University of Pennsylvania History of Art Department

Robyn Barrow and John Sigmier receive Fulbright Grants https://penntoday.upenn.edu//penn-students-graduates-award

Indigenous Arts in Focus The History of Art Department’s Living Land Acknowledgment Group Penn Arts & Sciences The Sachs Program for Arts Innovation... The History of Art department’s Living Land Acknowledgement Group will bring Indigenous artists, curators, and cultural leaders to host talks, workshops, performances, and roundtable discussions during the 2021-22 academic year. This series, Indigenous Arts in Focus, aims to contribute meaningful programming in Native American and Indigenous art, art history, advocacy, and scholarship at Penn and beyond. These events will reflect a diverse array of Indigenous arts and cultural contexts from across Turtle Island. With this project, the History of Art department seeks to center Indigenous arts in partnership with the Native American and Indigenous Studies program, Natives at Penn, and We Are the Seeds of CultureTrust of greater Philadelphia, among other organizations. https://sachsarts.org/grant-awards/indigenous-arts-in-focus/

ARTH 529: ECO-CRITICAL APPROACHES TO ROMAN IDEAS OF LANDSCAPE PROF. Mantha Zarmakoupi THURSDAYS, 10:15AM TO 1:15PM... In the Roman period, landscape was singled out as a theme for the first time in Greco-Roman visual culture. Writers described it accurately in texts and treatises, its qualities were praised and sought out in everyday life, and images of the natural world permeated the public and private spheres. This attention to landscape found an architectural expression in Roman luxury villas. It is primarily in the luxurious country-house residences that ideas about landscape were fully explored and shaped. In designing for luxury, Romans engaged in a sophisticated interplay of architecture and landscape - an interplay that Renaissance architects discovered and reinvented, and which persists to this day. This course will analyze the architectural design and wall-painting decoration of Roman villas, the cultivated landscapes around them, and their literary representations in order to address the ways in which ideas about and the idealization of landscape contributed to the creation of a novel language of architecture and landscape architecture. And while Roman luxury villa architecture and decoration showcase sophisticated ideas about landscape, they silenced and beautified the dependence of their surrounding cultivated landscapes and agricultural estates on enslaved labor. Moving beyond post-Renaissance ideas of landscape and canonical considerations of Roman wall-painting, the course will adopt an eco-critical lens to shed light on the ideas and idealization of landscape that were shaped in this period. It will draw on a diverse body of evidence (archaeological, art historical, and literary) in order to prioritize perceptions of ecology, environment and human-nature relationships and uncover a broader relationship between architecture, landscape architecture and design.

https://whyy.org//new-monument-in-n-philly-honors-women-/

ARTH 229: ROMAN ARCHITECTURE AND URBANISM PROF. MANTHA ZARMAKOUPI W/F 10:15-11:45 Architecture is the most striking legacy of Rome and the well-preserved remains of Roman buildings dominate our vision of the empire. Although Roman architecture has been studied since the Renaissance, it is only since the middle of the 20th century that it has come to be appreciated for the developments in concrete construction, which led to a revolution in the treatment of interior space and l...andscape architecture. Indeed, Rome’s architectural revolution radically changed both cities and countryside. Romans developed a wide range of new architectural forms and technological innovations in order to meet the increasingly sophisticated and diverse needs of their society. The purpose of the course is to shed light on Roman architectural and urban projects within their social, political, religious, and physical contexts. Throughout, the emphasis will be on concepts of organizing space, issues of structure, materials, decoration and proportion, the role of architecture in Roman society, and on the varied ways that architecture was employed by individuals and communities to express and enhance their status. See more

Shira Brisman, The Idea of Scarcity in Early Modern Art and Law, presented by The Department of the History of Art Lecture Series at Johns Hopkins University. Tuesday, October 27th at 6pm via Zoom. RSVP to [email protected] ... Image: Christoph Jamnitzer, Design from the Neuw Grotteßken Buch, 1610. Etching, Rijksprentenkabinet, Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam. Image description: Two animal-human-vegetable composite, curlicued figures face one another in an etching.

SPRING 2021 COURSE GREEK ART AND ARTIFACT ARTH 225/ARTH 625/CLST 220/AAMW625 PROF. ANN KUTTNER ASYNCHRONOUS ONLINE... This course surveys Greek art and artifacts from Sicily to the Black Sea from the 10th century BCE to the 2nd century BCE, including the age of Alexander and the Hellenistic Kingdoms. Public sculpture and painting on and around grand buildings and gardens, domestic luxury arts of jewelry, cups and vases, mosaic floors, and cult artefacts are discussed. Also considered are the ways in which heroic epic, religious and political themes are used to engaged viewers’ emotions and served both domestic and the public aims. We discuss the relationships of images and things to space and structure, along with ideas of invention and progress, and the role of monuments, makers and patrons in Greek society.

