Presentation at the IFA/NYU-Frick Collection, History of Art Symposium

I am thrilled to announce that my presentation was selected to represent Boston University's History of Art and Architecture department at the IFA/NYU-Frick symposium for Art History graduate students, jointly sponsored by the Institute of Fine Arts of New York University and the Frick Collection. I will present a version of my paper on artists' viewsheds that I wrote for Professor Keith Morgan's seminar. The paper is titled "Institutionalizing the Artist's View: The Viewsheds of Frederic Edwin Church and Winslow Homer." If you'd like to know more about viewsheds, here is a very short intro.

The symposium will be held April 15-16, 2011. They just posted this year's schedule; you can browse the program here.

ABOVE: a photograph from my visit to Olana

This is your brain after one year as a PhD student

This is my brain. This is my brain after finishing my first year as a PhD student. Actually, these are about 1/2 of the post-its I removed from my ~70 books before returning them to the library (and from the 10+ books I bought, both numbers are from the spring semester alone). Despite the exhaustion, I'm in a good spot: the program and professors are fantastic and my colleagues inspirational. I have learned so much. Bruce also celebrated a milestone: he finished his first year as a fulltime professor and recently graduated his first class.

One year of coursework down, one more to go...and then all that other stuff (orals, prospectus, dissertation). It's rather strange as I haven't not worked fulltime in about 11 years. Don't get me wrong, I have plenty to do: prep for teaching the history of photography in BU's second summer session (here's hoping that two more sign up!), curate an exhibition of Dan Ranalli's work for the fall/winter at the Provincetown Art Museum, go to a conference in London (here's hoping the flights come down!), and get married in the Catskills. Nevertheless, I am still recovering from the year and also not quite sure what to do with myself as I re-enter the land of the living. (A start: yesterday, I bought flowers and planted my window boxes.)

Getting my PhD is something I've always wanted to do and I always intended to go back, but I now feel something like a high schooler without steady summer employment. Some of the more interesting summer jobs I have had in the way past include amusement park ride operator and ice cream truck driver. What are some of the more noteworthy or quirky ones you've had? Any suggestions, tips, or tricks for re-entry inbetween/after school?

Paper at the BU Art History Graduate Student Symposium, "Place"

I was delighted to be selected to present at the BU Art History graduate student symposium on March 20th. The presentations and keynote look wonderful and place is a favorite topic of mine. I can't wait to hear them all! The full schedule of events is below and more information is here.

KEYNOTE ADDRESS
Friday, March 19, 2010, 5:30pm
Boston University Art Gallery at the Stone Gallery
855 Commonwealth Avenue, Boston, MA, 02215

Anne Whiston Spirn, Professor of Landscape Architecture and Planning, Massachusetts Institute of Technology
The Language of Landscape
(www.annewhistonspirn.com)

GRADUATE SYMPOSIUM
Saturday, March 20, 2010, 10:00am-3:00pm
Riley Seminar Room, Museum of Fine Arts, Boston
465 Huntington Avenue, Boston, MA, 02115

10:00 am COFFEE, Riley Seminar Room

10:30 am MORNING SESSION
Moderator: Lana Sloutsky, Boston University

10:40-11:40 am - PRESENTATION OF PAPERS

Elisa Foster, Brown University
Remembered Places and Lost Spaces: Retrieving the Medieval Sites of Le Puy-en-Velay

Jessica Roscio, Boston University
The New Woman at Home: Alice Austen, Gendered Identities, and Domestic Spaces

Sally H. King, Columbia University/The Metropolitan Museum of Art
Establishing the Modern Gateway: the Ornament and Architecture of Grand Central Terminal, 1913

11:40 am QUESTION & ANSWER

12:00 pm LUNCH
1:00 pm COFFEE, Riley Seminar Room

1:30 pm AFTERNOON SESSION
Moderator: Austin Porter, Boston University

1:40-2:40 pm - PRESENTATION OF PAPERS

Elizabeth Bennett Hupp, University of California, Berkeley
On China Cabinets in a Mennonite Living Room

Erica North Morawski, University of Illinois at Chicago
Savior of Stop-Gap Housing: The Role of the Quonset Hut in Post-World War II University Housing

Leslie K. Brown, Boston University
Nostalgia with a View: Meditations on the Tower Optical Coin-Operated Binocular Viewer

2:40 pm QUESTION & ANSWER

For more information please contact Carrie Anderson, Symposium Coordinator, Art History Department, Boston University at moorec@bu.edu, or visit www.bu.edu/ah/news/2009-2010/symposium.html. This event is sponsored by The Humanities Foundation at Boston University; the Art History Department, Boston University; The Museum of Fine Arts, Boston; and the Boston University Art Gallery at the Stone Gallery.

Above Image: Henry Pelham, A Plan of Boston in New England with its Environs (detail), 1777. Map Reproduction Courtesy of the Norman B. Leventhal Map Center at the Boston Public Library.

My new commute and first week as a PhD student

Not that I am actually walking from the PRC to the BU Art History department, but above represents my "move" if you will and a big life transition from working fulltime to going to graduate school fulltime: 0.3 miles. I am currently parking in Cambridge to save money and walking over the BU bridge with laptop and books. Luckily, I have a little office cubicle, which is proving quickly to be a life (and back) saver and I don't have to find a new grocery store. I always wanted to go back for my PhD, it just took me a while. I am loving it.

Updates will be fewer and farther between as the reading and prep work takes over... But in short, I had my first 1/2 week of classes, including a seminar on representations of Paris. I will also be taking a seminar on Material Culture. I am a teaching fellow and will be leading 3 discussion sections in support of Art History 111 (ancient to medieval) with about 20 students in each. I just finished preparing my section powerpoint, we're looking at the Venus of Willendorf, Palette of King Narmer, Standard of Ur, and the Alexander Mosaic and comparing them with some later works to get them used to looking and describing what they see in words. I had a blast putting it together.

Two years ago, Bruce was preparing for graduate school, see this post for example, and now I am. He starts teaching fulltime at the New England Institute of Art this fall and is also teaching a section of View Camera at RISD. Wish us both luck!