BETSEY ROBINSON'S HISTORIES OF PEIRENE WINS 2011 PROSE AWARD
Betsey Robinson’s book, Histories of Peirene: A Corinthian Fountain in Three Millennia, volume 2 in the "Ancient Art and Architecture in Context" series of the American School of Classical Studies at Athens (Princeton, 2011), has been awarded the 2011 PROSE award for Anthropology and Archaeology by the Professional Scholarly Publishing division of the Association of American Publishers.
The interdisciplinary study combines art and architectural history, archaeology and allied sciences, and historiography. It tells the long story of the celebrated Peirene fountain, the evolution of the site of Corinth around it, and the history of excavation from 1898 to the present.
http://www.ascsa.edu.gr/index.php/news/newsDetails/histories-of-peirene-published/
PROFESSOR EMERITUS THOMAS B. BRUMBAUGH, 1921-2011
It is with regret that we announce the death of Thomas Brendle Brumbaugh on December 18, 2011. He received his Ph.D. from Ohio State University, teaching at Hood College and Emory University before coming to Vanderbilt in 1964. In 1968 he received the Madison Sarratt Prize for Excellence in Undergraduate Teaching. He retired in 1985 from teaching art history survey, American art, nineteenth-century art, and Indian art. Many alumni, undergraduate as well as graduate, will recall his erudition, his anecdotes, his kindness, and his humor. His profound influence and love of art led many of his students to pursue teaching careers in art history.
His scholarly interests ranged widely, from Ingres to Indian numismatics, and he published many articles, including "An Artist and His Model: Abbott H. Thayer and Clara May," The American Art Journal, vol. 10 (May 1978). His scholarly writing appeared in the Wadsworth Atheneum Bulletin, Connoisseur, Journal of the Walters Art Gallery, Manuscripts, Art Journal, Tennessee Historical Quarterly, Antiques, Southeastern Arts Review, Asian Review, Gazette des Beaux-Arts, Art Quarterly, American Book Collector, Notes and Queries, Mississippi Quarterly, Pennsylvania Magazine of History and Biography, Ohio Historical Quarterly, and numerous other publications. He was co-editor of Architecture of Middle Tennessee: The Historic American Buildings Survey and co-author of The Art of Gerald Brockhurst.
As a youth in Pennsylvania, Brumbaugh began collecting stamps and autographed correspondence. Several public collections have benefited from his collecting, notably the Archives of American Art and the Freer Gallery of Art and Arthur M. Sackler Gallery Archives, on whose website intern Beatrice Kelly wrote the following:
Thanks to his eagle’s eye for diamonds in the rough that would augment the worth of the collection, Brumbaugh managed to acquire letters from a number of famous figures in the 19th and 20th century American art scene, including Thayer, Widener, George de Forest Brush, Samuel Coleman, and Maria Oakey Dewing.... The Thomas B. Brumbaugh collection of 19th and 20th century American artists' correspondence doesn’t simply give the researcher a lopsided, art-focused view of those years, it paints a beautiful, multi-dimensioned picture of the time, covering everything from formal commissions for paintings to friendly invitations to dinner; from plain scenes of daily life to heart-wrenching appeals for forgiveness.
A letter from Henry Miller to Brumbaugh, now in Special Collections at the University of Virginia Library, offers a tantalizing glimpse into the way Brumbaugh obtained materials for his collection. Miller sends it in 1943 "as an example of [his] handwriting and asks to be placed in the album near Fyodor Dostoyevsky, Arthur Rimbaud, or Louis-Ferdinand Celine, 'Not beside an American! (Unless Walt Whitman.)' Miller says he understands the joy given by such a collection, 'I have looked with tears in my eyes at the script (under glass) of Hugo, Balzac and others in France. Are you interested at all in the science of graphology? What is it precisely that appeals to you in these items? The marvelous thing would be to know when and where, under what precise circumstances, these pages were written.'"
Brumbaugh also enriched the holdings of the Vanderbilt University Fine Arts Gallery, giving more than 200 paintings, drawings, and prints during his career as an art historian and collector. While his generous gifts often reflected his scholarly interests in such American artists as Thayer and Brockhurst, they also were an indicator of his inquisitive eye, according to Joseph Mella, director of the Gallery. Among his donations are interesting works by such prominent artists as Isabel Bishop, Honoré Daumier, John Flaxman, John Henry Fuseli, Hendrick Goltzius, Sir Francis Seymour Hayden, Martin Lewis, Roy Lichtenstein, Berthe Morisot, Camille Pissarro, George Romney, Ansei Uchima, and Rembrandt van Rijn. These are artworks the Gallery continually draws upon to constitute the basis for many exhibitions now and in the future.
