News & Events

Professor Oliver Wunsch publishes article in Art History on Black subjects in French art

In the February issue of the journal Art History, Professor Wunsch examines how audiences in eighteenth-century France could admire Black people in art while denigrating them in life. He shows that they justified this contradiction through a belief in the ameliorating effects of art, adhering to what Wunsch describes as a theory of aesthetic redemption. Wunsch argues that the theory of aesthetic redemption that developed in eighteenth-century France gave art a unique position in the construction of race. Because those who believed in the possibility of aesthetic redemption distinguished between art’s content and its manner of representation, they created the conditions for artists to depict people of color using materials, techniques, and formal structures whose qualities would otherwise be considered at odds with the subject. The resulting art often strikes audiences today as progressive, yet it did little to challenge the biases of the original viewers, who admired aesthetic departures from stereotypes precisely because they took those stereotypes for granted.

Professor Stephanie C. Leone, publishes an article about the painting, "The Victory at San Pietro in Casale," in the Doria Pamphilj Gallery, Rome, in the February 2025 issue of The Burlington Magazine.

Using archival evidence and a closer reading of the primary sources, Professor Leone and co-author, Dr. Alessandro Serrani, have proposed a new understanding of the monumental painting in the Galleria Doria Pamphilj, Rome, which was formerly identified as the Battle of Castro and attributed to Jacques Courtois (known as il Borgognone; 1621–76) and Carlo Maratta (1625–1713). They have narrowed the location and chronology of the painting’s production to Bologna, between late August 1649 and February 1651, and identified the patron as papal vice legate Monsignor Marcello Santacroce (1619–1674), who donated it to his benefactor, Pope Innocent X Pamphilj (reg. 1644–55). In addition, rather than illustrating the battle at Castro that ended on 2nd September 1649, they argue that the painting in fact depicts a related occurrence at San Pietro in Casale on 13th August 1649. Consequently, given the date and the provenance of Bologna, Maratta and Borgognone cannot be the painters. Instead, based on style, they suggest that the Bolognese painter Giovanni Andrea Sirani (1610–70) was at least partially involved in the work’s execution.

February 2025 issue of The Burlington Magazine

Stephanie C. Leone, Restoring Rome for the Jubilee: Pope Innocent X’s Motives, Methods, and Meaning in 1650 (Tuesday, 1 April 2025, 6pm, American Academy in Rome)

When Innocent X Pamphilj was elected pope in 1644, he quickly commissioned monumental works of architecture and sculpture at St. Peter’s and San Giovanni in Laterano, according to G.S. Ruggieri’s Diario dell’anno del SS.mo Giubileo 1650, “to excite greater devotion in pilgrims and foreigners…[and] reflect the piety, religion, and paternal affection of the Pope toward this Holy City, his homeland.” Ruggieri’s contemporary voice serves as a starting point to investigate Innocent X’s motivations for renovating Rome for the Jubilee, which also comprised projects at Piazza Navona and the Campidoglio. Through select examples, this paper explores why Innocent X—head of the Roman Catholic Church, protector of the Pamphilj family, and Roman citizen—chose these locations and what, specifically, he aimed to communicate to pilgrims and Romans alike. Furthermore, it argues that he accomplished so much artistic production in such little time—only five years—by harnessing the robust building and sculptural industries of Rome and employing proven and new operational strategies. Further information can be found here.

Renaissance Society of America Conference

Professor Stephanie Leone is participating in the Renaissance Society of America's conference, held in Boston, from 20-22 March 2025. She has co-organized and is co-chairing the panel, "Artists' Collaborations outside the Workshop in Early Modern Europe." Professor Leone is also chairing the panel, "Street Art in Early Modern Italy."

Embrangledscape

Embrangledscape at Williams Center Gallery at Lafayette College, in Easton,PA showcases the work of installation artist Debra Weisberg. The exhibition features densely collage works on paper along with two site specific installations, one in the performance lobby providing a portal ionto which Brazilian born choreographer Paula Gil Higa's dance video is projected. January 30- March 14, 2025

Stephanie Stigliano's Don't Judge a Book by its Cover

Don't Judge a Book by its Cover, Cultural Center of Cape Cod, 307 Old Main St.South Yarmouth, MA. Artist books by Stigliano included in this national juried exhibit. February 3–March 1, 2025; Friday, February 7th reception 5-7pm

https://www.cultural-center.org/dontjudgeabookbyitscover

February Artist: Stephanie Stigliano, books and prints, Malden Public Library

February Artist: Stephanie Stigliano, books and prints, Malden Public Library36 Salem St. Malden, MA 9-9pm M-Th; 9-6 F-Sat. Closed Sundays.Monday, February 3rd reception 6-7pm

Amy Golahny: "Rembrandt's Artemesia Revisited"

In 2000 the author proposed that the regal woman in the painting by Rembrandt(1606–1669) in the Prado is Artemisia, queen of Caria in the fourth centuryBC, rather than Sophonisba, Carthaginian princess, as she has often been called (“Rembrandt’s ‘Artemisia’: Arts Patron,” Oud Holland, 114, 2/4, 2000, 139-52). Artemisia rules with Mausolos, her husband, and they built a monument to hold their ashes as a tomb; after his death she drinks a potion of his ashes daily, and commissions poetry in his honor. The present article brings additional support for Artemisia as the subject of the painting.  Rembrandt would have read about Artemisia during his year at Leiden university, when his textbook contained essential details of her life. As Rembrandt included an enormous book to show her patronage of poetry in honor of her deceased husband, he would be followed by several Dutch painters in their versions of the story. This article further examines the early inventories that mention Rembrandt's painting, and the recent interpretations of it as representing Judith at the banquet of Holofernes or Esther.

