Featured in McGill Hour Talk on October 1

Rebecca VanDiver, assistant professor of history of art, will give a talk as part of Vanderbilt’s McGill Hour series on Thursday, October 1. Her presentation is entitled “Hands Up/Camera Ready: Emmett, Trayvon, and Michael, Photograph, History, and Violence.”

VanDiver teaches courses on modern/contemporary African American and African art and visual culture. Her research centers on articulations of blackness in twentieth century African American art, African American artistic engagements with Africa, and the history of display and collection of African culture in the West.

Posted by vrcvanderbilt on September 29, 2014 in Events, HART, Lectures, Student/Alumni, VRC

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Space 204 Exhibit Celebrates 30 Years of the Hamblet Award

In celebration of the 30th anniversary of the gift from Clement H. Hamblet in memory of his wife, the Department of Art will showcase works from previous recipients of the Hamblet Award, given annually to a graduating senior. “The Gift: 30 Years of the Margaret Stonewall Wooldridge Hamblet Award” opens Thursday, September 25, at Space 204 in the E. Bronson Ingram Studio Arts Center, with a reception from 5 to 7 pm.

Exhibiting artists whose work will be on view through December 5 include Eric Erhnschwender, Jean Kang, Xin Lu, Kathryn McDonnell, Nicole Pietrantoni, John Powers, and Hannah Stahl. Saralyn Reece Hardy, the Marilyn Stokstad Director of the Spencer Museum of Art at the University of Kansas, curated the exhibit.

The Hamblet Award provides the means for travel and independent art activity for one year, culminating in a solo exhibition at Vanderbilt in Space 204. The Department of Art added a merit award in 2002.

The exhibit is free and open to the public. Gallery hours are Monday through Friday, 10 am to 4 pm. Space 204 is located at 25th Avenue South and Garland Avenue in the E. Bronson Ingram Studio Art Center on the Vanderbilt campus. On street parking is available along Garland Avenue and in the nearby parking ramps. For more information, contact the Department of Art at 615.343.7241.

*John Douglas Powers, Core Sample III, wood, plastic, and history books, 57 x 10 x 10 inches, 2011

Posted by vrcvanderbilt on September 23, 2014 in Events, HART, Student/Alumni, VRC

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HART Society to Host Tour of Frist Exhibit with Vivien Fryd

The HART Society will host a tour of “Real/Surreal: Selections from the Whitney Museum of American Art,” an exhibit at the Frist Center for the Visual Arts, on Thursday, September 18. Vivien Fryd, professor of history of art, will lead the tour, and students and faculty should plan to meet in Cohen’s 21st Avenue lobby at 5:00 pm.

Fryd will lead participants in understanding major movements within American art history from 1920 to 1950 as represented by works in the current exhibit, which features a survey of works from the 1930s, 1940s, and 1950s drawn from the Whitney.

Anyone interested in the HART-sponsored tour at the Frist should RSVP (by September 17) to Jodi Chamberlain at jodi.l.chamberlain@vanderbilt.edu.

*Edward Hopper, Railroad Sunset, 1929, oil on canvas, 74.3 x 121.9 cm, Whitney Museum of American Art, New York

Posted by vrcvanderbilt on September 9, 2014 in Events, HART, HART in Nashville, Student/Alumni, VRC

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AIA Lecture Features Lea Stirling and Her Work at Leptiminus

Lea Stirling, associate professor of classics, University of Manitoba, will deliver the first Archaeological Institute of America lecture of the academic year on Thursday, September 18, at 6 pm at the Nashville Parthenon in Centennial Park. Stirling will introduce us to her excavations at Leptiminus (Lamta), Tunisia, in her lecture titled Food, Funerals, and Fuel at Leptiminus: Honoring the Dead in Roman Africa.

“Textual sources, inscriptions, and ancient images all indicate that dining and food offerings for the dead were an important element in funerals and commemoration,” wrote Stirling. “These discussions are usually unspecific about ‘menus,’ however, and archaeological evidence of actual food remains has often been sparser still. Thus, during excavations (2004-2006) at the East Cemetery of Leptiminus (Lamta, Tunisia), an important focus of the project was to collect physical evidence of food remains, namely bones, seeds, and residues. Finds related to food preparation and certain architectural features (particularly libation tubes and offering tables) provide further insight.”

Stirling holds a Canada Research Council Chair in Roman Archaeology. She has co-directed excavations in Roman kilns and cemeteries at the ancient city of Leptiminus, Tunisia, and participated in fieldwork at Germa, Libya, Carthage, Tunisia and Roccagloriosa, Italy. She specializes in Roman art and archaeology, including that of the Roman provinces, Late Antiquity, and North Africa. Her art historical research focuses on Roman and Late Antique statuary and its role in society.

