Department/UCR News and Events

Welcome from the Chair

As I hope will be apparent from the other parts of this website, the Department of the History of Art at UC Riverside is a lively place to be and offers something highly distinctive to potential students at both graduate and undergraduate level. To undergraduates we offer courses dealing with a wide range of world art - from Renaissance sculpture to photography and landscape in 20th century America, and from the architecture of colonial Latin America to German painting around 1900. To graduate students we offer a well-established MA program that provides a thorough training in a range of art historical methodologies so equipping students to proceed to some of the best PhD programs.

These activities, achievements and plans all stem from the varied and distinguished faculty that has expanded considerably over the past two years. The interests of this group of scholars give the department an unusual profile. While most of the expected areas of the discipline are represented - you will not look in vain if you to study either medieval pilgrimage churches or the relationship between art and language in the 1970s - our faculty also is exceptionally well equipped to work with students interested in the less familiar histories of sculpture, architecture and photography.

During the coming year we shall be developing several new collaborative initiatives. One, involving a series of workshops over three years, is with the University of Warwick, in the UK, whose History of Art faculty have interests which mesh well with ours. Another, closer to home, concerns the display and viewing of sculpture, using the rich resources of Special Collections at the Getty Research Institute. In addition, an Early Modern Studies group, spanning Europe, Asia and Latin America, will be running a workshop with colleagues at Caltech. Not least, we are delighted to welcome to the faculty our new colleague, Dr Susan Laxton, a specialist in the history of photography, who will be joining us in fall 2010, after a year at the Institute of Advanced Study at Princeton.

Please be sure to explore all the different parts of our website and find out what is happening in History of Art at UCR.

Malcolm Baker
Chair

 

 

NEWS

University of California Riverside has been ranked as 16th most effective American research university by Washington Monthly magazine.

http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/college_guide/toc_2009.php

 

Statement from the Department of the History of Art, UC Riverside, about the UC Day of Action

September 23, 2009

The faculty of the History of Art Department of the University of California, Riverside has voted unanimously to endorse the UC System Day of Action on September 24, 2009. We resolve to support it as we each consider is consistent with our commitment to our students.

We together endorse the key demands of the Day of Action:

  1. the preservation of access to affordable public education
  2. the protection of employees who earn the least
  3. the restoration of transparency and shared governance in the UC system

We protest against the erosion of public higher education accessible to all Californians.  We also reject attempts to play faculty, students and staff against each other and question the assumptions on which the administration’s budget is based.  United with our colleagues across California, we call for the restoration of the Master Plan for Higher Education, for full funding for public education, and for real and effective advocacy for the University of California from our highest officials.

On behalf of the faculty of the department,

Malcolm Baker
Distinguished Professor and Chair
History of Art Department
University of California, Riverside

 

Wong Endowment in Asian Art

Completion on the new website for the Wong Endowment in Asian Art is available at http://vrc.ucr.edu/wongsite/index.html. This vehicle providing information about Asian art, culture and local history is made possible by the Voy & Faye Wong Asian Art Resource and stimulates interest and research in artistic topics of Asian culture. Resources include the availability of 5,000 high quality digital images of works from the permanent collection of the National Palace Museum in Taipei, Taiwan.

 

LECTURES AND EVENTS

  • Curatorial Walk-Through: “Intelligent Design: Interspecies Art”
    November 14, 2009
    UCR Sweeney Art Gallery
    Walk-Thru begins at 12pm

     Due to the popularity of “Intelligent Design: Interspecies Art” there will be a second curatorial walk-through this Saturday, November 14, at Noon, with co-curators Rachel Mayeri, and Sweeney director Tyler Stallings. This provocative exhibition explores collaborations between humans and animals, the first such show in the US. Free parking on Saturday in the lot across the pedestrian mall from Sweeney at 9th and Market.
  • Dr. Rhonda Taube presents: 'Borrachas, ' Beauty Queens, and Xena Warrior Princess
    November 20, 2009
    HMNSS 1500
    4-6pm

