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A Renaissance Triptych of Success!

August 22, 2021 Art History and Archaeology

Graphic showing portraits of (L to R) Caroline Paganussi, Steven Cody, and Abigail Upshaw

New Positions, Promotions, and Opportunity Visit Three Department Alumni Who Share a Love for All Things Renaissance

The close of this past academic year brought exciting news for three alumni of the Graduate Program of the Department of Art History and Archaeology, all of them students of Professor Meredith Gill, who retired last year after many years of service to the Department as Professor of Fifteenth- and Sixteenth-Century Italian Art and as Chair for two terms.

In September, Dr. Caroline Paganussi (pictured at left) will begin her tenure as the American Friends of Capodimonte Postdoctoral Curatorial Fellow at the Museo e Real Bosco di Capodimonte in Naples, Italy. This spring she successfully defended her dissertation “Bologna la dotta: The University and the Visual Arts in the Age of the Bentivoglio, 1463-1512,” and doubtless she will bring her deep knowledge of archival research from that project to bear in her new position at the museum.

As the only American postdoc installed in an Italian state museum, Caroline will oversee a number of exciting projects, including a collaboration with Google Arts & Culture on digital initiatives and the curation of the  Farnese wunderkammer, the museum’s core collection of decorative arts and rare objects. She will also contribute to Capodimonte’s upcoming exhibitions, including one co-organized with the Museo del Prado in Madrid. She looks forward to continuing the work of her predecessor on producing English- and Italian-language didactics for the permanent collection and temporary exhibitions, contributing to the museum’s ongoing digitization of the collection, and supporting the director’s efforts to energize the neighborhoods of Naples in Capodimonte’s vicinity. After a year away from museums, Caroline can’t wait to get back into the galleries and help reacquaint visitors with Naples’s artistic treasures.

Dr. Steven Cody, pictured here taking in stride the disaster befalling Laocoon and his two sons, graduated in 2015 from the Department. The dissertation he successfully defended, "Andrea del Sarto (1486-1530) and the Art of Reform," forms the basis of his book published last year, Andrea del Sarto: Splendor and Renewal in the Renaissance Altarpiece (Leiden: Brill, 2020) ( https://brill.com/view/title/57459).

The excellence of this volume, along with his impressive scholarly work rate, are factors that have led the faculty at Purdue University Fort Wayne, where Steve has taught since the fall of 2015, to award him the rank of Associate Professor with tenure, effective this August. The tenure committee relied not only on Steve’s remarkably incisive scholarship; his classroom effectiveness is broadly acknowledged. Indeed, Steve just was named member of the Faculty Academy on Excellence in Teaching (FACET), one of the highest teaching honors at PFW and throughout the Indiana state university system (https://facet.iu.edu/).

Dr. Abigail Upshaw (pictured at right) takes her considerable talent as a scholar and a teacher to the University of North Carolina – Wilmington this fall as a newly-minted Assistant Professor of Art History in the Department of Art & Art History. Abby successfully defended her dissertation “Performing Parnassus: Leonardo da Vinci’s Ephemeral Productions at the Court of Milan (1492-1499)” this spring, impressing the committee with her sophisticated analysis of Leonardo’s most transitory of artistic endeavors – set designs for and productions of theatrical performances at the court of the Duke of Milan in the late fifteenth century.

While at the Department Abby distinguished herself as an innovative, excellent, and empathetic teacher and advisor to undergraduate students within and without the classroom. Indeed, the Department enjoyed a significant rise in the number of majors and minors under her expert leadership. A generous colleague, Abby frequently shares successful teaching tricks, and in the fall of 2020 she featured many of these techniques in a blog – Digital Bytes – she maintained on the website of the Digital Art History Society as its inaugural Graduate Fellow (https://digitalarthistorysociety.org/). Without doubt, her colleagues and students at UNCW will benefit from Abby’s outstanding scholarship and pedagogy.

Congratulations Abby, Caroline, and Steve!