“Betsey Robinson, Robin Jensen, and I had the very great pleasure of traveling to North Africa with Lea two years ago,” said Barbara Tsakirgis, associate professor of classical studies and history of art, “and we are eager to have her here so that everyone can enjoy learning about the exciting work she and her team are doing at Leptiminus.”

Free and open to the public, Stirling’s lecture is sponsored by the Nashville Society of the Archaeological Institute of America and Vanderbilt’s Department of Classical Studies. Those who plan to attend the lecture are encouraged to call the Nashville Parthenon at 615.862.8431 to reserve a seat.

Posted by vrcvanderbilt on September 9, 2014 in Events, HART, Lectures, VRC

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Fryd Teaches American Realism and Surrealism Course at the Frist

Vivien Fryd, professor of history of art, taught a three-week course on American realism and surrealism in late August and early September at the Frist Center for the Visual Arts in Nashville. Fryd led participants in understanding major movements within American art history from 1920 to 1950 as represented by works in the current exhibit, Real/Surreal: Selections from the Whitney Museum of American Art that will be on view through October 13 at the Frist.

A survey of works from the 1930s, 1940s, and 1950s drawn from the Whitney, Real/Surreal examines American artists’ representations of reality as a subjective and malleable state of mind rather than a fixed truth. Influenced by European Surrealists of the 1920s like Salvador Dalí and René Magritte, some American artists used the tools of illusionistic representation to subvert reality entirely, while others subtly tweaked the conventions of realism to turn the familiar into something unsettling and uncanny. Fryd examined works by Andrew Wyeth, Edward Hopper, Grant Wood, Man Ray and Thomas Hart Benton, among others.

*Edward Hopper, Cape Cod Sunset, 1934, oil on canvas, 74.3 x 91.92 cm, Whitney Museum of American Art, New York

Posted by vrcvanderbilt on September 8, 2014 in Events, HART, HART in Nashville, VRC

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Cohen Gallery Exhibit of Donna Ferrato’s Photographs Opens Friday

Donna Ferrato, a documentary photographer internationally acclaimed for her work to end family violence, on Friday, September 12, will debut the first gallery exhibition in her series that focuses on women who have left their abusers. I Am Unbeatable––Documenting and Celebrating Stories of Empowerment will be on display at Vanderbilt Fine Arts Gallery in Cohen Hall through December 4. A reception will be held in honor of the photographer on Friday from 5 to 8 p.m. in the atrium of Cohen Hall.

In conjunction with the opening reception, Ferrato will address Looking for Positive Change in a Climate of Fear at 6 p.m. in Cohen 203. A short film on Ferrato’s subjects, Sarah (a survivor of domestic violence) and her children, whose experiences are the focus of much of this exhibition, will premiere at the opening and be shown continuously thereafter in the gallery.

Ferrato’s groundbreaking documentary project, “Living with the Enemy,” serves as a context for framing her new campaign against domestic violence, “I Am Unbeatable,” which takes her social activism to a new level by focusing on survivors of domestic abuse. Through a storytelling partnership with acclaimed American journalist Alex Chadwick, best known for his work on National Public Radio, and Claudia Glenn Dowling, award-winning journalist for such publications as Life, Time, and others, “I Am Unbeatable” is an exhibition, a grass-roots effort to support women who have escaped violent relationships, and a means to speak directly to young women and girls who have yet to declare themselves “unbeatable.”

For more than a decade, Ferrato traveled with police, lived in battered women’s shelters, camped out in emergency rooms, and stayed in maximum security prisons with women who were serving life sentences for killing their abusers in self-defense. “Shocked that love could go so wrong, I became obsessed with documenting domestic violence,” said Ferrato. “Driven to do something about it, I found that a camera was my best weapon.”

Her photographs on this subject were published in Life, The New York Times Magazine, Time, USA Today, U.S. News and World Report, and the Los Angeles Times, among other publications, and were aired on the television programs Dateline and Eye on America. The culmination of Ferrato’s domestic violence project came in 1991 with the publication of her book, Living with the Enemy, and the founding of the Domestic Abuse Awareness Project, which produces photographic exhibitions on domestic violence to raise money for women’s shelters.

This exhibition is presented in collaboration with the Class of 2018 Commons Reading, Salvage the Bones by Jesmyn Ward. I Am Unbeatable—Documenting and Celebrating Stories of Empowerment—Photographs by Donna Ferrato, a project organized by the Vanderbilt University Fine Arts Gallery and curated by Joseph S. Mella, director, is brought to Vanderbilt by The Ingram Commons, the College of Arts and Science, the Project Safe Center, and the Robert Penn Warren Center for the Humanities. Additional support has been provided by an Innovation Grant from the Curb Center for Art, Enterprise & Public Policy, and by a generous gift from Leslie Cecil and Creighton Michael, MA ’76.

