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.’”
Congratulations to PhD Candidate Benjamin Levy, who recently presented his dissertation research on the photographic halftone as part of the AIC/FAIC symposium “Photomechanical Prints: History, Technology, Aesthetics, and Use” hosted by the National Gallery of Art in Washington, DC!
Our medievalists had so much fun at the Graduate Association of Medieval Studies book club event this October! We read Gentlemen of the Road by Michael Chabon, a swashbuckling story of two unlikely friends set in about 1000 CE. Thanks to all who came to take part in our lively discussion!
Congratulations to PhD candidate in medieval art Alexandra Kaczenski on Word as Image, the exhibition she has curated for the Norton Simon Museum in Pasadena, California! The show is on view through February 5, 2024. Word as Image, presented in the Museum’s focus gallery, highlights artworks from the Norton Simon collections that center on or subvert the idea that a text’s legibility is essential for making meaning. Spanning the comical to the political to the conceptual, Word as Image calls our attention to how we are constantly “reading the image” in and out of museum spaces. As such, artists challenge us to consider language and image anew, by positioning words as an essential part of visual culture.
Please join us in congratulating Ruth Bryant, senior undergraduate student and double major in Art History and Biology, who is the recipient of a Research Spotlight Award for her work on “Canal to Cuyahoga: Everlasting Plastics in Context”! In announcing the Research Spotlight Awards, President Kaler, Interim Provost Ward, and the AASL Committee of the CWRU Board of Trustees shared how impressed they were with the high caliber of the student projects and presentations.
If you’ve spent any time in a professional small-talk setting, you know how often art comes up and how hard it can be to fumble for a response in front of your future boss. This workshop, Art Appreciation for New Professionals, taught by first-year Master’s student Sarah Frisbie, is designed for people who have no idea what is happening when they walk into a museum—and people who avoid museums altogether.
