Department News

Professor Francesco de Angelis has been awarded a 12-month Humboldt Research Fellowhsip.

This prestigious German fellowship is meant to enable scholars of all fields to work on specific projects in cooperation with academic hosts at research institutions in Germany. He will spend his research period in Heidelberg, where Prof. T. Hölscher will serve as his host. Professor de Angelis's research project, on style and identity in Roman imperial art, will be the foundation of his second book.

Professor Cordula Gewe
Awarded Humboldt Research Fellowship

In July 2008, Professor Cordula Grewe was awarded a 13-month Humboldt Research Fellowship for her work on the religious aesthetics of German Romanticism, and is currently conducting research in Germany.

She is being hosted by Professors Frank Büttner and Hubertus Kohle at the Ludwig-Maximilians-University in Munich. Further, she has been named a founding board member of the Internationales Zentrum für Klassikforschung that will be established in Weimar, a city famously associated with Goethe and Schiller.

Drawing Inspiration: A Symposium in Honor of David Rosand
Friday, October 17, 2008

***This event is open to the public***

Professor David Rosand will be honored at a one-day symposium to be held at Columbia on Friday, October 17, 2008. The event will bring together Professor Rosand’s colleagues and former graduate students to present research and personal reflections on the occasion of his seventieth birthday and retirement. Organized by Jodi Cranston (’98 PhD) and Maria Ruvoldt (’99 PhD), the symposium will feature a keynote address by Professor Deborah Howard of the University of Cambridge, and papers on a wide variety of topics related to Professor Rosand’s past and current research. Speakers will include James Saslow, William E. Wallace, Mary Vaccaro, and Jonathan Crary

Professor Kellie Jones Receives Fletcher Fellowship

NEW YORK, July 1, 2008 – Alphonse Fletcher, Jr., Chairman and CEO of Fletcher Asset Management, Inc., today announced the selection of the 2008 class of Alphonse Fletcher, Sr. Fellows. A charitable initiative created in 2004, the Fletcher Fellowship program commemorates the fiftieth anniversary of the United States Supreme Court’s landmark decision, Brown v. Board
of Education. Each of this year’s four Fletcher Fellows will receive a stipend of $50,000 for work that contributes to improving racial equality in American society and furthers the broad social goals of Brown v. Board of Education.

Regarding this newest selection of Fellows, Mr. Fletcher said, “As in former years, our selection committee has assembled a class of scholars, each preeminent in their individual field. Whether working from the discipline of art and cultural studies, history or law, each of this year’s Fellows approaches the historical and contemporary challenge of race relations through a project of current relevance.”

An important consideration within the selection process is an applicant’s ability to bring a proposed project to fruition within a year’s time frame. Mr. Fletcher noted, “Considering the past accomplishments of this class of Fellows, we greatly look forward to seeing these important projects brought to life in the year ahead."

Kellie Jones will approach race relations through a project titled, “Eyeminded: A Life of Art and Writing.” An Associate Professor of Art History and Archaeology at Columbia University, Professor Jones will unfold a dialogue on modern literary and visual culture through the compilation of personal, family essays spanning nearly 50 years, including the work of her father, the writer Amiri Baraka.

Dawn Delbanco Joins the National Council on the Humanities

Dawn Delbanco was confirmed by the US Senate for a six-year term on the National Council on the Humanities, the 26-member advisory board of the National Endowment for the Humanities. Professor Delbanco has taught at Columbia since 1991. Her primary commitment is to the Core Curriculum program, in which she teaches both Western and East Asian art to undergraduates. She also advises on doctoral dissertations and has mentored many graduate student teaching assistants. She has curated an exhibition of ritual Chinese bronzes from the Arthur M. Sackler Collections at the Fogg Art Museum, and has published as well on other aspects of Chinese art, including painting, woodblock prints and snuff bottles. She received her A.B. and Ph.D. degrees from Harvard.

Professor Simon Schama wins the International Emmy for Best Arts Documentary for 2007

Image from the International Academy of Television Arts & Sciences

On November 19th University Professor Simon Schama won the International Emmy for Best Arts Documentary for his film on Bernini and the Ecstasy of St Theresa, one of eight in his PBS/BBC series "The Power of Art" which aired in Britain in 2006 and the United States this summer. The series took two years to make and won critical acclaim in both the UK and USA. Directed by Clare Beavan and shot by Chris Openshaw, the sculpture was filmed in High Definition and lit to optimize the drama of Bernini's touch. The film also features a sequence on the downfall of Bernini's bell tower for St Peter's which owes much to the definitive account written by Sarah McPhee (GSAS *97), a graduate of our department.

David Freedberg is appointed the Pierre Matisse Professor of Art History

Columbia University is pleased to announce the appointment of David Freedberg as the Pierre Matisse Professor of Art History. The Pierre Matisse Professorship was established through a generous gift of the Pierre and Maria Gaetana Matisse Foundation in memory of the late Pierre Matisse, the distinguished art dealer and supporter of artists, who played a major role in introducing European modernism to America.

Born in South Africa, and educated at Yale University and Balliol College, Oxford, Professor Freedberg joined the Columbia faculty in 1984. Initially trained in classics, he has written about a vast array of topics, ranging from the art of the Renaissance to modern art and criticism. Among his books, The Power of Images: Studies in the History and Theory of Response (1989)—which has been translated into many languages—has had a transformative influence in the field of art historical studies. His most recent book, The Eye of the Lynx: Art, Science, and Nature in the Age of Galileo (2002), has received many awards, including the Ralph Waldo Emerson Prize of Phi Beta Kappa “for significantly contributing to our understanding of the cultural and intellectual condition of humanity.” His current research expands the boundaries of humanistic studies by applying new knowledge from the field of neurosciences to the understanding of art—an interest that is reflected in the title of his current book project, Modes of Seeing: Mind, Body, and Emotion in the History of Art.

Since 2000 Professor Freedberg has been the director of the Italian Academy for Advanced Studies in America at Columbia, which he has developed into a major international center for interdisciplinary scholarship. Professor Freedberg has also served as Slade Professor of Fine Art at Oxford University and as Andrew W. Mellon Professor at the National Gallery of Art in Washington. He has been honored with membership in the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, the American Philosophical Society, and the Accademia Nazionale di Agricoltura.

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