| School of Art and Art History Newsletter | The students, faculty, and alumni of the School of Art and Art History at the University of Iowa create extraordinary art and scholarship. Our monthly newsletter will keep you up to date.
Please submit your news and images for consideration for the SAAH newsletter. We'd love to share your accomplishments! | | | | Rielle Jones-Teske (Art History BA, Museum Studies Certificate, Ancient Civ Minor) received both the Howard and Ruth Schumacher Scholarship and the Margaret Ellyson Rice Travel Scholarship to spend a summer in Florence, Italy, where she took art history and Italian language classes, gathered research for her senior thesis, and worked at the Palazzo Vecchio. The most inspiring moment of her time abroad was seeing the painting she has been studying for years for her senior thesis, Plautilla Nelli's Last Supper. She is completing a historiography of writings about Plautilla Nelli, analyzing how the artist has been treated by previous scholars. She plans on pursuing a MA and PhD in Italian Renaissance Art History with goals of working as a museum curator or professor.
She writes: "During my time at Iowa, I have found everything I needed to succeed. I have met wonderful professors who became great mentors, I have earned and been supported by scholarships, and I have been encouraged to and guided through pursuing original research. All of these components have added up to prepare me for graduate school and life as a professional in the worlds of museums and academia. [...] Now more than ever is great time to join the program; as the art history department has recently launched a new track aimed at appealing to double-majors from other humanities disciplines, thus complementing the traditional emphasis on dialog between studio and art history."
Jones-Teske is also an Honors Program Fellow and President of the Undergraduate Art History Society. | | | Amelia Rosenberg (MFA Ceramics student) was selected for an Iowa Arts Fellowship, an award from the Graduate College designed to recruit the most talented artists to the University of Iowa.
Amelia received her BFA in Ceramics from the University of North Carolina Asheville. Tell-Tale, her undergraduate solo exhibition, and corresponding publication Folk Art and Ancestry: German Jewish Creation through Time propelled Amelia into a residency in Dachau, Germany following her graduation. During her time abroad, Amelia produced artwork for a regional exhibition and began work on a collaborative project with the aim of bringing Jewish makers and artists back into the Bavarian folk craft community. This collaboration resulted in newfound relationships between textile designers, sewists, and creatives both in Austria and Germany.
A large part of Amelia’s work relates to her artistic ancestry and her family's history as prevalent Jewish artisans in Germany pre-World War II. She is now in the process of co-founding a German nonprofit, The Wallach Foundation, which will provide a platform for the education, preservation, and reintegration of this history. She greatly looks forward to her time at the University of Iowa and plans on refining and expanding her work both as an artist and researcher.
See more of her work on her website. | | | | Art History PhD student Erin Daly and Art History Professor Björn Anderson have been recognized for uncovering a massive antiquities forgery scheme.
In 2019, Daly and Anderson were invited to see the new Rosetta Stone exhibit at the Herbert Hoover Presidential Library and Museum in West Branch, Iowa. Upon close inspection, they realized most of the objects were fakes that could be traced back to a Manhattan gallery where thousands of phony antiquities were made for decades.
Daly is an expert on ancient seals, and Professor Anderson specializes in ancient Mediterranean and Near Eastern art. Daly first noticed something unusual about an Old Babylonian seal supposedly from 1920 BCE. “Right away, it seemed to me each seal was made by the same hand, or as we later learned, some sort of workshop,” she says.
Read the full story in a Daily Iowan feature article: Decades-long scheme exposed: UI professor and grad student uncover forged antiquities.
Their discovery has also been published in The New York Times, The Art Newspaper, and other sources. | | | Part II of Painting and Drawing Professor T.J. Dedeaux-Norris’s solo exhibition T.J. Dedeaux-Norris: Second Line opens October 8 at University Galleries of Illinois State University. In this exhibition, Dedeaux-Norris critiques systems of race, sex, gender, religion, education, healthcare, and class, as well as the complexities of family dynamics and histories.
Through their multidisciplinary practice, including painting, fiber, performance, video, and music, Dedeaux-Norris questions how these systems—and the visible and invisible trauma they induce—exploit people of color, women, Queer folx, and the elderly.
Mourning takes on different connotations in Part II of the exhibition as themes of second lining become present. Figures appear in nearly every piece—the joining in celebration of many. Portraits of family members from the series Cut From the Same Cloth highlight the subject’s domestic life; these were created with the intention of reconciling family disconnection after leaving the Gulf Coast to pursue a rap career and their education.
A gallery walk with Professor Dedeaux-Norris will be held at University Galleries on Friday, October 8 at 5:00 pm. | | | | Sue Hettmansperger, Professor Emeritus of Painting and Drawing, has work on display in One Year Later: The Derecho Remembrance Exhibit at CSPS Hall in Cedar Rapids through October 31.
This exhibit captures the stories and perspectives from the 2020 Iowa derecho. Hettmansperger's piece is a collage including painted and drawn elements, as well as photographed pieces of natural objects like grass and leaves.
Read more in a Daily Iowan feature article. | | | | Donté K. Hayes (MFA Ceramics 2020) recently had a solo exhibition of sculptural ceramic works in partnership with Mindy Solomon Gallery at The Armory Show in New York City.
Through the influence of hip-hop, history, and science fiction, Donte’s work explores Afrofuturism, a projected vision of an imagined future which critiques the historical and cultural events of the African Diaspora and the distinct black experience of the Middle Passage while also exploring deeper social issues which broaden the conversation between all of humanity.
Follow Hayes's work on Instagram. | | | María Alarcón Aldrete Wolf (MFA Ceramics 2020) has been accepted to the Art Axis juried international artist program. Wolfe’s work addresses the historical, cultural, and current socio-political aspects of the word "Alien."
She writes: "Through this inquiry my artwork looks into the wide spectrum of meanings, associations, stigmas and or emotions derived from this word. While also addressing the historical, cultural, and current socio-political aspects the word, "Alien," means in society. Understanding the parallels in my life, from my love for space aliens to the experience in being an Alien in the United States, has forced me to analyze the definition of being either from "out of space," foreign, or just alienated from myself and society."
Visit her website to learn more. | | | | Jake Jones (MFA Intermedia 2021) started a teaching job this semester at Michigan State University's Electronic Art and Intermedia program as an Assistant Professor.
Jones works with intermedia, new media, sound and video, and music. Follow her work on Instagram. | | | Marcia Wegman (MFA Printmaking 1961) is in the exhibition Five: Five Contemporary Iowa Landscape Art at the Cedar Rapids Museum of Art through January 16, 2022. Wegman studied with Mauricio Lasansky at Iowa and has worked in many different mediums, but today is primarily known for her Iowa pastel landscapes. She has won many awards in art magazines for both pastel and acrylic work, and is represented by Iowa Artisans Gallery in Iowa City and Gilded Pear Gallery in Cedar Rapids. | | | |