CONSTITUENT PARTS: Cathy Della Lucia and Nicholas Anthony Mancini in Dialogue

Cathy Della Lucia’s modular sculptures merge hand-finished wood, 3D-printed silicone, ceramics, and found objects. Using traditional Japanese joinery, these interactive pieces unfold and reassemble, reflecting her diverse experiences as a sculptor, former athlete, Korean-American adoptee, and woman in the U.S.

Reception: January 30, 2025, 6-8PM @ 808 Gallery, Boston University

For more details

Khalid Kodi's Out of Place: Alternative Landsacapes and Other Stories

Skoto Gallery is pleased to present Out of Place: Alternative Landscapes and Other Stories, an exhibition of recent works by the Sudanese-born artist Khalid Kodi. This will be his third solo show at the gallery. The reception is on Thursday, January 30, 6-8pm. The artist will be present.artist will be present. Out of Place is a conceptual exploration of the dynamic interplay between nature and human perception. These alternative landscapes challenge traditional notions of place and expand the boundaries of how we perceive and interact with the environment. Through fluid forms, vibrant gestures, and abstracted terrains, the works invite us to step beyond the static imagery of landscapes and enter a world of endless possibilities—where nature is not merely observed but continuously rearranged, imagined, and co-created. This exhibition examines the moments when nature escapes definition. Here, nature is both static and mutable, an entity we encounter and rearrange—sometimes with intention, sometimes in unconscious gestures, and other times in states of playful disruption. “Out of Place” reflects a search for that which lies beyond the known—a place of desire, comfort, majesty, love, and even madness. It asks: What happens when we deconstruct landscapes? When we let our minds wander through imagined terrains? When we infuse our interactions with nature with elements of whimsy, chaos, and longing? The abstract compositions of Out of Place reject the rigidity of fixed landscapes. Instead, they propose an alternative: a fluid interplay of color, form, and movement. Swirling brushstrokes, scattered patterns, and unexpected juxtapositions evoke a sense of both familiarity and dislocation. These are not landscapes we know; they are landscapes we dream of, where natural forms and human interventions collide, merge, and transform. At its core, this collection is a meditation on the human tendency to shape and be shaped by the natural world. It celebrates the tension between control and surrender, order and chaos. In these works, we find a mirror of our own restless curiosity and our constant quest to reimagine the spaces we inhabit. Out of Place: Alternative Landscapes and Other Stories is an invitation to explore the profound interplay of perception, imagination, and the natural world. Through this exhibition, viewers are encouraged to reflect on their own relationship with landscapes—both the ones they know and the ones they yearn to create. Born in Sudan, Khalid Kodi is an accomplished artist who has lived and worked in the US since the early 1990s. He is an educator, a public intellectual, and a cultural critic who has emerged as a central figure working on multi/cross cultural concepts. A pioneer of Participatory Art, he uses visual language to address social change issues and facilitate communication between communities, including communities in conflict and individuals who are not literate. Kodi uses art as a mechanism to create a platform for dialogue on constructions of identity across racial, gender socio-economic, and other forms of difference, co-existence, justice and peace. His work has been widely exhibited with critical acclaim. 

Stephanie Leone's "Cardinal Benedetto Pamphilj: Patron of the Villa del Gran Priorato, Rome (1678-1730)"

Professor Stephanie Leone has published an article about "Cardinal Benedetto Pamphilj: Patron of the Villa del Gran Priorato, Rome (1678-1730)," in L’Ordine di Malta e la Lingua d’Italia. Architettura e temi decorativi dalla Controriforma al Settecento, a special issue of the journal Lexicon, available here. Leone argues that the relationship between the Order of Malta and Benedetto Pamphilj--who served as Grand Prior of Rome from 1678 to 1730--was mutually beneficial. The exceptionally educated young nobleman blossomed into a consummate cardinal patron, who took seriously his stewardship of the Order and the villa del Gran Priorato. Her archival research shows that Cardinal Pamphilj sponsored major repairs to the Villa from 1689 to 1705. In 1704, he built a new garden pavilion that was designed and executed by Francesco Fontana and commissioned Luigi Garza to paint a fresco of the Ecce angus Dei, in the vault of this pavilion. Professor Leone demonstrates that the position of Grand Prior was the means through which Benedetto Pamphilj fulfilled the expectations of a cardinal-prince, at once wealthy secular aristocrat and pious apostolic successor. 

2025 Faculty & Staff Art Show

Pope Innocent X and Roma sancta

Prof. Stephanie Leone presented a paper on "Pope Innocent X and Roma sancta," at the Early Modern Rome 5 Conference, which was held in Rome and the Orsini-Odescalchi Castle on Lake Bracciano. Prof. Leone interpreted Algardi's magnificent altarpiece of Saint Leo the Great and Attila the Hun, in St. Peter's, as Innocent X's revival of early Christian Rome for the Holy Year of 1650.

The Art of Sammy Chong

Studio Art professor Sammy Chong's paintings are the subject of a recent essay by Vicente Chong, S.J. entitled "The Art of Sammy Chong as a Revelatory and Symbolic Meditation of a Servant God" in Theology and Media(tion): Rendering the Absent Present, edited by Stephen Okey and Katherin G. Schmidt (Orbis Books, Maryknoll, New York: 2024), 210-223.

