Recipients of UCR graduate degrees in Art History have a remarkable record of achievement and professional success in academia, the museum, and the private sector.
If you are an UCR art history alumnus and would like to reconnect with the department and learn more about our current activities, please contact us at: arthistory@ucr.edu.
Karlyn Olvido (MA, 2017) is a Curatorial Assistant at the Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles.
Elaine Wilson (MA, 2017) is a part-time instructor at Fullerton College and Santa Ana College.
Robin Hextrum (MA, 2017) is Assistant Professor of Visual Art in the Fine and Performing Arts Department at Regis University.
Kelly Filreis (MA 2016) is the McDermott Graduate Intern for Contemporary Art, Dallas Museum of Art, where she assists the contemporary curatorial department with the research and development of exhibitions, writes blog posts and leads public gallery talks on the museum’s permanent collection.
Sara Greenberg (MA 2016) is the McDermott Graduate Intern for Adult Programming and Arts & Letters Live, Dallas Museum of Art.
Reva Main (MA 2016) is a Collections Associate at the Princeton University Art Museum.
Diana Navarrete (MA 2016) is an Intern in the Education Department at the J. Paul Getty Museum, working with neighboring school communities to strengthen their students’ arts integration skills—including a yearlong project training visual/performing arts teachers and general ed teachers to bring the arts to the forefront of their sixth graders’ learning.
Victoria Taormina (MA 2016) will be starting a position as Curatorial Assistant at the Palm Springs Museum of Art.
Mateusz Ferens (MA 2015) is a PhD student in Byzantine art history at the University of Wisconsin. He is currently working on an exhibition of historical photographs of the Autonomous Monastic State of the Holy Mountain (Mount Athos).
Astara Light (MA 2015, Art History/Southeast Asian Studies) is a PhD student in Art History and Visual Studies at the University of Victoria, Canada, where she received a Kalman Award for International Heritage Studies for 2016; she will travel to the Tropen Museum in Amsterdam to research how spiritual meanings of Balinese paintings changes when they are placed in a European setting.
Ashley Medina (MA 2015) was a Public Affairs Graduate Intern at the Getty for 2015-2016. In Summer 2015 she taught in the Brown University program in Rome.
Cyle Metzger (MA 2015) is a PhD student in art history at Stanford University, studying art and architectural history as it relates to queer history and theory. Cyle is interested working with the visual materials of transgender history and investigating the ways in which queer theory can illuminate works of art and architecture independent of figuration.
Sandra Schmidt (MA, 2015) is teaching Architectural History at Norco College and Art Appreciation at Cal Baptist, and working as a plans examiner for the City of Pomona.
Rachel Zimmermann (MA 2015) is Associate Editor, VASA Project/VASA Journal of Images and Culture.
Brooke Devenney (MA 2014) is the Donor Relations Officer at the Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles.
Chelsea Herr (MA 2014) is a PhD Student in Native American Art History at U Oklahoma; she also assists the Director of the Charles M. Russell Center in researching, planning, and producing publications and exhibitions in the Art of the American West as well as Native American Art.
Leslie Paprocki (MA 2014) held a 9-month graduate internship in the Education Department at the Getty, worked as an Associate Museum Educator in Education at Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art, and is now the Program Coordinator for the Gluck Fellows Program of the Arts at UC Riverside.
Jessica Orzulak (MA 2014) is a PhD student in Art History and Visual Studies at Duke University. Prior to going to Duke, she was the Western Art Council Coordinator at the Palm Springs Museum.
Ana Ramey (MA 2014) is Gift Operations Coordinator at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art.
Edgar Ramirez (MA 2014) just started in his first year in the PhD program in Art History at Emory University. Drawing from his research on the Typological Windows at Canterbury Cathedral and its relation to the mysterious 14th-century Canterbury Roll, he is exploring how the windows used theological and patristic sources to create a cutting-edge artwork capable of expressing 12th-century contemporary concerns.
Kaelyn Rodriguez (MA 2014) is a PhD student in Chicano Studies at UCLA. Her research interests include: public art, visual culture, activism, Chicana feminism, third world feminism, multiculturalism, public space, site and memory, alternative forms of knowledge, and social justice.
Margaret Wallace (MA 2014) was Graduate Curatorial Intern of the American Art Collection at the Huntington; she now works in Content Strategy and Digital Engagement at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art.
Amy Whitacre (MA 2014) is Community Heritage Center Director, Clovis Veterans Memorial District.
Michaeline Anderson Farzad (MA 2013) is an Adjunct Instructor at the University of La Verne.
Elizabeth Franks (MA 2013) is Program Administrator for Summer Sessions & Special Programs, UCR.