The exhibition is free and open to the public. The Fine Arts Gallery is located in Cohen Memorial Hall, 1220 21st Avenue South on the Peabody campus. Gallery hours are Monday through Friday from 11 a.m. to 4 p.m., and weekends from 1 to 5 p.m. The gallery will be closed October 16 through 19 for fall break and November 22 through 30 for Thanksgiving break.

For more information on the exhibition, visit the gallery’s website or call 615-322-0605.

Donna Ferrato
American, born 1949
Sarah Augusta, 26, Finally Free from Abuse, 2012
Archival pigment print, digital 35 mm
© Donna Ferrato

Sarah’s New World, 2012
Archival pigment print, Sony, digital
© Donna Ferrato

Posted by vrcvanderbilt on September 8, 2014 in Events, Fine Arts Gallery, HART, VRC

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Vivien Fryd to Lecture on Andy Warhol at Cheekwood on July 17

Fifty years ago, during the summer of 1964, Andy Warhol began working on silkscreen paintings of Flowers, a subject that would preoccupy him for the rest of his life. Best known for his vibrant pop imagery and searing commentary on art and popular culture, Warhol’s flower imagery reveals a softer, more intimate side of the artist.

Vivien Fryd, professor of history of art at Vanderbilt University, will lecture at Cheekwood Botanical Garden and Museum of Art on Thursday, July 17, at noon. Her lecture, entitled “Decoding Andy Warhol: Lifestyle and Art,” is part of the Lunch and Lecture series and will be held in the Potter Room of Botanic Hall (also known as the Visitor Center).

Fryd will look at Warhol’s background and examine his closeted sexuality and how it is both absent and present in such subjects as his flowers and comics. Her lecture is coordinated with a current exhibit at Cheekwood, Andy Warhol’s Flowers, on display now through September 7. A guided tour of Andy Warhol’s Flowers will follow the lecture.

This exhibition traces Warhol’s engagement with floral images throughout his career, beginning with a group of his earliest commercial illustrations, drawn in the 1950s, and his creation of the Flowers series in 1964, to photographs, paintings, and screen prints through 1986 before his untimely death the following year.

Posted by vrcvanderbilt on July 15, 2014 in HART, HART in Nashville, Lectures, VRC

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Gallery Exhibit of Polish Theatre Posters in Honor of Don Evans

Presented in honor of the late Don Evans, who for much of his professional career taught art at Vanderbilt University, Curiouser and Curiouser—Avant-garde Polish Theatre Posters from the 1970s features a selection of posters given by Evans that are from a particularly rich period of Eastern European graphic art design. Evans, who developed a national reputation for ambitious and interdisciplinary work, died on May 6, 2013. The exhibit opens on Thursday, June 19, in the Fine Arts Gallery housed in Cohen Memorial Hall on the Peabody campus.

Some Polish artists went on to receive significant notoriety for their work. Jan Sawka’s theatrical posters provoked the Polish government to expel him in 1979. Many of the posters reflect an aesthetic begun in the 1960s under the influence of pop art and experimental theater of the period. These posters, as well as those from the 1960s, influenced a wide range of creative figures, including the filmmakers the Quay Brothers. This past year they were featured in a retrospective at the Museum of Modern Art in New York where several similar posters from the period served as a context for their innovative films.

Within the exhibition, the Fine Arts Gallery is pleased to screen Freedom on the Fence, a 2009 documentary about the history of Polish posters, from World War II through the fall of Communism. The film details the evolution of this art form by revealing the revolutionary role that posters played in the social, political, and cultural life of Poland. Freedom on the Fence spotlights several Polish poster artists, including Roman Cieślewicz and Franciszek Starowieyski, both of whom are featured in Curiouser and Curiouser. Produced by Andrea Marks, the 40-minute documentary is directed by Glenn Holsten and Andrea Marks. For more information, please visit freedomonthefence.com.

Curiouser and Curiouser—Avant-garde Polish Theatre Posters from the 1970s is organized by the Vanderbilt University Fine Arts Gallery and curated by Joseph S. Mella, director. For further information, please visit vanderbilt.edu/gallery.

*Jan Sawka, Polish (1946-2012)
Untitled, 1975-1976
Offset lithograph, 32 3/4 x 23 inches

Posted by vrcvanderbilt on June 16, 2014 in Fine Arts Gallery, HART, VRC

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