Hartmut Austen's Divide

Hartmut Austen's mural Divide was on display at WGBH on Thursday, November 14. Divide is an acrylic and oil painting loosely based on Matisse’s “La Danse”. The abstract shapes are derived from the blurry online image of a military “Global Hawk” drone in flight.“It’s an elegant shape, weirdly figurative, and when turned upside down, sculptural,” Austen says. “For me, the drone shapes became a vehicle that helped me reflect on the battles that this country has fought, and still is fighting - with others and with itself.”

Professor David Young Kim, Department of the History of Art at the University of Pennsylvania, presented the Annual Josephine von Henneberg Lecture in Italian Art.

On October 3, 2024, Professor David Young Kim, Department of the History of Art at the University of Pennsylvania, presented the Annual Josephine von Henneberg Lecture in Italian Art. He discussed his new research project, "Found in Translation: Giorgio Vasari in Korea," about the interdependence of image and word in art history, the intersecting biographies of artists, writers, and art historians, and questions of identity in contemporary scholarship. Faculty, students, and friends of Boston College and the Boston community filled the lecture room at the Ricci Institute for Chinese-Western Cultural History. This year's lecture was co-sponsored by the Ricci Institute and the Art, Art History and Film Department. The lecture series is made possible by the generous gift of Professor Emerita Josephine von Henneberg. 

In Memoriam: Pamela Berger (1940-2024)

Our beloved colleague Pamela Berger (1940-2024) passed away on August 31st, 2024. Professor Berger joined our department in 1974, after receiving her PhD in art history at the Institute of Fine Arts, New York University. She retired in 2021, following nearly five decades at Boston College.

A renowned scholar of medieval art history, Professor Berger published a remarkable four books in her career, the most recent of which was Hebrew Psalms and the Utrecht Psalter: Veiled Origins, published in 2020. Much of her research engages iconography and iconology, analytical approaches she found particularly effective for understanding the meaning of a work of art in its own time. Pamela was also active as a screenwriter, filmmaker, and playwright. In 1987 she wrote and produced Sorceress, a film based on a thirteenth century Latin text about a medieval female healer accused of being a heretic. She went on to write and produce two more films, The Imported Bridegroom (1989) and Kilian's Chronicle: The Magic Stone (1994). Instead of slowing down after her retirement from Boston College, Professor Berger shifted her energy towards adapting The Imported Bridegroom into a musical, which was performed off-Broadway in New York City in 2023. At Boston College, Professor Berger taught a wide range of courses in Art History and Film Studies, including the introductory survey in art history, seminars on early and later medieval art, and several film courses, including “Cinema of the Greater Middle East,” “Cinema of Revolution and Revolt,” and “French Cinema.” The great breadth of Pamela’s teaching and scholarship reflects her profound intellectual curiosity and expertise. As Professor of Film Studies John Michalczyk put it, “Very quietly and calmly she lived several professional lives.”  Beyond Boston College Pamela will be remembered as one of the founding members of Our Bodies, Ourselves, a pioneering feminist organization intended to empower women through conversations about their bodies, health, sexuality, and reproductive rights. She helped write the chapter on alternative modes of healing in early editions of the publication of the same name.  In both her professional work and personal life, Professor Berger strove to raise up the voices of the underrepresented. I will never forget the kindness and support she showed me as an often unsure and insecure new faculty member in our department. She had a loving heart and a brilliant mind, and was always the voice of reason. Her contributions to our department, and to this world, were enormous and we will miss her greatly. – Aurelia Campbell, Associate Professor, Art History; Chair of the Department of Art, Art, History, and Film

Pamela was always a kind, smart, and respectful colleague. – Mark Cooper, Professor of the Practice, Studio Art

When I reflect on my time at Boston College, I cannot help but think of the dedicated educators that shaped my experience, especially those of the Art, Art History, and Film Department. Prof. Berger, or Pamela (as she implored me to call her after I graduated) was no exception. Pamela was always pushing the boundaries of what it meant to be a scholar and creative. An art historian, filmmaker, and lyricist, she never stopped pursuing the projects passionate to her, even in retirement. Her kindness, genuine care for my well-being, and her mentorship in both my academic and personal life, even after I graduated, are things for which I will always be deeply grateful. I know she will be dearly missed by her former students and colleagues, as she will be by me. – Matthew DiBenedetto, Class of 2021 

Pam Berger was am incredibly  kind colleague, creative scholar and feminist who was guided by the highest ethics on both  a macro political level and a micro personal level.  When I first came to Boston College, I was the only full-time woman in the Studio Art Area. I am so grateful that Pam was always looking out for me, not only encouraging my creative scholarship but always making sure that as a young artist, mother, and newly minted academic that I and everyone she encountered was treated with fairness. I love that she chose to be buried in a natural shroud. In death as in life, Pam had her eye on the prize of doing the right thing for others and the earth. She is sorely missed. – Sheila Gallagher, Associate Professor, Studio Art 

Professor Berger was my instructor in ART1101 during my senior year at BC. It was not until studying for my General Exams in grad school that I came to know the sheer variety of Pamela’s research interests and creative works. Around that same time, Pamela was invited to Princeton to deliver a public lecture on her book, The Crescent on the Temple, about the medieval conflation of the Temple of Solomon and the Dome of the Rock. This material, and the conversation we had afterwards about the Old City of Jerusalem, has stayed with me for a decade---students in my Holy Lands course will read selections from Pamela’s book this fall. Reading through Pamela’s bibliography, one sees how at home she was seeking out the complexities and paradoxes of life in the Middle Ages, as reflected in visual and material culture, naturally set across continents and confessional boundaries. I am very heartened to share in her field and to continue in the pedagogical track where she left off. – John Lansdowne, Assistant Professor, Art History