VIVIEN G. FRYD TO BE VISITING PROFESSOR IN BERLIN
The Terra Foundation for American Art actively supports and initiates historical American art exhibitions, scholarship, and programs abroad and hence finances renowned scholars and professors of American art to teach at the John F. Kennedy Institute at the Freie Universität in Berlin, Germany, as well as other countries. Professor Vivien Green Fryd has been awarded the Visiting Professorship at this institution for fall 2012.
Students in HART 295 assist renowned artist Marie Magdalena Campos-Pons with art installation
Students in Professor Fryd's HART 295 class helped Maria Magdalena Campos-Pons plant bulbs for her installation, October 2011. From l-r in the back: Stephanie Schmidt, Christi Weinhuff, Margo Danis, Liz Furman, Kevin Manning; in front l-r Margaret Coleman, Kelly Sorren.
PUBLICATIONS
Robin M. Jensen, Luce Chancellor’s Professor of the History of Christian Art and Worship, with a joint appointment in the Department of the History of Art and the Divinity School, published Living Water: Images, Symbols, and Settings of Early Christian Baptism, Vol. 105 of Supplements to Vigiliae Christianae (Brill, 2011). Her publications include Face to Face: The Portrait of the Divine in Early Christianity (Fortress, 2005) and Understanding Early Christian Art (Routledge, 2000).
VIVIEN FRYD PRESENTED LECTURE AT UW-MADISON IN OCTOBER
Professor Vivien G. Fryd was one of a select few alumni from the University of Wisconsin-Madison’s graduate program to present a talk at the symposium, "Art History as a Window on Global Culture: New Research," celebrating 85 years of education, research and enrichment for generations of students, faculty, and community at large. Her lecture, "Ringgold's Slave Rape Story Quilt: Representing Transgenerational Sexual Trauma," took place at the end of October 2011.
INTERDISCIPLINARY FACULTY SEMINAR
"SACRED ECOLOGY: LANDSCAPE TRANSFORMATIONS FOR RITUAL PRACTICE"
The Robert Penn Warren Center for the Humanities, 2011-2012.
Co-directed by Professors John W. Janusek (Anthropology), Tracy G. Miller (History of Art), and Betsey A. Robinson (History of Art)
The Warren Center is hosting a year-long interdisciplinary faculty seminar exploring the manifold experiences of complex ritual sites around the world and across all periods of human history. Sacred ecology refers to the human experience of divinity in relation to the natural environment, real or represented. Landscape is construed for our purposes not simply as natural scenery, but as a cultural complex in which the natural world and human practice, conceptual and material, are dynamically linked and constantly interacting. An investigation of landscape may focus on pastoral or picturesque scenes, earthly elements and celestial movements, or constructed places and objects, such as a temple, altar, or stage. We are also interested in exploring the temporal rhythms of human-landscape relations, whether regular or periodic, as well as the way in which transformations of space through activities enacted at sacred sites are received and replicated to encode other sacred spaces.
The seminar’s investigations of setting, nature, and monuments offer a chance to revisit sacred places and to see them in a new light. Our intentionally broad definition leaves room for participants to introduce new topics to the table, such as (but not limited to): the practicalities of survey and excavation and the mapping of ritual; the natural landscape and its representation in words and images; geomorphology and its influence on planning and architectural design; the modification and improvement of natural features to accommodate human ritual; poetry and performance, whether on-site or remote venues; or the visualization of landscape as a means of facilitating ecstatic experience.
For more detailed information, see:
http://www.vanderbilt.edu/rpw_center/VF_Fellowship_2011_2012.html
Or contact:
Mona Frederick, Executive Director
Robert Penn Warren Center for the Humanities
VU Station B #351534, Nashville, TN 37235-1534
(615) 343-6060
VISIT US IN COHEN HALL
We welcome visitors to Cohen Memorial Hall on the Peabody campus. This beautiful McKim, Mead, and White building--which also houses the Fine Arts Gallery and the Department of Classical Studies--was built in 1928 and renovated in 2009.