Prof. Abby McEwen awarded Inaugural Do Good Campus Fund Grant
The $25,000 grant will focus on providing students opportunities to "understand the process of commissioning and installing public art."
Research in art history and archaeology is an interdisciplinary enterprise.
Engaging diverse theoretical frameworks and research methods, our faculty produce innovative scholarship in the form of books and articles, digital projects, museum exhibitions, public lectures and more. Our faculty lead national networks and conferences (including the Archaeological Institute of America and the College Art Association), providing innovative research frameworks and making significant contributions to UMD's research enterprise.
Consolidated ARTH Statement of Commitment to Diversity, Equity and Inclusion
(Prepared by the DEI Task Force and Approved by GAHA May 2022)
We, the members of the Department of Art History and Archaeology at the University of Maryland, affirm that Black lives matter and condemn the ongoing violence of systemic racism, xenophobia, homophobia, transphobia, and other acts of injustice and harm impacting BIPOC and other marginalized people. We recognize and are willing to confront the roles of Art History and Archaeology in elevating and perpetuating Eurocentrism and its attendant systems of oppression including colonization, exploitation of labor, exploitation of the nonhuman world, sexism, classism, and white supremacy inside and outside academia. We recognize that this list is not all-inclusive and is ever evolving, and to it more will be added. Continuing the work begun by graduate students, faculty, and staff in the summer of 2020 following the murder of George Floyd by police, we commit to building and maintaining a more inclusive, equitable, anti-racist and pluralistic department. As part of this commitment, we recognize the need to confront and redress bias and harm and to challenge monocultural norms and expectations.
In this process, we are inspired by and join the campus-wide efforts to reckon with the University of Maryland’s long record of discrimination, racial injustice, and actions that undermine the very principles of intellectual and moral integrity for which we stand.
We are committed to lifting up and expanding the diversity of our department community and to improving inclusivity and equity in our departmental practices, policies, and culture. In the study and practice of art history and archaeology, diversity and differences are assets. Our department affirms that diversity is expressed in myriad forms, including race, ethnicity, sex, gender, sexual orientation, class, immigration status, body type, language, culture, national origin, religion, age, ability, and political perspective. We are made stronger by inviting in and providing for the diverse voices, approaches and contributions that form the foundation of our twinned disciplines, and which enable our community, as a whole, to thrive. While our disciplines have collaborated in structures of oppression, we wish to affirm the role that we in the humanities and in art history and archaeology can play in helping to envision and make possible a world that is both sustainable and just.
We envision our department as a space of care, safety, and respect for all of our members. All of our voices are valuable and our actions matter. We commit to upholding this vision in our work together.
Entries on Hamish Fulton, Chryssa, Jimmie Durham, Joseph Cornell, and Paul Gauguin in Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden: The Collection. edited by Stéphane Aquin and Anne Reeve. New York: Delmonico Books, 2022
Re•Cast is organized by UMD Department of Art History and Archaeology Graduate Students Marco Polo Juárez Cruz, Cléa Massiani, and Gabrielle Tillenburg, under the direction of Associate Professor Abigail McEwen.
This essay addresses Rubens’s perspective on the human/animal relationship as exemplified by the figure of the satyr. As the author argues, in addition to established associations with ideas of unbridled sensuality, this liminal character relates to deeper philosophical considerations about the interconnectedness of all living beings. Furthermore, a closer look at the connection between the satyr and the literary satire demonstrates that Rubens’s satiric images bear a number of salient qualities of this genre as one that destabilizes all boundaries: be it between the beautiful and the repulsive, the tragic and the comical, or the sublime and the grotesque.
Humans are organisms, but “the human being” is a term referring to a complicated, self-contradictory, and historically evolving set of concepts and practices. Humans explores competing versions, constructs, and ideas of the human being that have figured prominently in the arts of the United States. These essays consider a range of artworks from the colonial period to the present, examining how they have reflected, shaped, and modeled ideas of the human in American culture and politics. The book addresses to what extent artworks have conferred more humanity on some human beings than others, how art has shaped ideas about the relationships between humans and other beings and things, and in what ways different artistic constructions of the human being evolved, clashed, and intermingled over the course of American history. Humans both tells the history of a concept foundational to US civilization and proposes new means for its urgently needed rethinking.
Read More about The Jean-Michel Basquiat Reader: Writings, Interviews, and Critical Responses
In recent years, we have mourned the deaths of many of the most prominent scholars in Chinese calligraphy and painting working in the United States. Many other scholars have retired. It is time for us to celebrate their scholarship and the American contribution to the study of Chinese calligraphy and painting. The present volume examines critically the historiography of the field of Chinese calligraphy and painting in Postwar America, to assess its achievements, and to explore how various practices in the field have been affected by the personal backgrounds of its scholars and by the constraints of its institutions (such as universities, museums, private and public funding bodies).
Praise
"Historiographical studies, personal reminiscences, and autobiographical accounts by eight leading scholars of Chinese art history present a vivid picture of how formative figures in the field shaped American understanding of Chinese art. These accounts of what was accomplished in the decades after WWII, accompanied by suggestions for the future, are invaluable readings for students and scholars alike." Julia F. Andrews, Professor of Art History at The Ohio State University; author of Painters and Politics in the People's Republic of China and co-author (with Kuiyi Shen) of The Art of Modern China.
"This remarkable collection of essays by outstanding authorities celebrates some of the influential personalities who have shaped the field of Chinese art. They give a kaleidoscopic view of the diverse ways in which knowledge of Chinese art is acquired and transmitted." Alfreda Murck, author of Poetry and Painting in Song China: The Subtle art of Dissent, and co-editor (with Wen C Fong) of Words and Images: Chinese Poetry, Calligraphy and Painting.
"Chinese Calligraphy and Painting Studies in Postwar America: New Perspectives presents a collection of eight unique essays by experts in the field. It examines the trajectory of academic research on Chinese art history in the United States, which in recent years has become the center of the field. The book offers an opportunity to engage with the latest scholarship on Chinese art and discover how it arrived at its current state. The wide-ranging and insightful essays include historiographies of art historical research, veteran art historians' vivid memories of firsthand research experiences, biographical and scholarly investigations of major players in the field, and the systematic analysis of path-breaking explorations conducted by U.S. scholars. In reading, we are reminded how closely Chinese art history is connected to our own time and place. The book liberates the history of Chinese art from hackneyed narratives anchored solely in historical past and geographical confines, while providing a compelling account of how the history of art history has itself become a new avenue of academic pursuit." J. P. Park is the June and Simon Li Associate Professor in the History of Art and Fellow of Lincoln College, University of Oxford; author of Art by the Book: Painting Manuals and the Leisure Life in Late Ming China and A New Middle Kingdom: Painting and Cultural Politics in Late Choson Korea (1700-1850).