The Department of the History of Art & Architecture Newsletter Fall 2025 / Spring 2026
From the Chair
Dear Friends,
Art History is thriving at UMass Amherst! This edition of the Department of the History of Art & Architecture (DHAA) newsletter is full of news about the exciting and impactful work of our faculty, students and staff during the academic year of fall 2025 and spring 2026.
Amongst the highlights are:
After an extensive search, the faculty appointed Walid Akef as assistant professor of Islamic Art & Architecture beginning in fall 2026.
Faculty taught, advanced their research, gave talks and organized conferences and exhibitions about diverse subjects from Venice to medieval books, brutalist libraries, campus planning and birds at UMass.
Professor Laetitia La Follette and Department Administrator Regina Bortone de Sá retired after many years of service to DHAA.
The new Anthony Roux scholarship funding undergraduate summer internships was awarded for the first time.
Undergraduates and graduate students are on the go all over doing research, delivering talks and seeing art and architecture.
DHAA alumni wrote in to the newsletter to tell us about their exciting careers and lives.
Save the date: a conference about teaching honoring Professor La Follette will be held on October 2, 2026 and the annual Roskill Symposium is October 16.
Your financial support of our department activities and internships is greatly appreciated! To continue helping, please go to the contributions link in the “Giving to the Department” section of the newsletter and found as well on our department website.
My thanks to MA student Alan Yang for helping prepare this newsletter.
My thanks as well to all for their support during my term as chair of DHAA. I am pleased that during my tenure the department successfully passed a rigorous outside review (the AQAD), completely redesigned its website, secured a new faculty member to teach Islamic art and architecture, launched new student fellowships supported by generous alumni, published its first annual report and did much, much more, all made possible by the collaborative work of the faculty, staff, students, administration and alumni. In fall 2026, Professor Karen Kurczynski will succeed me as chair and I will return to my other duties. Please send us news about yourself and stop by to see us in Amherst!
Sincerely,
Timothy M. Rohan
Chair and Professor, Department of the History of Art & Architecture
PS: Please share what you are doing
by writing to me at @email and after August 31, the new department chair Karen Kurczynski @email
And follow us on Instagram for the latest news about art history at UMass! @umassarthistorydepartment
Faculty News
In March 2026, during a two-week trip to northern Italy, Walter visited MITA, the new International Museum of Antique Carpets in Brescia, and photographed extensively in Milan, Brescia, Verona, Padua, and Ferrara, sharing the digital results through Luna at the UMass Library.
Walter Denny continued actively to chair the Visiting Committee for the Department of Textile Conservation at the Metropolitan Museum of Art.
Walter Denny continued actively to chair the Visiting Committee for the Department of Textile Conservation at the Metropolitan Museum of Art.
"Sonja Drimmer with students in Special Collections and University Archives in the Du Bois Library, examining a medieval charter.
Sonja Drimmer trying her hand at lithography thanks to Taylor Kinnell (Studio Art) who invited her to the studio after taking Professor Drimmer's fall 2025 class, Early Medieval Art.
A depiction of the conference in Amiens where Professor Karen Kurczynski gave a keynote lecture on Nov. 27, 2025, by artist Eric Valette.
Professor Meg Vickery visiting the Køge Water Filter Plant, Køge, Denmark, by Gottlieb Paludan Architects, April 2026.
Professor Monika Schmitter and her graduate students, Georgia Brabec and Alan Yang, attended a Save Venice lecture by Professor Bill Wallace in Boston (March 2026).
Professor Ho on her research leave for the 2025-26 academic year, first as a visiting fellow at Freie Universität and then as a Fulbright Senior Scholar in Taiwan.
Professor Çakmak co-edited, with Dr. Patricia Smyth (University of Exeter), the Fall 2025 special issue Nineteenth-Century Visual Technologies in Contemporary Practices for the peer-reviewed digital journal 19: Interdisciplinary Studies in the Long Nineteenth Century.
New Faculty Member!
