Public Lecture by Alexander Nemerov

Starting in 1908, Lewis Hine made photographs of child laborers in the mills of the Carolinas, Georgia, and Tennessee, among other places in the United States. Today, many of these photographs remain powerful, exerting an emotional and even mystical appeal that Alexander Nemerov will address in his talk, ‘Lewis Hine in the Southeast: Child Labor Photographs, 1908 – 1912,’ to be held Wednesday, September 3, 2014, at 4:00 pm in Hodges’ Lindsay Young Auditorium.

A scholar of American art, Nemerov writes about the presence of art, the recollection of the past, and the importance of the humanities in our lives today. Committed to a broad teaching of art history as well as topics in American visual culture — the history of American photography, for example — he is a noted writer and speaker on the arts. His most recent books are Wartime Kiss: Visions of the Moment in the 1940s (2013) and Acting in the Night: Macbeth and the Places of the Civil War (2010). In 2011 he published To Make a World: George Ault and 1940s America, the catalogue to the exhibition of the same title he curated at the Smithsonian American Art Museum. Among his recent essays are pieces on Peter Paul Rubens, Henry James, Thomas Eakins, JFK, Rothko, and Rembrandt.

Two UT Knoxville School of Art Alumni Receive Awards

Virginia Derryberry (MFA 1984) and Scott Betz (MFA 1992) were recognized at the 2013 Southeastern College Art Conference (SECAC) held in Greensboro, North Carolina. Derryberry, who is a Professor of Art and Department Chair at the University of North Carolina Asheville, received the SECAC Award for Outstanding Artistic Achievement. Betz, who is a Professor of Art at Winston Salem State University, received the SECAC Award for Excellence in Teaching.

The 2013 Southeastern College Art Conference was held October 30-November 2 included presentations by School of Art faculty members, Joshua Bienko, Tim Hiles, Beauvais Lyons, Norman Magden and John Powers and Printmaking technician Jessie Van der Laan. Graduate students presenting papers included Raluca Iancu and Jennifer Scheuer, both in Printmaking.

SECAC is a non-profit organization that promotes the study and practice of the visual arts in higher education on a national basis.

Professor Mary Campbell is this week’s Quest Scholar

“Mary Campbell, assistant professor of art history in the School of Art, was recently awarded an American Council of Learned Societies (ACLS) Fellowship for the upcoming academic year. She will use the time to finish her forthcoming book for the University of Chicago Press. In this book, Campbell examines the work of the Mormon photographer — and sometimes pornographer — Charles Ellis Johnson (1857–1926). Specifically, she untangles the complicated relationship that exists between Johnson’s photographs for the Mormon church, his risqué stereoviews of young women, and the decision of Mormon authorities to relinquish polygamy in 1890.

Campbell received her Ph.D. from Stanford, earned a J.D. at Yale Law School, and did her undergraduate work at Brown University. Her teaching focuses on the history of American art during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, the history of American modernism, and African-American art.”

Source: Text taken from UT Quest Scholar of the Week.

Spotlight: Art History

In When All of Rome Was Under Construction, architectural historian Dorothy Metzger Habel considers the politics and processes involved in building the city of Rome during the baroque period. Like many historians of the period, Habel previously focused on the grand schemes of patronage; now, however, she reconstructs the role of the “public voice” in the creation of the city. She presents the case that Rome’s built environment did not merely reflect the vision of patrons and architects who simply imposed buildings and spaces upon the city’s populace. Rather, through careful examination of a tremendous range of archival material—from depositions and budgets to memoranda and the minutes of confraternity meetings—Habel foregrounds what she describes as “the incubation of architecture” in the context of such building projects as additions to the Palazzo Doria-Pamphili and S. Carlo ai Catinarias well as the construction of the Piazza Colonna. She considers matters of the financing of building, of the availability of building materials and of labor, and she offers a fresh investigation of the writings of Lorenzo Pizzatti who advocates for “the social implications” of building in the city. Taken as a whole, Habel’s examination of these voices and buildings offers the reader a deeper and more nuanced understanding of the shape and the will of the public in mid-seventeenth century Rome.

February 7th: An Evening of Mark Rothko with Distinguished Art Historian Thomas Crow

With the generous support of the Haines Morris Endowment, the School of Art and the Department of Theatre have teamed up to bring the distinguished art historian Thomas Crow to campus. A highly respected scholar, Crow is the Rosalie Solow Professor of Modern Art at New York University’s Institute of Fine Arts. He has also taught at the University of Chicago, Princeton University, and Yale University, as well as spending six years as the director of the Getty Research Institute in Los Angeles. On the evening of February 7th, Professor Crow will deliver a lecture on the work of the Abstract Expressionist painter Mark Rothko (1903-1970). Entitled “Mark Rothko’s Actors: Shape and Edge in the Evolution of His Art,” this talk will take place in the Hodges Library Auditorium at 5 p.m.; the lecture is free and open to the public.

Professor Crow comes to the University of Tennessee on the occasion of the Department of Theatre’s production of John Logan’s play Red directed by UT faculty member John Sipes. Winner of the 2010 Tony Award for best play, Red gives the audience a gripping view of Rothko as he sets out in 1958 to paint a series of murals for New York’s exclusive Four Seasons restaurant. Shuttling wildly between his highest artistic aspirations and his near-crippling anxieties, Logan’s Rothko confronts the audience with a captivating picture of the artist’s capacity for egotism and brutality but also transcendence. The show will begin at 7:30 p.m. and will be followed by a question-and-answer session between Professor Crow, the audience, the cast, and the director, John Sipes.

For additional information concerning Professor Crow’s visit to Campus, please consult the School of Art website. For information about Red and to purchase tickets, please consult the CBT and Carousel website.

Mary Campbell gave a presentation at the Fall 2012 UT Mic/Nite

Mary Campbell, Assistant Professor in Art History, gave a presentation during this semester’s Mic/Nite. Mic/Nite is a faculty event hosted each semester that gives selected faculty a chance to represent and introduce themselves and their departments. Professor Campbell’s presentation was entitled, “”Mormon Porn: Charles Ellis Johnson’s Erotic Stereographs.” To learn more, please refer to this pageor watch the video. Enjoy!