Pamela was a wonderful and supportive mentor and colleague to me. She inspired me with her endless curiosity and her enthusiasm and energy for scholarship, creative work, and teaching. I vividly remember an exchange about our research a few years ago: She wanted to hear all about the method of historical network analysis that I was using--how I collected my historical data, how network analysis worked, and what I was learning--and I relished hearing details about her innovative interpretation of the much-studied Utrecht Psalter, which she published as a book with Penn State Press in 2020. Pamela will always be a great model of the love of learning. – Stephanie Leone, Professor, Art History

Pamela and I developed a close collegial bond over the last five years. She was a welcoming, warm, and deeply interested presence in our department, and I felt this from the moment I arrived in 2020. An intellectual with a fierce curiosity and openness, she welcomed my questions about her time in Paris as a graduate student in the 1960s and the important friendship she and her husband, Alan, developed there with the crucial American painter Bob Thompson. It is to Pamela's credit as an art historian that she recognized the importance of Thompson's interventions in the privileged histories and skills of easel painting--and this, years if not decades before Thompson would gain widespread recognition either within the discourse of art history or the art system at large (indeed, Thompson made a portrait of Pamela and Alan which hangs in their Cambridge apartment). We also talked about her art historical training with Erwin Panofsky and other key emigre art historians in mid-century New York; these are the founders of some of our field's structuring methodologies. Finally, I was endlessly fascinated to hear about her truly history-making role as a founder of Our Bodies, Ourselves and as a founding author of the legendary book of the same name. Pamela was a supportive and serious thinker with whom one could talk about anything intellectual. But beyond that, I was grateful to her for taking an interest in me and my family, especially my three-year old daughter Opal, whom she let run around her family's backyard. I will miss her.  – Kevin Lotery, Assistant Professor, Art History

Pamela often spoke of her great mentor, the German-Jewish emigree Erwin Panofsky at the Institute of Fine Arts at NYU. He fled Germany as the National Socialists were coming to power to begin a prestigious career in art history. His major focus was on iconography, and then iconology, the analysis of images and their deeper often historical or contextual meaning. Pamela shared her love for the image in all of its venues--art history, cinema, and theater. Her life was a brilliant tapestry, like “La Dame à la Licorne,” woven with colorful images from all of these rich experiences in the arts.Sometime in 1986 or so, Pamela came to me asking if I had a published script on hand to see how it is sketched out. Having taught film history since 1978, I had a few, and she was most interested in the medieval script for Ingmar Bergman’s Seventh Seal which I had used after writing my recent French book on the director. We also discussed the “medieval” film, Return of Martin Guerre (1983), with Gérard Depardieu and its historical recreation of the period. Little did I know that this art historian and professor would soon launch out into her own vibrant career in film. With a spark of an idea in mind for a French film on a medieval subject, Pamela applied for, and was awarded, a coveted National Endowment for the Arts grant. A second coup came with her recruiting Suzanne Schiffman, Assistant Director for French New Wave pioneer François Truffaut (The Last Metro, Day for Night) for her project. In pre-production and production, as a good art historian, Pamela insured the authenticity of the storyline and artifacts or props for the film, on and off the set. Her labors were rewarded with the nomination of The Sorceress for a César, a French Oscar. Pamela moved naturally from writer and art consultant on the set, to director, adapting Abraham Cahan’s immigrant story for the screen. I recall her extensive search for locations that existed after the turn of the 20th century, that led to her keen choices of the grist mill at the Wayside Inn in Sudbury, and Harvard’s Memorial Hall. Pamela received critical praise from The Village Voice, for her 1989 directorial debut of The Imported Bridegroom: “Berger has, with her first film, leapt into the ring with James Ivory,” the American director who adapted E. M. Forster’s novel, A Room with a View and directed Remains of the Day with Anthony Hopkins. Her film went on to have two other lives, as a theatrical play and a musical staged at the 14th Street Y Theater in NY. Her generosity of spirit, as an educator and mentor to students and colleagues continued, and I offer here two examples: sharing her film pre-production experience with students in courses on preparation for feature films in terms of story, location, artifacts, etc., and supporting my screenplay for a potential film “Anya: Black Diamond” about a young girl in 1939 in the coal region of Pennsylvania. In her next foray into film direction, Killian’s Chronicle: The Magic Stone, Pamela utilized her historical knowledge of the Vikings, her solid sense of storytelling, and her keen commitment to recreating authentic images on screen. Pamela was able to capture the Viking narrative and the New England Native American with accuracy and warmth. In all of these cinematic experiences, Pamela remained true to the primacy of the icon, the image on screen, in a medieval painting, and on stage. Her iconic humanity remains with us. – John J. Michalczyk, Director of Film Studies

Ten years ago, Pamela approached me to co-teach al-Andalus/Sepharad/Islamic Spain, a topic that did not fall within either our respective fields of expertise. But, she had acquired a new passion: Sephardic poetry. As customary of Pamela, she had to satiate her appetite by taking up the topic seriously, hence, teach a course on it. She and I spent the summer studying for the course.  At that earlier stage of my career I had the predilection to pedagogical experimentation and she was established with her own tried and true teaching methods. One would have thought that our generational differences risked creating friction, or at the very least, a power dynamic resulting in the resentment of the junior party. Not with Pamela. The workload was meticulously equally divided. And rather than resisting my ideas, she watched me intently with curiosity and admiration. Indeed, she empowered me. Pamela and I became friends and she and her husband Alan would invite me to their house, which I discovered was a meeting place for progressive Jews and Arabs. She gave me plant cuttings and I lent her books. We exchanged recommendations about contractors, real estate agents, and the best morning exercises. We had a sweet, light friendship and her energy was infectious. – Dana Sajdi, Associate Professor, History

