Drewal wraps up residency in Norwich, embarks on DC fellowship

Henry Drewal, Evjue-Bascom Professor of Art History and Afro-American Studies, recently completed his residency as Visiting Scholar at the Sainsbury Research Unit-University of East Anglia-Norwich-UK.

He soon begins the first phase of a six month Senior Fellowship (Summers 2010 and 2011) at the National Museum of African Art-Smithsonian Institution, Washington, DC working on his latest book and exhibition projects.

The book project is on art and the senses, and the other is a major traveling exhibition of African art in iron tentatively called "Striking Iron."

The exhibition entitled "Kingdom of Ife: Ancient Art from Africa" —which he wrote the catalogue essay — is presently at the British Museum-London (closing July 6) and will begin its US tour at the Houston Museum of Art in September before going to Virginia, Indiana, and New York.

Drewal's exhibition "Mami Wata: Arts for Water Spirits in Africa and Its Diasporas" will open at Stanford University in August and remain on view until January 2011. 

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Murray curates ground-breaking exhibition in New York

Professor Julia K. Murray's (Art History) research on Confucius (551 BCE-479 BCE) is being presented to a broader public in the exhibition CONFUCIUS:  His Life and Legacy in Art on view at the China Institute Gallery in New York City from February 11-June 13, 2010. 

The show is the first ever to examine the material and visual culture of the state and family cults for worshiping Confucius.  

Murray's aim is to reveal the diversity of his images and appropriations over the centuries, particularly relevant with China now promoting its own conception of Confucius as a national symbol, just decades after he was reviled in the Cultural Revolution. 

Co-curated with the director of the Shandong Provincial Museum in China, the exhibition brings treasured objects from Confucius's hometown of Qufu, Shandong, some of which are being shown outside China for the first time.  It is accompanied by a fully illustrated catalogue with scholarly essays.

• Envisioning an Abstraction Who Was Also a Man  (New York Times Art Review)
  
• A link to China Institute Gallery Press Release
• A link to Exhibition Related Resources
• A link to Catalogue
  

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Exhibition on Lydian Sardis, curated by Nick Cahill, opens in Istanbul

Professor Nick Cahill (Art History and Classics) and other members of the Sardis Expedition — an archaeological research project working at the site of Sardis in western Turkey — have helped curate an exhibition called "The Lydians and their World" which opened at the Vedat Nedim Tör Museum in Istanbul February, 19, 2010. 

The Lydians, famous as the inventors of coinage, and the richest people in the world in the sixth century BC, they established an empire that ruled over most of western Turkey.

The exhibition includes more than 150 Lydian objects from Sardis and other ancient sites throughout the Lydian empire, collected from museums and excavation storage depots throughout Turkey.

This is the first time that so many Lydian objects from many different sites have been seen together and the first time that some of them have been exhibited or published at all.

The exhibition will be accompanied by a 600-700 page catalog with articles by international scholars about various aspects of Lydian culture. The exhibit will run through May.

Highlights include:

• Newly discovered Lydian coins from Sardis, Ephesus and Kelainai, which offer new insights into the origin and dissemination of coinage
• A recently discovered funerary stele from Ödemiş mentioning the Persian king and satrap
• Jewelry and sealstones from tombs at Sardis excavated before the the first World War
• Weapons, armor, and the skeleton of a soldier killed in the battle between Croesus and Cyrus the Great of Persia in 547 BC

Cahill has also been awarded a Vilas Associate Award to work on the coinage of Sardis. 

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Drewal completes field research in West Africa

Evjue-Bascom Professor Henry Drewal has just completed a month of field research on the artistry of blacksmiths in West Africa (Togo and Benin).

While on leave this semester, Drewal will be Scholar-in Residence at the Sainsbury Research Unit of the University of East Anglia, Norwich, England working on his latest book on art and the senses.

The exhibition Dynasty and Divinity: Ife Art in Ancient Nigeria (for which he wrote the catalogue essay) will open at the British Museum in March before beginning a US tour.

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Six honors undergrads receive Trewartha Senior Thesis grants

Six Letters & Science Honors students have received $2,000 Trewartha Senior Thesis grants. 

The grant enables students to undertake more demanding and extensive honors senior thesis research projects than might otherwise be possible:

• Emily Anstadt (Medical Microbiology and Immunology) to study if cardiac stem cells can regenerate damaged cardiac tissue.
• Daniel Lecaonet (Physics and Mathematics) to study the non-linear evolution of magneto-shear field instabilities
  
• Craig Marquardt (Psychology)  to study the influence of several human genetic polymorphisms on response to aversive events
  
• Cathrine Olien (Art History) to study ancient Cypriot limestone sculptures at the Ringling Museum in Sarasota, FL
  
• Claire Rydell (Classics and History) to study classical self reliance as expressed in the writing of Ralph Waldo Emerson
  
• Casmir Turnquist-Held (Biology and English) to study whether human neural progenitor cells can be transplanted and integrated into brain tissue

Congratulations!

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Symposium marks anniversaries of avant-gardes authors

On October 9-10, 2009, the symposium Marinetti and Ungaretti: Futurisms and Avant-Gardes took place at the French House and at the Pyle Center.

The year 2009 marks the centenary of the publication of Filippo Tommaso Marinettis manifesto of foundation of Futurism and the 50th Anniversary of the publication of Giuseppe Ungarettis collected poems.

The two authors — born in Alexandria of Egypt by Italian parents — at the beginning of the 20th Century moved to Paris, where they both started writing poems in French and translating French poets into Italian.

Marinetti and Ungaretti played an important role in promoting the avant-gardes in Europe in the first half of the 20th Century.

Organized by Ernesto Livorni with the generous support of Anonymous Fund, Center for the Humanities, Center for European Studies, Italian Institute of Culture in Chicago and the Department of French and Italian, the event was also sponsored by the Institute for Research in the Humanities, Visual Culture Center, Department of Theater and Drama, Department of Comparative Literature and the Department of Art History.

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"The Americana Indian" Exhibit opens at Memorial Union

This fall, Assistant Professor of Art History Nancy Marie Mithlo will host Sacramento State Ethnic Studies Professor Brian Baker as a guest curator of the exhibit "The Americana Indian: American Indians in the American Imagination."

The exhibit opens Friday, September 25, 2009 at the Memorial Union Theater Gallery with a reception from 7-9 p.m. A tour and teach-in on the politics of American Indian collectibles follows on Monday September 28, 2009 at Memorial Union TITU from 4:30-6:30.

Baker and Mithlo's collaboration is an outgrowth of the American Indian Curatorial Practice symposium sponsored by UW-Madison's Department of Art History with funding from the Ford Foundation. 
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