    Dr. R. Taube’s lecture will explore disfraces, “disguises,” a new genre of dances performed among the K’iche’ Maya of Momostenango, Guatemala. Highlighting cultural change and innovation, disfraces derive their inspiration from ever changing North American mass media and popular culture (e.g., Xena Warrior Princess, Batman and Barack Obama). The talk examines how Western costumes are being used to produce local meaning and the multiple ways in which “disguises” and performances operate as sites for the production of identity, signifying specific notions of gender, class and ethnic affiliations.
  • Faculty Work-in-Progress Talk: FACING Questions: Index, Gesture, and Portraiture by Jeanette Kohl
    December 3, 2009
    Arts 333

     This paper will explore the role of the face and facial reproductions in sculpted Renaissance portraiture. While in painting the truthful representation of a sitter’s likeness is a result of a translation from three-dimensional corporeality onto the two-dimensional picture-plane, portrait sculptures address, reflect, and reproduce the human body in a fundamentally different way. In re-thinking the interrelated acts of making and perceiving portrait busts with regard to their role in the production of ‘meaning’, the concepts of “index” (as developed by Charles Sanders Peirce and re-interpreted by Rosalind Krauss, Roland Barthes and others) and “gesture” (Giorgio Agamben, in re-interpreting Max Kommerell) will be introduced to the discussion. The question is if and how these tropes might be of heuristic value in sharpening our understanding of early modern portrait sculpture and its often times ambiguous status as a complex medium of reproductive, iconic and symbolic functions - of representation, re-personification and, sometimes, de-personification.
  • Lucas Samaras, Photo-Transformation, December 17, 1973 (Polaroid SX-70 print, Getty Images)

 

EXHIBITIONS

  • Off the Grid & (-Americans)
    Keliy Anderson-Staley
    October 1, 2009 - November 27, 2009
    UCR/California Museum of Photography
  • Intelligent Design: Interspecies Art
    September 5, 2009 - February 6, 2009
    UCR Sweeney Art Gallery
  • And Howe!: Photographs by Graham Howe, 1967 - 2007
    September 26, 2009 - January 2, 2010
    UCR/California Museum of Photography
    Opening Reception: September 26, 6:00 PM - 9:00 PM
  • Lewis Baltz: The Park City Portfolio
    September 26, 2009 - January 2, 2010
    UCR/California Museum of Photography
    Opening Reception: September 26, 6:00 PM - 9:00 PM
  • Lisa Oppenheim: Open Source
    September 26, 2009 - January 2, 2010
    UCR/California Museum of Photography
    Opening Reception: September 26, 6:00 PM - 9:00 PM
  • Smoke and Mirrors: The Magic of the Autochrome
    September 26, 2009 - January 2, 2010
    UCR/California Museum of Photography
    Opening Reception: September 26, 6:00 PM - 9:00 PM
  • The End of Film: The Brief History of Digital Cameras 1987-2009
    October 15, 2009 - January 30, 2010
    UCR/California Museum of Photography
  • Arts Walk
    December 3, 2009
    Art Block
    Downtown Riverside, CA
    The First Thursday of Every Month from 6:00-9:00 pm

    The Riverside Arts Walk on First Thursdays presents over twenty participating arts venues, art museums, galleries, and studios open free to the public every month. These participating locations present an eclectic mix of visual art mediums and styles, in addition to special art/musical performances, exhibitions, tours, and art-making demonstrations.

    Local restaurants and retail establishments along the Arts Walk also offer special menus and discounts. For more information, call the Riverside Downtown Partnership at 951-781-7335 or visit www.riversidedowntown.org.

    Attendees may begin their walk at any participating sites or get started at one of the two coordinating sites: the Riverside Art Museum (3425 Mission Inn Ave.) or the Riverside Community Arts Association (3870 Lemon St.). Some of the other participating sites are: UCR/California Museum of Photography, Riverside Municipal Museum, Mission Inn Museum, and the Riverside Public Library, Division 9 Gallery, Riverside Visitor's Center, People's Gallery, Back to the Grind, and Exposures Photo Gallery.

    For more information on this event and the evening's schedule of special tours and performances, please contact the Riverside Art Museum at 951-684-7111 or visit the www.riversideartscouncil.org for a listing of current events.

 

For a complete and up-to-date listing of all UCR campus events and activities, please consult the UCR campus calendar.
http://www.ucr.edu/happenings/

 

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