From the moment that I arrived at Boston College, Pamela was such a warm and welcoming presence. Whether we were discussing the complexities of iconology or the pleasures of parenthood, she always conveyed a joyfulness and curiosity that left me feeling more alive to the world. I miss her dearly. – Oliver Wunsch, Assistant Professor, Art History

'Drawing in HMart" Solo Exhibition by Cathy Della Lucia at Framingham State University

Cathy Della Lucia's solo exhibition "Drawing in HMart" opened this week at the Mazmanian Gallery at Framingham State University. The opening reception will be held next Wednesday, September 11 at 4:30PM with an artist talk to follow at 5:30PM. All are welcome. 

The show runs through October 25. Open hours are M-F 10-6PM at the McCarthy Center - 93 State St. Framingham, MA- 3rd floor. (The third floor is the main floor when you enter from State St). 

Stephanie Stigliano's Now and Then at Bromer Gallery

At Bromer Gallery we are delighted to announce our latest exhibition, “Stephanie Stigliano: Now and Then.” The show serves simultaneously as a retrospective view of a long career of artistic exploration, and as a showcase of current activity and experimentation. Stigliano’s deft play with material and structure imbues a sense of continuity between her flat work on the walls and her artist’s books, which in their complex folds and structures demonstrate the progression between single sheet to bound volume. To unfurl the origami-like puzzle of one of Stigliano’s volumes is to collaborate in the book’s construction, to build it up again and again out of its parts. Collaboration and community inform two of the exhibit’s largest book projects, “At the Edge of the Ocean” and “Four Women for Freedom,” which both adopt sculptural formats, each building a literal scaffold around concepts that can seem nebulous, difficult, or elusive.

Stephanie Stigliano’s work is held at Harvard University, the Museum of Fine Arts, and the National Museum for Women in the Arts, and she has participated in exhibits as local as Yarmouth and Florence, Massachusetts, and as global as Iceland and Poland. She is a professor at Boston College, where she teaches, “Making Prints/Making Books.” She is a longtime member of The Boston Printmakers and is a co-founder of New England Book Artists.

“Stephanie Stigliano: Now and Then” will be on exhibit at Bromer Booksellers & Gallery from June 27 to November 15, 2024, with books and prints available for sale.

Did Auguste Rodin Steal From Camille Claudel?

What went so wrong that the brilliant sculptor’s work became so little known? Simply put, she entered Rodin’s studio. Read Mary Sherman's article in full at Hyperallergic.

Read the article

Brian Reeves Featured in Poster Show

Brian Reeves' work will be featured in the Design for Good poster show at Space Gallery in Portland, Maine.

The opening is 5-8pm on Ocobert 6. The show lasts through November 15.

Graphica Creativa Triennial 2022 Exhibition

Brian Reeves has been selected to participate in the fourthcoming Graphica Creativa Triennial 2022. The international Triennial exhibition will be on display in Jyväskylä Finland. The organizer of the exhibition is Jyväskylä Art Museum.

The theme of the 2022 Triennial is Untold Artists’ Stories and it features works by 95 international artists from 68 countries.

The triennial will be on display in Jyväskylä October 22, 2022–January 29, 2023.
Graphica Creativa Triennial has been organized in Jyväskylä since 1975. Graphica Creativa is the oldest international print exhibition in the Nordic countries and the only one regularly organised in Finland.

Seniors to Remember 2022: Bozhena Kulchyckyj

Bozhena Kulchyckyj has had a deep interest in entrepreneurship and venture capital. At the same time, she has pursued her passion as an artist through her studio art major.  She has worked in operations roles at architectural firm Perkins Eastman and fashion startup Aurate New York, and for the past two years has served as a design lead at the technology startup Fisherman.

Read More.

The Inaugural Art History Student Symposium

We congratulate the art history students who presented their original research in the symposium on 6 May 2022. Their topics address a range of issues (social, political, visual, and more), media (architecture, painting, photography, and more), and cultures (American, Brazilian, British, and Irish).

Christopher Rizzo - “Semana de Arte Moderna: The Birth of Brazilian Modernism”

Peyton Wilson - “Alison and Peter Smithson's Robin Hood Gardens: A Brutalist Approach to the Future of Collective Housing”

MacLaine Jones - “The Mural Medium as Political Expression During the Northern Irish Troubles”

Annie Taylor - “What’s So Funny?: Louise Lawler’s Brand of Institutional Critique”

Professor Campbell's first book wins honorable mention

Professor Campbell's first book, What the Emperor Built: Architecture and Empire in the Early Ming, won the Society of Architectural Historians' Alice Davis Hitchcock Book Award honorable mention. The Alice Davis Hitchcock Book Award recognizes annually the most distinguished work of scholarship in the history of architecture published by a North American scholar. Congratulations to Professor Campbell! 

Debra Weisberg’s “Holding the Center Still”

Debra Weisberg’s “Holding the Center Still” (on view through March 27, 2022) transforms a spacious gallery into an environment of organic compositions, which look as if they have whirled out from a central installation to reach the surrounding walls. These works present a variety of ways of “making,” held together by the common thread of an obsessive impulse to experiment and explore, to push the limits of materials to encompass entirely new forms of expression.

