Our Favorite Things with Rebekah Utian!

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.”

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Our Favorite Things with Master’s Student Emme Page!

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.”

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Dr. Justin Willson Awarded 2023 SHERA Emerging Scholar Award–Congrats!

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.’”

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Congratulations to Jillian Kruse and Reed O’Mara on Defending their Prospectuses!

Congratulations to Jillian Kruse and Reed O’Mara on successfully defending their dissertation prospectuses! Jillian’s dissertation, “Printing Utopia: Experimentation, Collaboration, and Anarchy in the Prints of Camille Pissarro,” will explore the intersections of Pissarro’s experimental and collaborative printmaking practice with his anarchist subject matter and philosophy. Through her research, Jillian plans to demonstrate that the artist’s prints served as sites in which he combined process, technique, and motif to create his own anarchist utopia founded in artistic freedom, collaboration, and a love of the earth. Reed’s dissertation, “Materializing Sacred Language: Picturing and Performing Hebrew in Late Medieval Art,” will consider text and image relationships in Jewish illuminated manuscripts and Christian prints from Ashkenaz and Italy, ca. 1200-1500. In particular, Reed will examine how word play, visual punning, pseudo-texts, and other visual-verbal mechanics contributed to the complicated status of Hebrew in the Middle Ages both within and beyond Jewish communities.

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Mellon Seminar Featured in the College Bulletin

This year’s Mellon Collections Seminar, taught by Prof. Elina Gertsman (CWRU) and Dr. Gerhard Lutz (CMA), has been featured in the Case Western Reserve University College Bulletin! The profile highlighted the visit to the Detroit Institute of Arts (DIA), where students toured the museum’s medieval art galleries and were treated to a visit from the DIA’s curator of medieval arts, Chassica Kirchhoff. The course is keyed to the installation Elina and Gerhard are co-curating, scheduled to open at the CMA in Aug. 2024. Students are producing a robust gallery guide and a series of labels for the show, which will comprise a broad range of objects from the global Middle Ages. Click below for more info and photos!

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Congrats to Yuna Kim, Abigail Adams, Soorya Janakiraman, and Hannah Dorris on their Capstone Presentations!

Congratulations to the undergraduate seniors who presented their fantastic Capstone Presentations today to a packed audience in Mather House! We are so proud of their work. The following students presented their research: Abigail Adams, "Blood, Fireworks, and the Feminine: Ana Mendieta’s Artistic Odyssey and Victory over Exile" Hannah Dorris, "The Fountain of...

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Congratulations to Prof. Erin Benay on her Inaugural Lecture as Distinguished Scholar in the Public Humanities!

Congratulations to our own Distinguished Scholar in the Public Humanities, Prof. Erin Benay, on the astounding success of her inaugural public lecture, "From Campus to Community: Taking Art and its Histories to the Street!" Her talk was delivered to a packed, standing-room-only audience in the Tink on November 15 and...

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