Walid Akef
Assistant Professor | Islamic Art and Architecture
Walid's Faculty Page
Walid Akef recently completed his PhD dissertation in the Aga Khan Program for Islamic Architecture at Harvard University. He specializes in the architectural history of the pre-modern Mediterranean world, with a focus on North Africa, southern Italy, and Iberia. His research examines periurban and suburban landscapes of power, particularly the villa-like estates that proliferated in the western Islamic world before their re-emergence in Renaissance Italy. His broader interests include the use of art for political propaganda, cultural exchanges across the Mediterranean basin, and the historiography of Islamic art in English, Arabic, and Spanish intellectual circles.
Walid received his BA in Islamic Archaeology from Ain Shams University (Cairo, 2008), an MA in Art History from the University of Granada (2015), and an MA in Muslim Cultures from the Aga Khan University’s Institute for the Study of Muslim Civilisations in London (2019). He has taught as a teaching assistant at Ain Shams University and at Harvard University, and has published in Arabic, Spanish, and English in both regional and international journals. His research has been supported by the Aga Khan Program at Harvard, Villa I Tatti in Florence, the Center for African Studies and the Center for Middle Eastern Studies at Harvard, and Dumbarton Oaks in Washington, DC.
Gülru Çakmak
Associate Professor | 19th-Century European Art
Gülru's Faculty Page
Professor Gülru Çakmak advanced an ambitious program of research and institutional leadership during the 2025–2026 academic year. Her scholarship expanded beyond nineteenth-century French painting to examine the intersections of art history, visual culture, media studies, digital technologies, heritage, and the history of science. She co-edited, with Dr. Patricia Smyth (University of Exeter), the Fall 2025 special issue Nineteenth-Century Visual Technologies in Contemporary Practices for the peer-reviewed digital journal 19: Interdisciplinary Studies in the Long Nineteenth Century, bringing together twelve international contributors and co-authoring the introductory essay, “Nineteenth-Century Technologies, Contemporary Stakes.” Her three refereed articles were accepted for publication in Fall 2026 in The Art Bulletin, Nineteenth-Century Studies, and Source: Notes in the History of Art, while a fourth was submitted to Sculpture Journal as part of her developing book project.
As the 2025–2026 Chancellor’s Leadership Fellow at the University of Massachusetts Amherst, Professor Çakmak developed the Humanities at Work Program, a new residential experiential-learning initiative at the Charles River Campus in Newton scheduled to launch in Spring 2027. As the program’s inaugural director, she designed its academic framework, developed its core curriculum, and established partnerships with cultural institutions, government agencies, and civic organizations across Greater Boston.
Professor Çakmak also continued to serve as Chief Editor of H-France Salon, where she broadened the platform’s scope to include art history, visual culture, and cultural studies, and led the implementation of Crossref DOI registration to enhance the visibility and long-term accessibility of the journal’s publications.
Walter B. Denny
Distinguished Professor Emeritus | Islamic Art, Museum Studies, Orientalism
Emeritus Faculty as of fall 2023
Walter's Faculty Page
Emeritus Distinguished University Professor Walter Denny and his colleague Sumru Krody from The Textile Museum gave a second version of their week-long carpet workshop for curators and scholars in the Museum's storage and conservation facility in Ashburn VA in October 2025. Also in October Walter gave a guest lecture at Amherst college in a course taught by his former student Yael Rice. In November 2025 he pinch-hit for Monika Schmitter in Art History 100, giving five lectures on Renaissance art. In March 2026, during a two-week trip to northern Italy, Walter visited MITA, the new International Museum of Antique Carpets in Brescia, and photographed extensively in Milan, Brescia, Verona, Padua, and Ferrara, sharing the digital results through Luna at the UMass Library. In April 2026 he gave a guest lecture via Zoom for a museum studies course at the University of Richmond, taught by former student Kymberly Newberry. In spring 2026 Walter began work on editing a collection of his scholarly articles to be published by Edinburgh University Press. He continued actively to chair the Visiting Committee for the Department of Textile Conservation at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, and as a Board member for the early music organization Arcadia Players. In spring of 2026 Walter began the complex process of donating the section of his library consisting of books on Islamic art, over 2000 volumes, to the Sheridan Libraries of Johns Hopkins University.
