News and Events
News
Read stories and articles for and about current and prospective students and faculty in the Art History program, or catch up on the latest program updates in our announcements below or by following us on Twitter, Instagram, and Facebook
Get the latest Art History news
You can also browse an archive of books published by program faculty and scholars.
Events
The Art History program hosts numerous events for its students and faculty, as well as the wider Philosophy community.
View all upcoming Art History events
Rewald Seminar
Rewald Seminars take place every two weeks, and offer an opportunity for faculty and students to hear cutting-edge research in progress by scholars from inside and outside CUNY.
John Rewald (1912-1994) was a Distinguished Professor of Art History at the Graduate Center, beginning in 1971. Rewald was known for his important work in late 19th century art, especially The History of Impressionism, published in 1946. The Rewald endowment was established to support art history students and is used to fund our annual Rewald seminar series focusing on new research in progress from outside of and within CUNY. The Rewald endowment also funds two to three student-led conferences a year, among other scholarly activities.
Art History Announcements
More Like This
Alum Sooran Choi Directs Cross-Gender-Ethnic-Korean-Asian Studies Initiative
Alum Sooran Choi (Art History Ph.D. '18) has won a grant from the Black, Race and Ethnic Studies Initiative at CUNY to direct a Cross-Gender-Ethnic-Korean-Asian Studies Initiative at Brooklyn College, where she teaches in the Art Department. As part of that initiative, she is running a symposium to foreground Korean studies while taking an intersectional approach to the subject. The symposium will be held Saturday and Sunday, April 22-23, online. More information can be found here.
- Announcement
Luisa Valle ('22) dissertation is honored
Luisa Valle who finished her dissertation in 2022, received an Honorable Mention from the Latin American Studies Association (LASA) for her dissertation "The Beehive, the Favela, the Castle, and the Ministry: Race and Modern Architecture in Rio de Janeiro, 1811 to 1945." Congrats to Luisa! All the LASA awards are listed here.
- Congratulations/Kudos
Professor Gail Levin featured on CUNY TV
Professor Gail Levin was featured on CUNY TV's Arts in the City. See the piece here.
- Congratulations/Kudos
Naiomy Guerrero accepted to a Museum Professionals Program at the Studio Museum
A round of applause goes to Naiomy Guerrero who was accepted to the Winter 2023 Museum Professionals Seminar at The Studio Museum in Harlem. The seminar is comprised of a series of workshops designed for emerging museum professionals to "incubate and ideate" their ideas. Congrats to Naiomy!
- Congratulations/Kudos
Recent Books
View all Art History books
Photography and Korea
Authored by GC alumna Jeehy Kim, Ph.D. '15, Art History.
From the late nineteenth century, when Korean travellers brought Western photographic technology home from China, to modern times, photography has been interwoven into Korea’s political and cultural history. In Photography and Korea, the first history of Korean photography for a Western readership, Jeehey Kim presents multiple visions of the country, including the divided peninsula, Korea as imagined through foreign eyes, key Korean artists, Korean diasporas and local professional and vernacular photographers. Kim explores studio and institutional practices during the Japanese colonial period, and the divergence of practices after the division of Korea.
Published May 2023
Reaktion Books
Monumental Controversies
Mount Rushmore, Four Presidents, and the Quest for National Unity
In recent years the United States has witnessed major controversies surrounding past American presidents, monuments, and sites. Consider Mount Rushmore, which features the heads of the nation’s most revered presidents—George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Abraham Lincoln, and Theodore Roosevelt. Is Rushmore a proud national achievement or a symbol of the U.S. theft and desecration of the Lakota Sioux’s sacred land? Is it fair to denigrate George Washington for having owned slaves and Thomas Jefferson for having had a relationship with Sally Hemings, an enslaved woman, to the point of dismissing these men’s accomplishments? Should we retroactively hold Abraham Lincoln accountable for having signed off on the largest single-day mass execution in U.S. history, of thirty-eight Dakota men? How do we reckon with Theodore Roosevelt’s legacy? He was criticized for his imperialist policies but praised for his prolabor antitrust and conservation programs. These charged issues and many others have been plaguing our nation and prompting the removal of Confederate statues and flags amid racial unrest, a national pandemic, and political strife.
Noted art historian Harriet F. Senie tackles these pivotal subjects and more in Monumental Controversies. Senie places partisan politics aside as she investigates subjects that have not been adequately covered in classrooms or literature and require substantial reconciliation in order for Americans to come to terms with their history. She shines a spotlight on the complicated facts surrounding these figures, monuments, and sites, enabling us to revisit the flaws of our Founding Fathers and their checkered legacies while still recognizing their enormous importance and influence on the United States of America.
Published April 2023
Potomac Books
In the Mind's Eye / La Mirada de Quien Contempla
Landscapes of Cuba / Paisajes de Cuba
This English/Spanish bilingual volume explores Cuban and U.S. landscape painters largely active from 1850 to 1910 whose portrayals of Cuba reflect political, social, and ideological changes in both countries.
In the Mind's Eye tells many stories about Cuba that reflect the island's significance, both as the place from which Cubans fled, and a destination to which Americans flocked. While the dynamics of the Revolution in 1959 frame many conversations about Cuba, this volume seeks a longer historical trajectory by focusing on the 19th century--with visual interpretations and commentary by 21st-century artists. American artists William Glackens, Childe Hassam, Winslow Homer, and Willard Metcalf are featured alongside contemporary artists including Juan Carlos Alom, Mar a Magdalena Campos-Pons, and Juana Vald's. Two new interviews with artists Juana Vald's and Carlos Martiel conducted by Donette Francis and Elvia Rosa Castro highlight the importance of contemporary Cuban art.
A ground-breaking exploration of the Cuban landscape in the imagination of American and Cuban artists, In the Mind's Eye opens new avenues of inquiry about the Caribbean island which has played an outsized role in global politics, economics, and culture. For centuries an Edenic image of fantasy and escapism has been projected onto Cuba by observers from North America and Europe. Until recent times, the harsh historical and contemporary realities of servitude, racial strife, and environmental degradation rarely colored artists portrayal of the country, presenting a skewed perspective on this nation.
Published October 2022
| Giles |