"SURVEYING MEDITERRANEAN SHIPWRECKS TO UNDERSTAND ANCIENT GREEK MARITIME NETWORKS" by Professor Mantha Zarmakoupi and Dr George Koutsouflakis https://www.thebritishacademy.ac.uk//surveying-mediterran/

SPRING 2021 | CHIAROSCURO | ARTH 350 PROF DAVID YOUNG KIM | W 5-8 | SYNCHRONOUS ONLINE In this seminar we will explore the artistic technique known as chiaroscuro, the contrast between light and shadow so as to produce effects of volume and relief. While we will grapple with chiaroscuro as deployed in architecture, drawings, and prints, our focus will be all the tenebrist paintings of Caravaggio. If the lit bodies in Caravaggio’s paintings project out boldly in relief, does anything remain and speak in the surrounding darkness?

Professor Emerita Renata Holod is the recipient of the 2020 Mentoring Award from the Middle East Studies Association (MESA). The MESA Mentoring Award was established in 1995 and first given at MESA’s 1996 annual meeting. The award recognizes exceptional contributions retired faculty have made to the education and training of others. With this prestigious honor, Dr. Holod's peers recognize her enduring contributions to the fieldand, in her case, several fields!through her outstanding advising and mentorship. The news was first announced on October 12 at the award ceremony of MESA's annual meeting, which was followed by a virtual reception of Dr. Holod's numerous former students and colleagues. https://mesana.org/awards/category/mesa-mentoring-award

New York Times writes tribute honoring the life of Carol Paumgarten, History of Art Alum (BA'68) https://www.nytimes.com//09/arts/carol-paumgarten-dead.html

TODAY - Monday, October 12, 2020 at 5:00pm (via Zoom) PROFESSOR EMERITUS ROBERT OUSTERHOUT GIVES THE JULIUS LECTURE IN BYZANTINE ART, "HEAVEN ON EARTH: JUSTINIAN'S HAGIA SOPHIA" This talk addresses the transformation of the basilica as an architectural form and its subsequent impact on architecture in the eastern Mediterranean. Justinian’s Hagia Sophia represents a critical moment in architectural history in terms of form, meaning, and aesthetics.... ROBERT OUSTERHOUT is professor emeritus in history and art at the University of Pennsylvania, where he taught from 2007-2017 and also served as director of the Center for Ancient Studies. He taught previously at the University of Illinois, where he received his PhD. Ousterhout’s fieldwork has concentrated on Byzantine architecture, monumental art, and urbanism in Constantinople, Thrace, Cappadocia, and Jerusalem. Click link to register: https://arth.sas.upenn.edu//professor-emeritus-robert-oust

October 21, 2020 at 12pm ET - "Queer Art & Censorship in Russia," a virtual panel discussion hosted by the Department of Russian and East European Studies at the University of Pennsylvania. Register here: https://www.eventbrite.com/e/queer-art-censorship-in-russia The last few years have witnessed increased violence against LGBTQA+ identifying individuals in Russia, highlighted by the anti-gay propaganda law of 2013 and several murders and imprisonments of queer activists. T...he passing of the Constitution Amendment on July 1, 2020 has not only guaranteed President Vladimir Putin’s presidency until 2036, but also lawfully defines family as a union between a man and a woman, thereby formally stigmatizing queerness. In the wake of recent violence and censorship, this panel brings together leading voices from the queer art and culture community in Russia and the diaspora. This panel will examine the state of censorship around queerness in Russia today and its effects on art and culture. Each panelist will make a 10 min presentation, which will be followed by moderated discussion and an audience Q&A. PANELISTS: Sasha Kazantseva, Saint Petersburg-based lesbian sex blogger & co-founder of O-Zine, https://o-zine.ru Yevgeniy Fiks (b. 1972) Moscow-born, New York City-based artist whose projects address Soviet-era queerness; co-editor of the forthcoming book Queer(ing) Russian Art: Realism, Revolution, Performance (edited by Yevgeniy Fiks, Brian James Baer, and Katherine Carl), https://yevgeniyfiks.com/home.html German Lavrovsky (b. 1995), Moscow-based artist; his project Reborn builds and documents, using a variety of media, a relationship with a reborn doll: a 3D-printed posthuman baby, https://garage.digital/en/projects/reborn-2020 MODERATORS: Ksenia Nouril, PhD, REES Lecturer and Jensen Bryan Curator at The Print Center, Philadelphia, https://rees.sas.upenn.edu/people/ksenia-nouril Ksenia M. Soboleva is a New York based writer and art historian, specializing in queer art and culture. She is the 2020-2021 Vilcek Curatorial Fellow at the Solomon R. Guggenheim in New York

Juliana Rowen Barton, PhD'20, Receives Luce 2020 Leading Edge Fellowship https://arth.sas.upenn.edu//juliana-rowen-barton-phd20-rec

https://www.artnews.com//art-history-survey-courses-yale-/

Juliet Sperling PhD'18 featured in The Daily of The University of Washington. http://www.dailyuw.com//article_0c048b04-d099-11ea-9c28-7f

Prof. André Dombrowski has been named by Dean Fluharty as successor to Professor Brownlee in the Frances Shapiro-Weitzenhoffer Chair in 19th-Century European Art https://arth.sas.upenn.edu//prof-andr%C3%A9-dombrowski-nam