Sonja Drimmer
Associate Professor | Medieval Art
Sonja's Faculty Page
This year Sonja stepped into the role of Graduate Program Director and was delighted to be working with our graduate students. Over summer 2025 she taught a California Rare Books School course on medieval manuscripts at UCLA and co-convened the Medieval Academy of America's graduate student mentorship program. In addition to co-authoring with Christopher Nygren (University of Pittsburgh) “Four Frictions: How to Resist AI in Education“ for Public Books, she gave over a dozen invited lectures and class visits, including at the University of Pennsylvania, Tufts, UCLA, Middlebury College, City College New York, the University of Hartford, Williams College, Wesleyan, College, and others. Her book, Impressive Politics: Print before the Press in Medieval England was accepted by the University of Pennsylvania Press and is slated for publication in 2027. As part of her work on the organizing committee for the Medieval Academy of America conference, which was held at the Five Colleges in spring 2026, Sonja assisted with the creation of an exhibition of medieval manuscripts in the Du Bois library. A portion of this exhibition reflected worked carried out with Sonja's students in her spring 2025 class "The Art of the Medieval Book." For the 2026-2027 academic year, Sonja will be at Williams College as the W. Ford Schumann Distinguished Visiting Professor in Democratic Studies.
Laetitia La Follette retires
Laetitia retired after four decades of service to UMass. Her career spanned a time of great change and growth for art history at the University.
Faculty of the Program in Art History ca 1997 (L to R: Mark Roskill, Anne Mochon, Kris Haney, Walter Denny, Bill Oedel, Laetitia, Craig Harbison and Monika Schmitter).
Laetitia La Follette
Professor | Ancient Art and Archaeology, Art History and Cybertechnology
Laetitia's Faculty Page
Turning down a job in Classics at Bowdoin College, Laetitia joined the art history faculty in Fall 1987, when it was still the Program in Art History of the Department of Art. She never regretted that decision, though the late eighties and early nineties were tough times at the University. There was no research or startup money, nor parental leave. Indeed faculty had to pay for their office phones ($190/yr) and were even furloughed in 1991. It took another decade for the next art history faculty member to be hired.
Looking back on nearly four decades at UMass Amherst, Laetitia says “it’s the people I worked with and the freedom to explore new things that stand out the most for me. I arrived with narrow expertise in ancient Greek and Roman architecture. While I continued research in Roman art (a book on Roman portraits is in press at Oxford), UMass allowed me to pursue my interest in two new areas, the teaching and learning of art history and the protection of cultural heritage.“
With no background in art history, Laetitia jumped into teaching Art History 100, the first half of the survey, learning a lot both from Kristine Haney with whom she co-taught for decades and from their great TAs (shout out to the late Brian Curran, Stephen Fisher, Jenny Mayfield, Areti Papanastasiou, and so many others). Two daughters later and post tenure, a Lilly fellowship allowed Laetitia to dive deeper into twin issues facing the field by the mid-nineties, the call to include more non-Western art and the digital image revolution.
At that time, the Dorothy Perkins Slide Library, run by Louise Bloomberg and Lee Sulzner (Bridegam), was the heart of the program. Louise’s work with the AIDS quilt brought expertise with grant writing and Lee was the sympathetic ear students relied on. With their encouragement, Laetitia applied for a US Dept of Education/FIPSE grant securing $250,000 to develop digital materials for the introductory art history survey. These became the survey “text” for AH 100, namely the original interactive online OWLs, later revised into the DATAS (Digital Assignments for the Training of Art historical Skills), all now being migrated into the e-book Art History For All hosted by Pressbooks.
