We are very pleased to announce an important new gift, in the form of the Mark S. Weil and Joan M. Hall Fund for Art History. We owe this generous support to our retired colleague and a past chair of the Department, Dr. Mark S. Weil, the E. Desmond Lee Professor Emeritus in Arts and Sciences, and his wife, Joan M. Hall, the Kenneth Hudson Professor Emerita in the College of Art in the Sam Fox School. Their generosity made it possible in the spring of 2020 to announce five awards: three to advanced doctoral students, and two to our faculty members.
Among the students, there are two Mark S. Weil and Joan M. Hall Dissertation Awards. In the coming year, Julie James will use her award to spend three weeks in Siena and two weeks in Florence (at the Villa I Tatti and at the Kunsthistoriches Institute) researching her dissertation on the painted cycles of illustrious men (uomini famosi), a practice that began in Sienna in the fifteenth century.
Mark S. Weil and Joan M. Hall Dissertation Award Recipient Julie James
Lacy Murphy will use her award to conduct research for her dissertation “Colonial Collisions: Visual Culture in France and Algeria (1918-1962).” She will conduct a research trip in spring 2021 to Paris to conduct library and archival research, and to Algeria.
Mark S. Weil and Joan M. Hall Dissertation Award Recipient Lacy Murphy
This year we are also pleased to initiate the Mark S Weil and Joan M. Hall Professional Development Fellowship, which enables an advanced doctoral student to locate an excellent opportunity for professional growth in their chosen field. The grant supports their work with a mentor over a six-month period in residence. PhD candidate Kirsten Marples has moved to Boston, Massachusetts, where in July 2020 she will begin work at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston in the Department of European Paintings. Under the mentorship of Katie Hanson, Associate Curator, Kirsten will develop multiple curatorial and collection management skills, and will conduct research for a forthcoming exhibition on the portraits by Edgar Degas. This new fellowship will allow a doctoral student each year to pursue their professional ambitions while in the final stages of completing their dissertation.
Weil Professional Development Fellowship Recipient Kirsten Marples
The generous gift from Mark Weil and Joan M. Hall also supports collaborative work by our faculty. In this cycle, two grants were awarded: to Professor John Klein and Associate Professor Nathaniel Jones. Prof. Klein will work with Dr. Simon Kelly, Curator of Modern and Contemporary Art at the Saint Louis Art Museum, to plan a public colloquium on the art of Pablo Picasso. The timing of this event will correspond to Prof. Klein’s seminar “The Century of Picasso” in the Department of Art History & Archaeology. Prof. Jones, working with Prof Jonathan Stitelman of the Departments of Architecture and Urban Studies in the Sam Fox School of Design and Visual Arts, is organizing a workshop on the subject of “Le Dolci Prospettive/The Sweet Perspectives.” A panel of invited scholars will examine perspective from interdisciplinary points of view, ranging from art history and design to anatomy, mathematics and physics. Attendees will participate in a practicum in drawing perspective and in 3D-modeling, and will also create a full-scale facsimile of Roman-style architectural murals. These two days will culminate in an assessment of what has been learned in this interdisciplinary experiment of combining art historical and architectural scholarship with practical instruction in the creation of constructive geometry. These projects will greatly enrich a climate of scholarly exchange in the Department in the coming academic year.
