| School of Art, Art History, and Design Newsletter | SAAHD students, faculty, and alumni create extraordinary art and scholarship. Please submit your news and images for consideration for a future newsletter. We'd love to share your accomplishments! | | | | The SAAHD is excited to welcome Dr. Max Boersma as the new Assistant Professor of Modern and Contemporary Art beginning in Fall 2026.
Boersma is a historian of European modernist and avant-garde art in a global context. His current research focuses on interdisciplinary, transnational, and transcultural histories of abstract art, as well as intersections of art with histories of craft, science, technology, and design.
maxboersma.com | | | Students in Steve McGuire's course "The Iowa Idea at Great Heights: Iceland Solar Eclipse High-Altitude Ballooning Project" launched a weather balloon in March.
This interdisciplinary course combines art, science, and engineering as students work collaboratively to design, build, and launch the balloon.
The launch served as a test run before students travel to Iceland this summer to collect atmospheric data during the solar eclipse on August 12, 2026. | | | | Suzanne Wright (Area Head, Painting and Drawing) is in the 2026 Every Woman Biennial: SPECTALiA in NYC through April 11. This exhibition is the largest all-women and non-binary biennial in the world.
Wright’s work proposes a contemporary "feminist alchemy," forging alternative frames of reference and symbology, with new perspectives that lead us to a re-vitalized kind of perception, equality, and empowerment.
website | @suzannewrightstudio | | | Ali Hval's (Assistant Professor, Painting and Drawing) solo exhibition Bows and Blunted Scissors is at Augusta University through May 8.
The exhibition combines colorful ceramics, installation, and mural painting into an almost overwhelming experience.
Hval's work combines ornate surfaces with feminist and personal narratives that explore identity, visibility, and contemporary femininity.
alihval.com | @alihval | | | | Photography students, faculty, and staff traveled to the 63rd Annual SPE National Conference (Society for Photographic Education), Catalyst for Exchange, in Atlanta.
MFAs Sammie Correa and Delaney Hoffman gave presentations about their work. The attendees participated in sessions and panels, engaged in student portfolio reviews, and visited the education fair with alumni.
@uiowaphoto | | | Ceramics students, faculty, and staff attended the 60th NCECA conference (National Council on Education for the Ceramic Arts) in Detroit.
MFAs Shaun Mallonga gave an artist demonstration for DiamondCore Tools, and Maggie Adams showed their work in the Juried Student Exhibition. MFA alum Javier Espinosa Mómox was a panelist in the podcast Community Engaged Work in Ceramics.
@uiowaceramics | | | | Caleb Engstrom (BA 2007) is a Los Angeles-based artist and designer whose work investigates material tension, process-driven experimentation, and the intersections of function, identity, and poetics.
Engstrom has exhibited internationally and his work has been featured in The New York Times, Dezeen, Elle Decor, Architectural Digest, and Sight Unseen.
Engstrom also leads Rest Fabrication, a custom millwork, fabrication, and special projects shop which has worked with top names in art, design, and architecture including Yoko Ono, Frida Escobedo, and Leong Leong.
website | @calebtengstrom | | | Morgan Brittain (MA Art History 2020) was one of seven scholars awarded a 2026 Luce/ACLS Dissertation Fellowship in American Art. Each fellow receives $43,500 to support one year of research, writing, and travel.
Brittain's project Pipelines: American Landscape Art and Petro-colonial Rupture (ca. 1859, 1943, 2016) explores the history of American landscape art and three key moments of entanglement with oil industry colonialism.
Pipelines exposes unexpected creative visions and ecological violences, intimacies, and petro-colonial contexts that lurk pervasively, like oil itself, in disparate corners of American art and space. | | | | Mary Merkel-Hess (MFA Jewelry and Metal Arts 1983) has a solo exhibition, Prairie Vessels, at UIHC Project Art through May 4. Working with molded paper, reeds, and paper cord, she creates sculptural basket-like forms inspired by the natural surroundings in Iowa.
Merkel-Hess's work is in numerous collections, including the Smithsonian American Art Museum. One of her sculptural vessels was the first contemporary basket form acquired by the Metropolitan Museum of Art. | | | Sandy Dyas and LeAnn Erickson's (MFA Intermedia alumni) video retrospective Homegrown Stories: The Art of Moving Poetry is currently on a national tour. It will be screened at FilmScene in Iowa City on May 6, followed by an artist Q&A.
Homegrown Stories is an online collaborative media project featuring nationally and internationally recognized film, video, and sound artists, creating over 160 experimental videos since 2013. | | | |
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