This collaborative process involved colleagues as expert authors, graduate and undergraduate student researchers and programmers, and critical contributions from Computer Science (CCBIT, CESD), UMass IT (IDEAS, IML) and the University Libraries, especially from the Open Education Initiative and the successor to the slide library, the Image Collection Library headed by Brian Shelburne. It also included funny moments as the FIPSE grant required Laetitia to attend College Art as a vendor to demonstrate the modules. This marked the beginning of her work with other art historians interested in the scholarship of teaching and learning (SoTL).
The other new area Laetitia developed was in cultural heritage, again something that came from her students, especially those in her Greek art classes. The early aughts saw the indictment of J. Paul Getty Museum curator Marion True by the Republic of Italy and the final resolution of the Metropolitan Museum’ of Art’s “Hot Pot” scandal. Laetitia’s experiences testifying before the Cultural Property Advisory Committee, Dept of State (2010, 2012) led her to propose a faculty seminar at the University on Heritage which resulted in the edited volume, Negotiating Culture (2013) and to develop a popular course, Vexed Antiquities. Around the same time Laetitia was tapped by the Archaeological Institute of America to serve as an officer, where she was eventually elected as President (2020-2023).
In her six years as founding chair of the Department of the History of Art and Architecture (2014-2020) Laetitia helped shepherd the tenuring of colleagues Gülru Çakmak, Karen Kurczynski, Sonja Drimmer and Christine Ho, as well as the hiring of Ximena Gómez. She is grateful for the help of some wonderful department assistants: Celeste Stuart (now Stoddard), Colleen Wetzel, and Connie Chatterton, when we were still the Program in Art History in Bartlett Hall, and last but not least Regina Bortone de Sá. It was Regina who navigated the department’s move to South College in January 2017 and also assisted with the 50th anniversary celebration of the MA program in 2019 which brought back so many of our alums to campus. It seems fitting that Regina whom Laetitia hired a decade ago and Laetitia are retiring at the same time, although Laetitia will be back in the fall to teach Junior Year Writing and for the Ripples symposium on Oct. 2.
Ximena Gómez
Associate Professor | American Art
Ximena's Faculty Page
Ximena Gómez is pleased to share that her first book, In the Hands of Devotees: Indigenous and Black Confraternities and the Creation of Visual Culture in Colonial Lima was published by the University of Texas Press in September. Based on dissertation research she began in 2014, the book represents over a decade of work, and she is excited for it to finally be out in the world. With the book behind her, she began research for a new article on the playful, anti-colonial art of Peruvian-American artist Kukuli Velarde. To that end, she invited Velarde to give a lecture about her work, which uses the visual language of pre-invasion Andean ceramics, in the spring. She looks forward to making progress next year on that article, as well as completing another and beginning her second book in earnest, as a fellow at the John Carter Brown Library. Between directing Art History 100 in the fall and teaching her lecture on Latin American and US Latinx art as a large enrollment Gen-Ed class for the first time, she taught a lot of students this year! The latter drew Latinx students from throughout the university and was a particularly gratifying experience. In summer 2025 she participated in the Clark Art Museum's Research and Academic Program, and gave an invited talk at Case Western Reserve University in the spring.
Christine I. Ho
Associate Professor | East Asian Art
Christine's Faculty Page
Christine I. Ho was on research leave for the 2025-26 academic year, first as a visiting fellow at Freie Universität and then as a Fulbright Senior Scholar in Taiwan for the 2025-26 academic year. In Taiwan, she was hosted by the Institute of History and Philology at Academia Sinica, where she used the many archives, museum collections, and six libraries devoted to the humanities. With the support of her sponsor, she had the privilege of reading the journals and papers of the artist Yen Shui-long as well as participating in interviews with several artists and art educators who had interacted with Yen. Beyond seeing exhibitions and collections across Taiwan, she saw several important exhibitions in Singapore, Hong Kong, and Japan. She gave three invited talks and submitted two journal articles, as well as completing a book proposal and an essay for an exhibition catalogue. An edited volume co-edited with Professor Sigrid Schmalzer in the History department, A Revolution Across Art and Science, was published in July as an open-access book with Hong Kong University Press. Other highlights of the year included visiting the architectural and Cold War heritage of Kinmen island; seeing the famous landscape trifecta of Fan Kuan, Guo Xi, and Li Tang; and eating a lot of shaved ice.
