Art History

Professor Emeritus Jeffrey Ruda has accepted an invitation to the Board of Directors of the American Ceramic Circle. His term begin January 1, 2021.

Alumni Kristin Hough (MFA ’16) and Julian Tan (MFA ’16) are among the founders of Outback Arthouse, a collaborative curatorial project in Los Angeles.

Professor Heghnar Zeitlian Watenpaugh has received a Public Scholar Award from the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) to support her research for a book about the medieval Armenian city of Ani.

Professors Heghnar Watenpaugh and Lucy Puls address the changing role of public monuments in “Redefining the Role of Public Monuments” by Karen Nikos-Rose in the College of Letters & Science arts blog Society, Arts & Culture.

Congratulations to art history student Arisa Bunanan whose paper “Helvetica and ZXX: Ubiquity and Surveillance in a Democratic Nation-State” was accepted to Prized Writing, an annual juried publication featuring exemplary undergraduate writing at UC Davis.

Alum Daniel Alejandro Trejo (BA, Art History and Art Studio, 2013) has been interviewed by Hyperallergic in their series Queer Art Workers Reflect. Hyperallergic is commemorating Pride Month by featuring one queer art worker per day on our website and asking them to reflect on what this time means to them.

Read the article here.

The Missing Pages: The Modern Life of a Medieval Manuscript, from Genocide to Justice by Professor Heghnar Zeitlian Watenpaugh has been shortlisted for the 2020 Saroyan Prize for writing in the nonfiction category. 

Congratulations to our Art History Class of 2020! This has been a remarkable year, but through it all, our students have produced great work. Well done!

Senior and Art History major Andrea Cota recently presented (virtually) her paper ”A Paradise Without God: Psychosexual Analysis of Hieronymus Bosch ‘The Garden of Earthly Delights’” at the Richard Macksey National Undergraduate Humanities Research Symposium at John Hopkins University in Baltimore. The conference was conducted April 3-4, 2020.

Places features DES 40B in its coverage of how design and architectural education is being delivered during the COVID-19 crisis. In “Field Notes on Pandemic Teaching: 2″, Professor Simon Sadler discusses how he addresses the challenge of remote teaching, applying ”shock doctrine” to his pedagogy, in his course DES 40B.

Senior Dorian Aguilar recently published an article in Erudition Magazine. Her article, “Humanizing Space: Rubén Martínez’s Iglesia El Rosario,” looks at the role this religious site plays in Salvadoran modernism.

On April 8, 2020, the Board of Trustees of the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation approved the awarding of Guggenheim Fellowships to a diverse group of 175 scholars, artists, and writers, among them Professor Heghnar Watenpaugh.

Listen to alum Katharine Schultz (MA 2019), Education and Development Associate at the Pence Gallery in Davis, discuss a few of her favorite works of art now on display at the Pence.

Alum Catherine Anderson (MA 1998 and Professor at Sacramento City College) will discuss the history of watercolor painting, from its use in the Middle Ages to the “Golden Age” of watercolor in 18th-19th century British Art, at the Pence Gallery on March 7 from 2-3 pm. She will also cover how watercolor was considered an appropriate medium for women artists, and the role of professional societies of watercolor painters in England and America in establishing the recognition of women artists’ work.

Benjamin Weisman (MA Candidate) will be giving a talk on March 5, 2020 at the “43rd Annual AHVA Graduate Symposium - Decadence: Flows of Abundance and Decay.” This event is sponsored by the Department of Art History, Visual Art and Theory at the University of British Columbia. Benjamin’s paper, “Decadence as a Generative Force in the Tale of Genji,” explores the concept of how decadence informed the production of the work, “Nine Scenes from the Tale of Genji” by Tawaraya Sotatsu.