Betty Schlothan (MA, 2013) is a second year Ph.D. student at University of California, Santa Barbara. Her principal areas of interest revolve around early modern materials, including modes of production, technical developments, and contemporary epistemology.
Andrew Turner (MA, 2013; PhD Anthropology, 2016) is a postdoctoral fellow at the Yale University Art Gallery. His researches the art, iconography, and religious symbolism in pre-Hispanic Mesoamerica.
Adele Avivi (MA 2012) works for the Weingarten Art Group in Houston.
Dominique [Garcia] Polanco (MA 2012) is a PhD student in Art History at the University of Arizona, focusing on sixteenth-century indigenous painted manuscripts of central Mexico.
Carol Whitmore Goetting (MA 2012) teaches at Palomar College, San Marcos.
Gabriela Rodriguez Gomez (MA 2012) was the Contemporary Art Council Coordinator at the Palm Springs Art Museum and is now a PhD student in Chicano Studies at UCLA, focusing on contemporary muralism, street art and graffiti art.
Sarah Bay [Williams] Gachot (MA 2012) is a writer who lives in Los Angeles. Her book Robert Cummings: The Difficulties of Nonsense was published by Aperture in 2016, and she is curating “Robert Cummings: The Secret Life of Objects” for the Eastman Museum in 2017. Her arts writing and reviews have appeared in Aperture, ArtSlant, The Daily Beast, and The Art Book Review.
Danielle Peltakian (MA 2012) is an Administrative Assistant at the UCR ArtsBlock, and Editorial Assistant, Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians.
Masha Rotfeld (MA 2012) is a Production Specialist at AJ+ (Al Jazeera Media Network).
Harmony Wolfe (MA 2012) was the 2015-2016 Artist in Residence at the Paris Gibson Square Museum of Art in Great Falls, Montana.
Mary Corey (MA 2011) is Professor of Dance and Associate Dean of the Claire Trevor School of the Arts at UC Irvine.
Steve Hampton (MA 2011) is currently pursuing his PhD in Art History at UCR.
Betsy Osenbaugh (MA 2011) is pursuing a doctorate at Art and Archaeology at Princeton University, where she is studying Northern Renaissance and Baroque art. Before going to Princeton, she was the graduate intern in Sculpture and Decorative Arts at the Getty, where she assisted the senior curator with the 2012 exhibition “Messerschmidt and Modernity.” She is currently on a doctoral fellowship to Leiden in the Netherlands.
Tia Vasiliou (MA 2011) is a Digital Editor at ComiXology, Amazon’s premier digital comic shopping and reading platform.
Courtney Wilder (MA, 2011) is pursuing a PhD in Art History at the University of Michigan, with a focus on early modern print culture. After completing her MA, she worked as a research assistant in Prints, Drawings and Rare Books at the Getty Research Institute. Her dissertation will explore correlations between technology, science, printmaking and the decorative arts in France and Britain between 1750 and 1850.
Melinda (Mindy) Brocka (MA 2010) was the Associate Arts Editor for the Huffington Post; she now works for Disney Interactive.
Lilit Sadoyan (MA 2010) is a second-year Ph.D. student at UC Santa Barbara, where she specializes in 18th-century French sculpture and decorative arts, and the history of collecting and display. She is a recipient of the Margaret Mallory Fellowship (2014-18). Additionally, Lilit has been a Museum Educator at the J. Paul Getty Museum since 2008.
Elizabeth Spear (MA 2010) is a Ph.D. candidate in the history of American art at the University of Iowa. She is currently researching her dissertation, “Re-framing Landscape: Spectacular Display and the Collaborative Viewing Experience in Nineteenth-Century Landscape Painting.”
Natasha Thoreson (MA 2010) is Associate Curator and Collections Manager Helen Louise Allen Textile Collection, University of Wisconsin, Madison.
Conley Entwistle (MA 2009) is a Reader/Researcher at Measured Progress, San Diego.
Robert Millard (MA, 2009) is completing his PhD in Art History at Penn State; his dissertation is on “Live, Struggle, and Die: A Study of Antique Forms in Late-Quattrocento Sculpted Reliefs.”
Bruce Picano (MA 2009) was a PhD candidate in Latin American art history at UC Santa Cruz (deceased).
Benjamin Hickey (MA, 2008) is Curator of Collections and Exhibitions, Masur Museum of Art, Monroe, Louisiana.
Lauren [Popp] Lockhart (MA 2008) manages the Art Program of the San Diego County Regional Airport Authority; she also co-chairs the Public Art Coalition of Southern California.