Karen Kurczynski
Professor | Modern and Contemporary Art
Karen's Faculty Page
In 2025–2026, Karen Kurczynski finished a draft of her book Drawing in Color and secured a book contract with University of Manchester Press for the “Rethinking Art’s Histories” series. She published her article on “Steve Locke’s ‘#Killers’” in the peer-reviewed Journal of Visual Culture and an edited version in the new book Steve Locke: I Said What I Said, edited by Mass MoCA curator Evan Garza (Delmonico, 2026). Her article “Leve grimheden: Asger Jorns eksperimenter med keramik i Albisola (Long Live Ugliness: Asger Jorn’s Ceramic Experiments in Albisola)” appeared in Sydvendt: Italienske aftryk på nyere dansk kunst og kultur, edited by Charlotte Bundgaard and Anna Wegener (Gad, 2025) and she wrote an article on African American drawing and the grotesque for an upcoming Companion to African American Art edited by Eddie Chambers. She gave a keynote lecture, “Drawing as Interpersonal Expression,” at the conference “Drawing as a Social Gesture” at Université de Picardie Jules Verne in Amiens, France, in November, 2025. She published essays on the work of Jacqueline de Jong for the for the Kunstmuseum St. Gallen and on Karel Appel for the Carl-Henning Pedersen and Else Alfelt Museum in Denmark. She taught Identity Politics and Contemporary Art, Museum Studies, and Intro to Contemporary Art, and a seminar on intersectional Gender Theory for the graduate Methods course in Comparative Literature at UMASS. She continues to appreciate the department bus trips to NYC and the joys of raising a tween and a teenager who can almost bench her own weight.
Charmaine A. Nelson
Provost Professor | Black Diasporic Art and Visual Culture
Charmaine's Faculty Page
Nancy Noble
Associate Dean for Undergraduate Education, College of Humanities and Fine Arts
Senior Lecturer in American Art
Nancy's Faculty Page
Timothy Rohan
Department Chair and Professor | American and European Architecture
Tim's Faculty Page
Tim Rohan served his final year as chair of the Department of the History of Art & Architecture. During his tenure the department successfully passed a rigorous outside review (the AQAD), completely redesigned its website, secured a new faculty member to teach Islamic art and architecture, launched new student fellowships supported by generous alumni, published its first annual report and did much, much more, all made possible by the collaborative work of his colleagues and Department Administrator Regina Bortone de Sá. He was glad to support former students. He served on the dissertation committee for Sarah Horowitz (MA ’14) who completed her thesis at Boston University. He led explorations of the Amherst campus’s architecture for his classes and the annual October campus tour organized by UMassBrut. As an active member of the architecture advocacy group, he also helped plan UMassBrut’s symposium on campus libraries held at UMass Boston. Beyond UMass, he was honored to be elected to the board of directors of the Society of Architectural Historians. He also continued his committee work with Historic New England and Docomomo New England. Pursuing his own research, Tim completed a peer-reviewed article for the Journal of Architecture in London and a book manuscript about modernist interiors. Tim attended conferences and took study tours to see buildings he had long taught but never seen. Amongst the highlights were the Hiroshima Peace Memorial Museum and Park by Kenzo Tange and Teotihuacan. He thanks all for their support during his term as department chair. He enjoys hearing from former students so please stay in touch! @email
Monika Schmitter
Professor | Italian Renaissance and Baroque
Monika's Faculty Page
Monika Schmitter was delighted to see her article “Character in Search of a Play: Parmigianino’s Portrait of a Dignitary” published in the September issue of The Art Bulletin. This year she continued her work on the color green in Renaissance portraiture, presenting the paper “Lotto’s Veils and Bronzino’s Phantoms: The Green Curtain Motif in Renaissance Portraiture” at the 2026 Renaissance Society of America conference in San Francisco. In the Fall the exhibition “A City in Flux: Reflections on Venice” that she organized with undergraduate art history students opened at the Smith College Museum to great fanfare and fun. She continues her association with the organization Save Venice, Inc., returning as an advisor to their Projects Committee in September. In March, she and graduate students Georgia Brabec and Alan Yang attended a Save Venice lecture by Professor Bill Wallace in Boston.
