Month: October 2013

CROSSTALK @ CAG

CROSSTALK @ CAG

University of Connecticut, Storrs Campus

Week one – Jesper Just – Nov. 4 to Nov. 10

Week two – Clinton Watkins – Nov. 11 to Nov.17

Week three – The Complaint Choir: Tokyo Nov. 18 to Nov. 24

Week four – Janet Biggs Nov. 25 to Dec. 13

Daily Campus: The UConn Experience is a Unique One for an Art Major

Caitlyn Hanlon is a 7th-semester fine arts major, focusing on photography.

Her classes start around 9:30 a.m., just like most students. She takes two different types of classes, normal lectures, like Chinese contemporary art history and then studio courses, like photography or drawing. Her studio classes last three hours.

Time management, Hanlon said, is an important aspect of an art student’s life.

“It’s hard to organize, very time consuming,” Hanlon said. “Setting up and cleaning up takes a while. I can’t go to Starbucks and read from my textbook, you have to set up, work on your project and then clean up, it takes a lot of time. One has to plan what to do first and when to do it. For example when you are painting with oil you paint for a while, let it dry and work on another project and wait until it dries to continue.”

To read the entire article, visit The Daily Campus.

To learn more about non-majors taking Art & Art History classes here.

UConn Today: Professor Kathyrn Myers – A Journey Through Indian Art at the Benton

For Kathryn Myers, curating the exhibition “Convergence: Contemporary Art from India and the Diaspora” that opens on Oct. 22 at the William Benton Museum of Art was considerably less difficult than the first time she organized an exhibition of art from India nearly a decade ago.

The 2004 exhibition “Masala; Diversity and Democracy in South Asian Art” opened a couple of years after her semester-long Fulbright Fellowship to India in 2002, her third trip to India but the first that allowed her to spend an entire semester immersed in the art and culture of the world’s second largest nation. It also was the first time the professor of art and art history in the School of Fine Arts had the opportunity to curate an exhibition.

“We didn’t have enough grant money to hire curators for each section of the exhibition, so I had to do it myself,” she says. “I had a Provost’s Research Grant, so I could take the semester off to work on it continuously. It was like a crash course in India artI was also able to make a short trip back to India to pick up more works of art. That was the beginning.”

To read the rest of the article, visit UConn Today.

To find out more about the exhibit, visit the Benton Museum of Art.

New Faculty Member Yan Geng Is Teaching Asian Art

Dr. Yan Geng has joined the Art & Art History faculty as a joint appointment between Art History and Asian American Studies.  She is part of a growing cadre of faculty focused on Asia and the Asian diaspora.  Professor Geng’s research focuses on modern and contemporary Chinese art.

“This focus allowed us to hire people who significantly build upon the established field of Asian studies by engaging contemporary and modern questions,” says Cathy Schlund-Vials, associate professor of English and director of the Asian American Studies Institute. “We’re moving from traditional area studies to a more global focus. At the same time, we are expanding the internationalist work of the faculty in Asian American studies, whose work is shaped by considerations of migration, movement, and diaspora.”

Daniel Weiner, vice provost for global affairs, says, “It’s a very exciting time to invest in faculty with expertise pertaining to Asia. It’s also exciting that UConn has an opportunity to construct the study of Asia in a unique way through inclusion of transnational and diasporic studies.”

In Spring 2014, Dr. Geng will teach a course on the painting traditions of China and Japan (ARTH 3740: Far Eastern Painting), and permission numbers are available for this class.  Be sure to look for more of Dr. Geng’s courses in the future!

Art ReStart: Students in Conversation

Art and Art History students participating in  SAIL (Student Artist Initiative for Leadership) with Professor Ray DiCapua are engaged in projects to transform the Department.  They’ve installed a chalkboard mural space in one hallway to host student work, are building an alumni network to enhance professional development, and have begun a series of video conversations, “Art ReStart,” to explore what it means to be an art student: http://vimeo.com/channels/607421

 

 

The SAIL group has approached its mission with energy and creativity.  “In my 30 years of teaching here, I have not witnessed anything quite like this,” notes Professor DiCapua, the group’s faculty mentor.

Faculty and professional staff are visiting with the group and offering advice and support for the different projects.  Stay tuned as the work progresses!