Abstract Melvin Edwards made his first abstract sculptures at the beginning of the contemporary period in the early 1960s, but the ways he held on formally to a modern notion of “interiority” in…
Several current Art History students and one alumna were recipients of Graduate College awards during the Fall 2023 semester. These include the following: Hannah Gadbois (PhD Candidate), Provost’s Graduate Research Award Josh Gomez-Ortega…
PhD Student Jacki Putnam has published an article titled “Nothing Comes from Nothing: Photographic Reinterpretations of Mesoamerican Codices” in volume XV of the journal Hemisphere: Visual Cultures of the Americas, produced by graduate…
Professor Ömür Harmanşah (Director of the School of Art & Art History and Associate Professor in Art History) secured a $180K grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities, announced in UIC Today…
Kaveh Rafie introduced Pamela Karimi who gave a talk in conjunction with the ongoing exhibition co-courted by Yasaman Moussavi and Elmira Sarreshtehdari at Artspeaks, Vancouver, for the first anniversary of Mahsa Jina uprising.…
Danish artist gave a museum empty frames. Why it’s more than just a stunt. Conceptual artist Jens Haaning intended the works to be a commentary on capitalism; the Kunsten Museum of Modern Art…
Film Screening and Discussion Thursday, September 21st, 6:00 p.m. 22 Christopher St, New York, NY 10014 The Institute of Arab and Islamic Art (IAIA) invites you to join us for a screening of…
The Chicago History Museum has featured students from Art History 180 in their summer issue of Chicago History: “A fall 2022 Introduction to Museum and Exhibition Studies class at the University of Illinois…
Please join the Department of Art History in congratulating our alumnus Jeffrey Campbell (MA, 2008) on the publication of his new cookbook, Jeff the Homo Chef. Order your copy today!
Associate Professor Emerita Virginia Miller has co-authored two new articles: Vera Tiesler and Virginia E. Miller. “Head, Skulls, and Sacred Scaffolds: New Studies on Ritual Body Processing and Display in Chichen Itza and Beyond.” Ancient Mesoamerica vol.…
MA Student Drita Bruqi Kabashi performed “A Trojan Woman” as part of The Region of Attica Interbalkan Festival of Ancient Drama in an ancient theater building in Athens (July 4-7, 2023). This one…
Professor Ömür Harmanşah just published a book chapter in Rethinking Heritage in Precarious Times Coloniality, Climate Change, and Covid-19, edited by Nick Shepherd and published by Routledge (July 2023). Professor Harmanşah’s chapter is…
Congratulations to Art History MA Student Drita Bruqi Kabashi, who successfully defended her MA Thesis on July 7, 2023. Her thesis is titled “”Critical Fabulation Meets Material Culture: Reimagining Kosova’s Art by Feminist…
With the death of Otto Karl Werckmeister on 7 June, the art history of the New Left has lost one of its most prodigious intellects and imposing personalities. Born in Berlin in 1934,…
On June 6, PhD student Humaira Hossain gave an invited lecture, “An Introduction to Art History Careers: What to do after we graduate,” at the University of Dhaka, where she received her BFA…
Cassandra Smith (PhD 2023) has accepted a Visiting Lecturer position in Contemporary Art, with a particular focus on Indigenous Art, in the Department of Art History at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.…
Marilynn Thoma Scholar and Assistant Professor in Art of the Spanish Americas Emmanuel Ortega will present a paper titled “From New Spain to Mexico, Belatedness as a Tool of Empire” at the “Belatedness…
Associate Professor of Art History Andrew Finegold presented a paper at the “Vessels Beyond Containment” conference organized by Sinem Casale, Jas Elsner, and Gerhard Wolf at the Kunsthistorisches Institut-Florenz, June 8–9, 2023. The…
Prof. Ömür Harmanşah has co-organized a conference session “Dialogues Across Landscapes: New Challenges to Practicing Landscape Archaeology in Western Asia” at the American Schools of Overseas Research Annual Meeting, Chicago IL 15-18 November…
Catherine Becker’s article “The Buddhavanam Replica Stupa in Telangana: Sculpting a Buddhist Homeland in India’s Youngest State” has been published in the May 2023 issue of Comparative Studies of South Asia, Africa and the Middle…
The Department of Art History is delighted to announce the recipients of this year’s prizes for Art History majors. Vae Faulkner, Maegan Resuello, and Haruka Smith have received the John D. McNee Art…