Margaret “Meg” Vickery
Senior Lecturer, Undergraduate Program Director | Architecture
Meg's Faculty Page
In the Fall of 2025, Meg Vickery worked with students to put together an exhibit in the Greenbaum Gallery titled, “Campus and Community: A History of Planning at UMass” and taught her course, Women in Architecture. Mary Anne Hunting and Kevin D. Murphy, authors of Women Architects at Work: Making American Modernism came and spoke to her class. She continued to work with Nate Senner and Rozy Bathrick of the Department of Environmental Conservation to protect the birds on campus from deadly collisions with our buildings. The team was awarded a Biodiversity Grant through the Massachusetts Department of Fish and Game to install bird-friendly film on the windows of the most dangerous buildings on campus. As part of this effort Meg also co-curated an exhibition in the Design Building titled, “Reflections on Collisions” which opened in March 2026.
During the Spring semester, Meg worked in Copenhagen thanks to a Fulbright Scholars Award. She taught some classes at the University of Copenhagen in the Department of Landscape Architecture and visited the first Adventure, or Junk Playground in Emdrup. The bulk of her time was spent researching and visiting infrastructure projects such as co-generation plants and water treatment facilities as part of her study of the architectural history of such projects. Her research touches on the development and ideals of the welfare society as well as the environmental history of Denmark. In March of 2026, she joined her UMass Colleagues in London to learn more about the CEA CAPA study abroad program.
Staff News
Regina retires
Regina Bortone de Sá
Department Administrator
After nearly fifteen years, Regina has retired from her position as department administrator. Her colleagues appreciate all the hard work, dedication,and good cheer Regina brought to its daily operations. She smiled no matter what happened! Regina first came to the department as a temporary employee, heroically keeping the office going during a difficult time. She ably fulfilled every possible duty from scheduling to budgeting as well as patiently listening to the concerns of faculty and students. Resourceful, she navigated UMass’s many requirements and complex software programs with aplomb. Regina concluded her time at UMass with a party organized by the faculty. Regina looks forward to spending time with family in Brazil and Rhode Island. Her friends in Amherst wish her well and look forward to hearing about her new adventures.
Conferences, Talks and Exhibitions
The faculty organized many events during this academic year
A City in Flux: Reflecting on Venice
September 19, 2025-March 22, 2026
Smith College Museum of Art exhibition curated by undergraduates from Professor Monika Schmitter’s Spring 2025 course, Curating Views of Venice
Curated by undergraduates in Prof. Monika Schmitter’s Curating Views of Venice course, this new SCMA exhibition looked at Venice through 18th–21st-century prints, photographs, drawings, and paintings drawn from the Five College collections—foregrounding water, reflection, and everyday life alongside the iconic Venetian views. Read the HFA coverage by student journalist, Chloe Borgida ’25: Venice Captured in Art and History of Art & Architecture Students Unveil “A City in Flux”.
You can also watch the October 15 lunch-hour member talk, “Behind the Scenes of A City in Flux,” with Danielle Carrabino (Curator of Painting and Sculpting at SCMA) and Prof. Monika Schmitter (Event Page | Recording)—an overview of the Five Colleges collaboration and curation process. For the exhibition and works on view, see the Exhibition Checklist (PDF).
The exhibition was also featured by arts outlets and event calendars, including Northampton Live, ArtsBoston, Visit Hampshire County, MutualArt, and Explore Western Mass.
Featured Image: Dwight William Tryon, American (1849–1925), Venice, 1879, oil on linen mounted on panel, Bequest of Dwight W. Tryon, SC 1930.3.121
UMassBRUT: The Brutalist Library: Rereading Its Legacy and Reimagining the Future
October 24, 2025
Timothy M. Rohan, Art History Department Chair, helped organize the UMassBrut symposium in Boston. Sarah Horowitz (’14MA) and PhD candidate at Boston University spoke about the UMass Boston library.
