Department of Art History

Upcoming Events

Buddhist Ritual Performance of The Sevenfold Supreme Offering
Dr. Naresh Man Bajracharya, Fulbright Scholar-in-Residence, Dept. of Art History, VCUarts

Dedicated to Arya Tara the Buddhist goddess of Compassion, this is one of the most popular Tantric Buddhist rituals in Nepal and Tibet.  The elaborate ritual illustrates the use of images in the ritual context and involves chanting, meditation, dance, symbolic hand gestures, empowerment, and blessing.  Dr. Bajracharya is one of the leading ritual specialists of Nepalese Buddhism.

Saturday, March 6th, 2010
10:00 am - 1:00 pm
Pace Center for Campus and Community Ministry
700 W. Franklin Street

The performance is free and open to the public. For more information: 804.828.2784

Bonds Colloquium on 20th and 21st Century Art
Speakers include:

1. Todd Cronan, Assistant Professor, Department of Art History, Virginia Commonwealth University
2. Bibiana K. Obler, Assistant Professor, George Washington University (specializes in Hans and Sophie-Tauber Arp)
3. Charles Palermo, Associate Professor, College of William and Mary (specializes in Miro, Picasso, and Photography from Emerson to Douglas Gordon)
4. Howard Singerman, Associate Professor, Univerity of Virginia (specializes in Contemporary Art and Theory, Sherrie Levine and Mike Kelly)
   
   Thursday, April 8th, 2010
   4:00 - 6:00 pm
   The Grace Street Theater, 934 W. Grace St, Richmond, VA
   
   The Colloquium is free and open to the public. For more information: 804.828.2784

2009-2010 Art History Faculty Lecture Series
Dr. Robert Hobbs, Rhoda Thalhimer Endowed Chair, VCUarts
"Looking for Bumstead"

Thursday, April 8th, 2010
4:00 - 6:00 pm
The Grace Street Theater, 934 W. Grace St, Richmond, VA

This lecture is free and open to the public. For more information: 804.828.2784

"Social Skin"
The body is at once biological and sociological. It is the container that distinguishes death from life, though it is only when our body fails us that we become aware of its complexity, its frailty, its physical presence—and our complete dependence upon it. At the same time, our bodies offer a means through which we craft our individualities. Although each physical body is unique, we embellish it and mold it to further elaborate upon our sense of self. Social Skin—the third in a biennial series of exhibitions collaboratively curated by VCUarts Museum Studies students—presents an eclectic mix of artworks and objects that present, explore, and delight in the body as cultural artifact.

Friday, May 28th, 2010
7:00 - 9:00 pm
VCUarts Anderson Gallery

“Traditions--II,” Virginia Commonwealth University's 18th Annual Symposium on Architectural History and the Decorative Arts
The conference, directed by Professor Charles Brownell, will have four sessions.  They will deal with the story of the Ionic Order from the ancient Mediterranean world through the Colonial Revival in Richmond’s Fan District;  Jefferson’s transformation of Virginia architecture;  the Classical country house in the Chesapeake region;  and the early twentieth-century renewal of Classicism from the Jamestown Tercentennial Exposition through the original building of the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts.  The Center for Palladian Studies in America and a dozen other cultural institutions join in sponsoring the Symposium.

Admission is free to students, $8.00 per person for members of sponsoring institutions, and $10.00 per person for others.  Reservations are necessary for a post-conference reception, at an additional charge of $15.00.  To register, please send checks, payable to VCU Symposium, to Symposium, Department of Art History, Virginia Commonwealth University, P.O. Box 843046, 922 West Franklin Street, Richmond, VA 23284-3046, by November 12th 2010.  Brochures will be available in early Fall 2010.  For a brochure or other information, please call 804/828-2784 or email Courtney Culbreth at <cculbreth@vcu.edu>. 

Friday, November 19th, 2010
9:00 am - 3:30 pm
Virginia Historical Society

News

1. Todd Cronan, Assistant Professor will be participating in the 98th Annual 2010 College Art Association Conference in Chicago.  Along with Charles J. Palermo, Associate Professor at the College of William and Mary, he will be chairing the double session "Intention and Interpretation" on Friday February 12th and Saturday February 13th.  Speakers include Walter Benn Michaels, David Summers, Whitney Davis, Stephen Melville, Thierry de Duve and others.
2. Michael Schreffler received an appointment as an Ailsa Mellon Bruce Senior Fellow at the Center for Advanced Study in the Visual Arts, a research institute at the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C. He will be in residence at the Center during the 2009-2010 academic year and will be working on a book about colonial architecture in Cuzco, Peru.
3. Dr. Babatunde Lawal, Professor has been invited by the Universidade do Estado da Bahia (State University of Bahia) in Salvador, Brazil to teach a one-week course on YORUBA ART AND CULTURE, July 5-10, 2009.
4. PhD student Elizabeth Reilly-Brown and Graduate student Marisa Day both participated in the Seton Hall Institute of Museum Ethics Graduate Student Conference in South Orange, NJ on November 14th, 2009.  They presented their paper "Educational Resource or Commodity?  Safeguarding University Art Museum Collections from Deaccession"
5. Phd student Amy Marshman presented her paper "Architecture of Conversion:  Convento Kivas in New Mexico" at the Southeast College Art Conference in Mobile, AL
6. Timothy Andrus, PhD Student, presented his paper "Anarchy, Abstraction, and Catholic Modernism" at the symposium on Religion in Early American Modernism in Boston, MA.
7. Nicole De Armendi (PhD, Fall 2009) has accepted a Visiting Assistant Professor position at the University of Tulsa.
8. PhD Student Kerry Lucinda Brown received the Paul and Fredrika Jacobs Scholarship Award for the 2009-10 academic year.
9. Undergraduate students Kalitah Crawford and Thomas Flanaga, with Sophia Minnerly of the Cinema Deparment, have won a 2009-10 VCUarts Undergraduate Research Award. The project, "VCU's First Aftrican Baptist Church (1876): A Cultural Crossroads", promises to be one of the first scholarly undertakings in the country to isolate African-American traits in historic religious architecture.
10. Undergraduate students Rachel Hutcheson, Mary Lamb, Jennifer Nigh and Amy Sailer all received the Bernice B. Gordon Scholarship Award for the Fall 2009 semester.
11. Undergraduate student Allison Frew received the Bess T. Brownell Scholarship Award for the Fall 2009 semester.
12. Undergraduate student Jessica Ferey received the School of the Arts Dean's International Study Grant to participate in an Internship at a French Museum.
13. Undergraduate student Hayley Sykes received the School of the Arts Dean's Scholarship Award for the 2009-10 Academic year.
14. Undergraduate student Christine Gillett received the Maurice Bonds Scholarship Award for the Fall 2009 semester.

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