Three BC Studio Art students were selected to create moving-image public art for the 2022 Student Art on the Marquee

Graham Adamson, Runzi (Harley) Cheng, and Haoyi Wang, three students in Prof. Georgie Friedman's Advanced Digital Art: Projection and Installation class were selected to create animation and video Public Art pieces for Art on the Marquee, an 80 ft x 26 ft, seven-screen, LED marquee outside the Massachusetts Convention Center in the seaport area of Boston, MA. The call for student proposals was a part of a statewide competition, and they are three of eleven students who were selected! The pieces will be on view in rotation with the MCCA’s informational screen content starting April 26, 2022.

Graham Adamson is a junior at BC studying Communications and Studio Art. Runzi (Harley) Cheng is a junior studying film studies and economics. Haoyi Wang is a junior studying studio art and finance. Read about all the student projects here: https://www.artonthemarquee.com/student/

About Art on the Marquee: Boston Cyberarts and the Massachusetts Convention Center Authority have teamed up to create “Art on the Marquee,” an ongoing project to commission public media art for display on the new 80-foot-tall multi-screen LED marquee outside the Boston Convention & Exhibition Center in South Boston. The largest urban screen in New England, this unique digital canvas is one of the first of its kind in the U.S. to integrate art alongside commercial and informational content as part of the MCCA’s longstanding neighborhood art program. “Art on the Marquee” offers artists more than 3,000 square feet of digital display on seven screens, providing full-motion video and a viewership of more than 100,000 pedestrians and motorists. The marquee is visible for a half a mile in many directions and is seen by traffic on Summer, D, and Congress streets, as well as from the surrounding hotels, office buildings and the Seaport World Trade Center.

Mixed-Media Installation By BC Profesor Explores Healing And Joy

Rarely do artists have the courage to break the static pattern of a traditional art gallery, but such is not the case for professor and multimedia artist Mark Cooper. It is no easy feat to organically weave together wood sculptures, ceramic pieces, rice paper collages, tapestries, video art and multi-layered paintings into one installation in a way that doesn’t look chaotic. However, it looks that way when Cooper is behind the process. His newest exhibit, titled “Unbounded: Angels in the Nursery,” took five days to install leading up to its opening night on February 26 at the gallery Howl! happening in New York City.

For more information, see the article in the Gavel.

“Holding the Center Still” at Piano Craft Gallery

The work of Debra Weisberg will be featured in a new exhibit, Holding the Center Still, at the Piano Craft Gallery in Boston from March 4 – March 27, 2022. The exhibit comprises collaged paper works and a large scale floor installation.  In the opening and closing receptions Vermont choreographer, Paula Higa, will premier a short piece created in response to Weisberg’s work.

In 2020, Weisberg explored printmaking (primarily monoprinting and embossing) as a Denbo Fellow at the Pyramid Atlantic Art Center. Deconstructed elements from prior sculptural installations--rope, netting, hot glue matrices--were inked and run through the press to create a large repository of deeply embossed printed images. Upon returning to her studio, these printed images were repurposed and reinvented: layered with black hot glue and handmade paper, drawn onto and into with graphite and charcoal.

The result is a richly dense body of work on paper that touches into the profound relationship between collapse and renewal. Their materiality connects touch/hapticity with the visual/optical. The work exposes the highly vulnerable nature of paper as a transparent and fragile medium that is also surprisingly enduring and sturdy.

There will be a panel discussion on expanded drawing practices on Tuesday, March 15 at 6:30. On the panel will be Audrey Goldstein, Michelle Samour and Julia Shepley moderated by Deborah Disston, director of  SNHU McIninch Museum.

Register for the event.

Students Debate Controversial Monuments in New Art History Course

As the United States reexamines monuments with ties to racism and injustice, Boston College students have been using the methods of art history to determine possible paths forward. In Professor Oliver Wunsch's new art history course "Contested Monuments," students this spring examined the long history of controversial monuments through weekly case studies that ranged from fascist architecture in Europe to apartheid monuments in South Africa. For their final projects, each student focused on a monument of their choice, using historical and visual evidence to propose a plan for the monument's future. Read more about the course in the recent issue of Boston College Magazine.

Working Together: A Conversation With Mark Cooper

Studio Art Professor, Mark Cooper, was recently featured in Sculpture, A Publication of the International Sculpture Center. B. Amore, who interviewed him, says, “Mark Cooper’s sculptures seem particularly suited to the uncertain nature of our times. Like the poet Rainer Maria Rilke, Cooper “liv[es] the question” through his work, both personal and collaborative, creating visual forms that bear traces of a rich, compelling, infinitely productive, and changeable process. The pieces, which exude energy, present variations on archaic forms and seem timeless. When combined to create installations, they give a sense of continually evolving life. Cooper has worked extensively in the United States, Europe, China, and Vietnam. Collaboration with communities is one of his favorite ways of creating art. He is forever exploring new ground, and he has most recently created a three-part marble “anti-monument” for the DaNang Museum of Fine Art in Vietnam. Through this and other works, Cooper shows us that though a form may seem fixed, its associations create endless permutations in the viewer’s experience.”

BC Thesis Films Are Now ONLINE!

Students in this year’s Filmmaking III class, taught by Professor Gautam Chopra, have produced seven powerful short films, all of which are, as he says, “imaginative, diverse, and challenging.” Professor Chopra notes, “Under the best of circumstances, making a film can be arduous, unpredictable and exhausting. This year's Film Studies Majors accepted the challenge to not only produce their own thesis films, but to work within the Covid restrictions we've all had to adapt to. These production obstacles inspired creative solutions and a collection of wonderful films. Enjoy!"