Left to right: History panel speakers: Sarah Horowitz (UMass Art History ’14MA), Tim Rohan (Chair of Art History), Kristina Wilson (Clark University), and Mary Anne Hunting (independent scholar).
Mary Anne Hunting discussed the history of the Du Bois Library (1973) at UMass Amherst designed by Edward Durell Stone.
Interior view of the UMass Boston Library.
Greenbaum Exhibition - Campus and Community: A History of Planning at UMass
November 13, 2025
The undergraduate-organized exhibition “Campus and Community: A History of Planning at UMass” opened on Thursday, November 13 at the Greenbaum Gallery in Elm House. Under the guidance of Professor Margaret Vickery, undergraduate program director of the Department of the History of Art and Architecture, Mattea Lo-Sears (Studio Art and Art History '26), Georgie Mark (Communications Major, minor in Art History ’26) and Jade Shum (Art History '26) used archival sources of plans, presentation drawings and other media from the DuBois Library archives to offer an in-depth look at the history of campus planning and its connection to the community at UMass Amherst.
From left to right: Mattea Lo-Sears (Studio Art and Art History,’26) and Georgie Mark (Communications Major, minor in Art History’ 26) and Jade Shum, (Art History ‘26)
Exhibition view in the Greenbaum Gallery.
Confluences: An Exhibit of Medieval Manuscripts & Early Print
March 19-21, 2026
Between March 19 and 21, the Five Colleges hosted the Annual Meeting for the Medieval Academy of America, where Professor Sonja Drimmer had the pleasure of meeting up with former, current, and future advisees. After gathering for coffee, they visited the exhibition "Confluences: Medieval Manuscripts and Early Print at UMass Amherst," which was co-curated by Genny Dorgan (PhD Candidate, Comp Lit) and Abby Klug (PhD Candidate, Comp Lit), who were assisted by Sonja and Annie Sollinger, Visual Archivist in Special Collections and University Archives (’23MA). Cecily Hughes and Rachel Sweeney, who are now pursuing their PhDs at Case Western Reserve, both presented at the conference.
In the semester, Sonja Drimmer was also featured on the podcast, American Medieval, and the episode is available on Spotify.
From left to right: Ana Wawersik (first-year MA student), Sonja Drimmer, Sofia Zavatone-Veth (incoming MA student), Genny Dorgan (PhD Candidate, Comp Lit), Cecily Hughes (’22MA), and Rachel Sweeney (’21BA).
Design Building Exhibition - Reflections on Collisions: The Science and Architectural Solutions to Bird-Window Strikes at UMass
March 25-May 1, 2026
Professor Margaret Vickery contributed to Reflections on Collisions: The Science and Architectural Solutions to Bird-Window Strikes at UMass, on view at the UMass Design Building Gallery #180 in spring 2026. The exhibition presented research on bird collisions and campus architecture, inviting viewers to consider both the causes of and responses to these incidents.
An opening reception was held on Thursday, April 2, from 5:00–6:30 PM, with a short talk by Rozy Bathrick (PhD candidate, Organismic and Evolutionary Biology) at 5:45 p.m. Professor Vickery played a significant role in shaping the exhibition. The exhibition was also featured by national and local outlets, including the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, Massachusetts Daily Collegian, and Athol Daily News.
Classroom Invited Talks
Faculty invited visitors to their classes who shared their research with students. Here are a few of the many invited speakers.
Lela Graybill: Guest Lecturer in European Art, 1780–1880
April 22, 2026
Lela Graybill, Associate Professor of Art History at University of Utah, presented a guest lecture in Professor Gülru Çakmak’s course, European Art, 1780–1880 (ART-HIST 323/623), on crime scene photography.
