Congratulations to professors Elina Gertsman and Erin Benay, who have been selected as finalists for the 2023-2024 John S. Diekhoff Award for Distinguished Graduate Student Mentoring/Teaching. The award, created in 1978, recognizes exceptional contributions to graduate student education at CWRU through exemplary advising, teaching, and mentoring. Up to four...
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On January 27th, CWRU graduate students and faculty joined Cleveland Museum of Art curators and conservators at the Cleveland Institute of Art to learn about champlevé enamel from Cleveland-based contemporary jeweler and enamelist Ariella Har-Even firsthand. This initiative was coordinated by Ariella and Reed O’Mara, a PhD candidate in...
This weekend, Rebekkah Hart, second-year PhD student in medieval art, presented a talk entitled “The Lithic and the Liquid in the Virgin’s Womb” at the 2024 Multidisciplinary Graduate Student Conference in Premodern Studies at the Newberry Library. Her talk focuses on Tilman Riemenschneider’s The Virgin of the Annunciation (c....
Professor Maggie Popkin and doctoral candidates Madeline Newquist, Clara Pinchbeck, and Arielle Suskin attended the recent Archaeological Institute of America annual meeting in Chicago. Congratulations to Madeline, Clara, and Arielle, who each gave a superb and very well-received paper!
Fuse: Museum to Studio Connections is a group founded by Ariella Har-Even and me that aims to bring art historians, artists, and the institutions they work at together through workshops, collaborations, and close-looking sessions. As a part of our first series, we will be hosting an enameling workshop on January 27th, 2024...
We are delighted to announce that Wendy Rohm received this year's inaugural Outstanding Staff Award for her fantastic service to the Art History and Art and the Classics departments. Wendy was honored by the Interim Dean Lee Thompson and the College of Arts and Sciences at the end-of-year celebration held...
Our Favorite Thing for today is the CMA’s Sculpture of Christ and Saint John the Evangelist (c. 1300)! 🦅Tess Artis is a first year doctoral student studying medieval art with Professor Elina Gertsman.
“I love medieval devotional art because it was made to be loved. Today, we show our respect for this sculpture of Christ and Saint John the Evangelist (c. 1300) by preserving it behind a transparent barrier; we are close, yet removed. But we only need to look at the figures’ toes, some of which have been kissed, rubbed, and grabbed into obsolescence, to see that this object has been cherished more intimately.”
Our Favorite Thing for today is The Hours of Isabella the Catholic, Queen of Spain (1963.256)! 📖 Claudia Haines is a first-year student in the Art History PhD program, studying medieval art under Professor Elina Gertsman.
“Books of hours are often deemed the ‘bestsellers’ of the Middle Ages: these often richly illustrated books contain the series of prayers recited by medieval Christians at various points throughout the day, and were so widely popular that thousands of examples survive to this day, including several now in the collection of The Cleveland Museum of Art. This fifteenth-century book of hours—the Hours of Queen Isabella the Catholic—is a particularly luxurious example, and was made by a Flemish artist for the Queen of Spain. She likely would have used it as part of her private daily devotions.”
Fourth-year PhD candidate Reed O’Mara and first-year PhD student Luke Hester participated in the Humanities in Leadership Learning Series (HILLS) Graduate Symposium this past weekend along with six other CWRU graduate students from across the humanities and humanities-adjacent fields. Together, the group discussed pathways to academic and administrative leadership and how to implement positive change at the department and university levels. The symposium was coordinated and facilitated by Dr. Timothy Beal and Dr. Joy Bostic and featured a discussion led by the interim Dean of Arts and Sciences, Dr. Lee Anne Thompson. Congrats to Reed and Luke for being selected to participate!
Our Favorite Thing for today is Convolvulus and Metamorphosis of the Convolvulus Hawk Moth by Maria Sibylla Merian (2019.9, not on view)! Rebekah Utian is a Master’s student studying Early Modern Art history with Dr. Erin Benay.
“My favorite object in the CMA collection is Maria Sibylla Merian’s Convolvulus and Metamorphosis of the Convolvulus Hawk Moth (c. 1670–83), which portrays the carefully observed life cycle of the European pink-spotted hawkmoth. I particularly love the languid, grayish-brown caterpillar in the center, who is clearly the protagonist of this naturalist narrative, sprawling across his favorite food, the flowering bindweed.”
Our Favorite Thing for today is Jared French’s Evasion! 🪞 Emme Page just presented her qualifying paper today! She is an art history M.A. student in her final semester studying American art.
“Jared French’s Evasion stands out to me as a work in which the meaning is both clear and ambiguous, creating an interpretative tension parallel to his understanding of the inner self. As a bisexual man married to a woman in 1940s New York City, French explores themes of shame and ostracism through this image.”
Congratulations to our very own Dr. Justin Willson, who was just awarded the 2023 Emerging Scholar Prize by the Society for Historians of East European, Eurasian, and Russian Art & Architecture (SHERA) for his article “On the Aesthetic of Diagrams in Byzantine Art,” which was published in Speculum in July. The judges called the article “a tour de force, drawing on an impressive command of multiple languages, theological traditions, texts, and images.’”