Photo:  Screenshot from "A Proper Goodbye," written and directed by Dejah Roberson-Cosby '21

Art, Art History and Film Department Celebrates Graduates' Achievements

On Sunday, May 23, 2012, the Art Department hosted a virtual graduation and award ceremony to recognize the 2021 graduates, and to salute those seniors who merited awards and honors.

Professor Stephanie Leone, Art History Professor and Department Chair, congratulates this year’s graduating senior award and honors recipients:

“We enthusiastically congratulate you, the Class of 2021 Art, Art History and Film Majors and Minors! Your college career took an unexpected turn when the pandemic hit, but you have responded with creativity, compassion, courage, determination, inquisitiveness, and resilience. Learning and creating in community with you has strengthened us all. We applaud you for your intellectual, creative and personal achievements during your entire career at Boston College and celebrate this auspicious moment with you. We recognize our Seniors who are receiving departmental awards and honors, and the Studio Art Majors and Minors who are participating in the annual Senior Art Exhibition. We will miss you. Please stay in touch!”

Image Caption: Dieudonne Rouanez (1920–), Country Dancers, 1967, oil on canvas, 15.275 x 23.3 in., McMullen Museum of Art, Boston College, Gift of Dr. Arthur M. Morrissey, 1999.68

Spring 2021 R & D Ceramics Installation

In the recent Center Stage Ceramic Exhibition, featured at the annual Arts Fest on May 1 and shown in Robsham Theater, all of the pieces were created by students in Studio Arts Professor Mark Cooper's ceramics classes. Each student completed research that guided their artistic design, thus the title, R&D Art Installation, with the overarching theme "Books move us. Art brings us together!"

Robyn Beatty (Lynch School ’21), coordinator of the exhibit, noted, “Coordinating the first ceramic exhibition in the twenty-three-year history of the Art Fest was quite a remarkable achievement. This installation expanded students' creativity and expression … and, what I enjoyed most was the integration of literacy with the arts. The first R&D Art Installation, held in the O'Neill Library in the fall of 2019, had multiple pieces of literature to accompany the collection of ceramic pieces. … Having this exhibition featured in the Robsham Theater has symbolic meaning to me, as it resonates with my pursuit of a double degree in Theater and Elementary Education … and has unlocked the potential of someday being an art exhibitionist who integrates literacy and art, and hopefully sharing this with local schools down the line. … In all, this has been a joyous experience and an opportunity to display the Center Stage Ceramic Exhibition for all to witness.”

Robyn was also interviewed about the installation by Yifan Wang ’22.

Film Studies Celebrates 20th Anniversary of the Jacques Salmanowitz Program for Moral Courage in Documentary Film

The Jacques Salmanowitz Program for Moral Courage in Film is devoted to encouraging the production of film concerned with acts of moral courage, providing role models for youth worldwide. Since 2001 students have produced more than sixty films on issues of human rights and social justice.

The program serves as a resource for student filmmakers who wish to create documentaries that will inspire future generations. The program is named for Jacques Salmanowitz (1884-1966), a Swiss businessman who was instrumental in bringing to safety in Switzerland individuals trapped behind German lines in World War II. The Salmanowitz Program was first established in 2001 through a five-year grant, and has been generously renewed annually thereafter.

Under the leadership of Professor John Michalczyk, Film Studies Director, these various events serve as a tribute to Jacques Salmanowitz:

The students from Professor Michalczyk’s Holocaust and the Arts course have published a 200-page book: Holocaust Film: History from the Ashes. Each student wrote an essay on the historical setting of thirty Holocaust films, presented in the order of the development of anti-Semitism leading to the Final Solution of the Jewish Question, the Holocaust.

Students in the Propaganda Film course created an exhibit at the O’Neill Library, Anti-Semitism, A Very Long Hatred. The exhibition was a collaboration of their critical analyses of posters that depicted the rise of anti-Semitism from its Christian origins to its occurrence today. Angelos Bougas, the Teaching Assistant for the course, produced a short film on the exhibit. Kate Canniff wrote a review of the exhibit for The Heights newspaper.

At the Annual Arts Festival, held on May 1, 2021, the Jacques Salmanowitz Program screened several documentaries as part of a retrospect of films produced with the social justice grant. The film program also included Angelos Bougas’s (’21) recent short film Colorblind. Jonathan Ng’s (’21) new Salmanowitz film project, Mauna Kea: A Fight for Indigenous Hawaiians’ Livelihoods, Lands and Rights was also screened.

Film Student Angelos Bougas '21 Produces Short Film, "Colorblind"

Angelos Bougas, a Senior majoring in Film Studies, recently wrote, directed, and produced the short film, Colorblind. Says Bougas, "As a filmmaker, I have been creating various multimedia projects for the past four years. Over the summer, while millions across the United States were taking part in widespread protests to support the Black Lives Matter movement, I was with my family in Greece, unable to participate from such a distance. I wanted to find a meaningful way to show my support, and that is how I came up with the idea to create this short film, Colorblind.

The aim of the film is to highlight the systemic problem of violence against people of color and to elevate racial consciousness. I strongly believe that creativity is vital for the existence of safe spaces that promote learning and discussion on issues of race. Each post, picture, commercial and film made is a small step in the colossal task towards eradicating racism.” 