PhD candidate Sarah Rogers Morris has been selected for the Dean’s Scholar Fellowship, which provides funding from UIC’s Graduate College to support dissertation writing in 2023-24. Sarah will work toward completing her dissertation,…
First-year PhD student Humaira Hossain has received the Graduate College’s Award for Graduate Research to support summer research and Urdu language coursework with the American Institute of India Studies in Lucknow, India. Congratulations,…
As art history professors, we have experienced our share of student responses to artworks like the one testified to by Aram Wedatalla, president of the Muslim Student Association at Hamline University: “It hurts…
Associate Professor of Art History Andrew Finegold’s book Vital Voids (University of Texas Press, 2021), was reviewed in the latest issue of the journal Latin American and Latinx Visual Culture: Mollenhauer, Jillian. “Review: Vital…
Raquel Flecha Vega (PhD candidate) has been awarded a fellowship for AY 2023-24 from the Mellon Foundation and the Inter-University Program for Latino Research through UIC’s LALS program to support the completion of…
PhD candidate Maggie Schuster has been awarded a FLAS (Foreign Language and Area Studies) Fellowship to support enrollment in Intermediate Hindi this summer at the University of Wisconsin-Madison’s South Asia Summer Language Institute.…
Emmanuel Ortega, Marilynn Thoma Scholar and Assistant Professor in Art of the Spanish Americas at UIC, had written a review of Chicago-based artist Yvette Mayorga’s exhibition at The Momentary (Bentonville, Arkansas) for Hyperallergic.…
UIC Art History alumnus Sim Hinman Wan (PhD, 2020) has published an article titled “Disciplining Otherness in the Tropics: Dutch Philanthropic Sites and the Urbanization of Indonesian Ports, 1640–1730” in the most recent…
The exhibition “Fortune and Folly in 1720,” which was co-curated by UIC Associate Professor of Art History Nina Dubin and is currently on view at the New York Public Library Schwarzman Building, was…
PhD candidates Kaveh Rafie and Leili Adibfar will be teaching an online course on the Iranian artist Monir Farmanfarmaian, to be held in conjunction with a solo exhibition of her work at the…
Nadia Gribkova publishes “Out of Nowhere: Emptiness and Aesthetic Feeling in the Works of Collective Actions” in Athanor vol. 39! An article-length version of Gribkova’s Master’s thesis, the paper examines the early works…
Emmanuel Ortega, Marilynn Thoma Scholar and Assistant Professor in Art of the Spanish Americas, has had the exhibition he curated, Contemporary Ex-Votos: Devotion Beyond Medium, reviewed in Hyperallergic. The exhibition is on view…
Assoc. Prof. Elise Archias was a speaker on the panel “Topical Abstraction: Race, Materials, Process” at the SECAC Conference in Baltimore, on October 27th.
Associate Professor of Art History Elise Archias gave a talk on Melvin Edwards at the symposium “Surrogates: Embodied Histories of Sculpture in the Short 20th Century” at Yale University, September 29 – Oct…
PhD Student Marina Álvarez has published an article titled “Monumentality and Anticolonial Resistance: Feminist Graffiti in Mexico” in the journal Public Art Dialogue (volume 12, issue 2, 2022). Congratulations, Marina! https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/21502552.2022.2112349
Art History PhD candidate Leili Adibfar has published an article titled “Aesthetics, Alienation, and Idealism: An Inquiry into Ali Shariati’s Account of Art” in the journal Philosophy and Global Affairs. The article can…
From PhD Student Anneliese Hardman, who is one of the organizers of this conference: 2023 Multidisciplinary Graduate Student Conference in Premodern Studies at the Newberry Library January 16-28, 2023 Newberry Library and…
Nina Dubin’s co-curated exhibition “Fortune and Folly in 1720,” forthcoming at The New York Public Library, is highlighted in The New York Times. Congratulations, Nina!
PhD Student Nadia Gribkova has had a two-part essay titled “New Financial Totality: Beeple’s Everydays” published on Plot.online. From her introduction: [S]ituating EVERYDAYS art historically may provide a contextual and formal…
Andrew Finegold, who joined the Art History faculty at UIC in 2016, has been promoted to the rank of Associate Professor with tenure. Congratulations, Andrew!