Jamie Kim '22 Awarded Corcoran Center Internship

Congratulations to Jamie Kim, Studio Art ’22, who was recently awarded a competitive Corcoran Center paid summer internship.  BC’s Corcoran Center for Real Estate and Urban Action leverages multidisciplinary discussions and develops actions that foster community transformation. Interns are placed in non-profits, public agencies, and mission-driven organizations devoted to research-based approaches to complex urban problems. One of the organizations that mentors interns is Utile, the architecture and urban design firm where Studio Art adjunct faculty member Matthew Littell is a founding partner.

For more information about the Architectural Studies Concentration, please see Professor Sheila Gallagher: gallagso@bc.edu.

Charles A. Meyer Memorial

The Art, Art History and Film Department mourns the passing of colleague and friend Charles A. Meyer (d. Dec 21, 2020). Charles taught photography and film making between 1977-2011, and quite literally helped build the department from the ground up. In our original quarters on the Newton Campus, he helped design both our darkroom and curriculum and, when the department moved to the main campus in 1993, Charles worked closely with the architects in charge of the renovation of Devlin Hall to create a state-of-the-art photo facility.

A consummate professional, Charles has an outstanding record in both film and still photography. After creating nearly twenty highly regarded independent documentaries, he worked for several years with Ken Burns, recording the sound for such films as The Civil War, Baseball, Lindbergh, and High Lonesome: The Story of Bluegrass Music. Charles also worked with Professor John Michalczyk on several of his social justice documentaries.

Charles was committed to social justice and used the power of images to help us confront the most difficult historical and social issues. An exhibit of his work displayed in 2011 in the O’Neill Library, titled Witnessing Conflict, included photographs of survivors of the violence in Kosovo and Northern Ireland, and apartheid in South Africa, The accompanying texts, which included the testimony of the survivors, are as deeply moving and inspiring as the photos.

His photographs are in the collections of the Bibliothèque Nationale, Polaroid, and many other institutions and private collections. His work has been exhibited at numerous museums and galleries, including the Addison Gallery of American Art, the McMullen Museum of Art at Boston College, the Institute of Contemporary Art in Boston, and the UNESCO Gallery in Paris.

A generous and inspiring teacher, Charles was a selfless mentor with his students, and he inspired generations of photographers. At BC, he curated noteworthy exhibitions on Edward Curtis, Aaron Siskind and the Photo League, bringing world-class photography to campus. Charles also taught at MIT, Clark University and Hampshire College, and was the Harnish Visiting Artist in Photography at Smith College.

Charles was a wonderful friend and colleague, with a terrific sense of humor. He will be missed by his fellow faculty, former students and friends. Charles is survived by his spouse of many years, Nancy J. Witting.

Websites:  http://www.charlesameyer.com/

Sacred Moments from India, Photographs by Charles Meyer, 1996

Jeffery Howe, Professor Emeritus of Art History, 27 December 2020

Photo: Charlie Meyer (center) with Etoile film crew in Jerusalem.

Emine Fetvaci Named Calderwood Professor in Islamic and Asian Art

The Art, Art History and Film Department is pleased to announce that Professor Emine Fetvaci has been appointed to Boston College's Norma Jean Calderwood University Professorship in Islamic and Asian Art, effective January 1, 2021. To read more about her background, experience, and outstanding accomplishments, please visit here.

Professor Stephanie Leone, Chair of the Art, Art History and Film department, noted, “We are thrilled to have Professor Emine Fetvaci join our department in the position of Calderwood Professor. An internationally recognized art historian of the early modern Islamic world, with specializations in the pictorial arts and Ottoman art and architecture, Prof. Fetvaci’s research investigates the connections among artists, works of art, and cultures across time and geography, especially the Ottomans, Timurids, Safavids, Mughals, and the Mediterranean basin. She challenges traditional conceptions of Islamic art with innovative ideas and original interpretations. We look forward to seeing Islamic art and architectural history continue to flourish at Boston College under Fetvaci’s leadership.” 

BC Professors Discuss Postponement of "Philip Guston Now" Exhibit by Boston MFA

In her December 1, 2020, article in The Heights, Metro Reporter Emily Kraus (’21) wrote about the Boston Museum of Fine Art’s postponement of the “Philip Guston Now” exhibit from this past July until 2024. The MFA directors cited recent events in the racial justice movement and the coronavirus pandemic as reasons for the delay, but confirmed their commitment to presenting Guston’s work.

In this collection of drawings and paintings, Guston (who died in 1980) depicts members of the Ku Klux Klan, who are shown as hooded figures engaged in everyday activities. The Boston MFA was one of three other institutions that have postponed the exhibit – the UK’s Tate, the National Gallery, and the MFA Houston.

Several BC Art Department professors weighed in on the postponement. Studio Art Professor Sheila Gallagher noted “I personally think the decision to postpone the exhibition for four years is cowardly, and I think it’s infantilizing for the audience of art to think they can’t tell the difference between a representation and advocacy. To me, the real fear is that museums will become places that are just these feel-good places full of flower paintings and will never confront difficult issues.”

Studio Art Professor Hartmut Austen added, “It is a sign of a very good artist, who was not sparing himself, was taking risks, and was challenging his audience. I think that’s really important.”

“Guston is an artist who explores the problems of white supremacy [and] of whiteness,” said Art History Professor Kevin Lotery. “I think that this postponement will now enter art history itself as a moment in the debate around museums. My understanding of what a museum should be is [that] these are spaces of debate, of conflict, of political conflict and debate. If they’re not that, why do we need them?”

To read the complete The Heights article, visit here.