Special Lectures: Identity Politics in Contemporary Art
As part of Professor Karen Kurczynski’s Identity Politics in Contemporary Art (ART-HIST 391P/691P), students attended a series of special guest lectures during the Fall 2025 semester. On October 28, 2025, Camille Turner, a Canadian artist and Slavery North Fellow in residence at UMass Amherst, presented a guest lecture. Turner’s work will be featured in a special exhibition at the University Museum of Contemporary Art (UMCA) in Spring 2026. On November 14, 2025, Kéla Jackson, Visiting Assistant Professor at UMass Amherst and PhD Candidate at Harvard University, presented the lecture “UnBecoming: The Poetics of Rupture in Visions of Black Girlhood.”
Credit: video still from Fly by Camille Turner.
Women Architects at Work: Making American Modernism
October 16, 2025
Mary Anne Hunting and Kevin D. Murphy discussed their new book, Women Architects at Work, including Smith College’s role educating women in architecture and landscape during the twentieth century with Professor Vickery’s class, Art History 331: Women and Architecture. Professor Timothy Rohan also organized a standing room only public lecture about the book supported by other departments and local organizations.
From left to right: Tim Rohan (Chair of Art History), Kevin Murphy (Vanderbilt University) and Mary Anne Hunting (independent scholar).
Local Public Lectures
Here are few of the local public lectures faculty gave about their work.
Professor Walter Denny, Emeritus, Oil on Canvas & “Canvas” in Oil at the Pruyne Lecture Hall, Amherst College, October 22, 2026
Sonja Drimmer, Impressive Politics: Print before the Press in Late Medieval England
March 26, 2026
Part of HFA Days: Faculty Lightning Talks at UMass, Sonja Drimmer introduced her forthcoming book, rethinking “print” before Gutenberg’s press. Focusing on coins, badges, seals, and heraldic insignia in late medieval England, she examinesd how replication and the language of impression shaped political discourse and proposes a broader understanding of print as a process tied to representation, value, and trust.
Slavery North Fellow Talks
Slavery North, a research initiative led by Professor Charmaine A. Nelson, officially opened its doors at 472 North Pleasant Street in fall of 2024. Slavery North welcomed many fellows this year, including graduate student fellow Chris J. Gismondi who also taught a course in the Department of the History of Art & Architecture in the fall.
For more on the Slavery North fellows, see the Slavery North website.
Fellow Talks: Spring 2026
Slavery North presents a series of talks by its fellows. This interdisciplinary cohort of scholars and artists shares research on transatlantic slavery in Canada and the U.S. North, offering new perspectives and recent archival findings.
Sherry Johnson, Black Geographies, Text, and the Troubling of Canadian National Narratives of a Promised Land (March 26, 2026)
María Sparrow, Another North (April 02, 2026)
Abi Mbaye, Slavery and the Making of New York: A Historical Timeline (April 09, 2026)
Jamie McGhee, The Hunted and the Hanged: Racial Paranoia and the “Great Negro Plot” of 1741 (April 23, 2026)
Zadi Zokou, Captain Paul Cuffe: Achieving Entrepreneurial Success as a Person of Color in the Era of Slavery (April 30, 2026)
Johnny Floyd, Leviathan!; or, Charting the White Whale: Reimagining Moby-Dick through Maritime Histories of Northern Slavery (May 07, 2026)
Save the Date!
Ripples: The Impact of UMass Art History from Ancient to Contemporary
Art History Conference In Honor of the Retirement of Prof. Laetitia La Follette, Organized by the Department of the History of Art & Architecture, UMass Amherst
October 02, 2026 1:00 pm - 6:00 pm ET
Bernie Dallas Room, Goodell Hall, UMass Amherst
How has art history pedagogy changed over the last several decades? How has it impacted other disciplines? These questions and many others will be raised in a conference honoring Professor Laetitia La Follette upon her retirement from UMass Amherst (spring 2026) after more than three decades of teaching ancient Greek and Roman art, cultural property and technology. Though her primary field was ancient art, she has had a great influence over those teaching in other fields from landscape to modern art. To consider how art history pedagogy has changed, her former students from the MA program at UMass will convene, give talks and discuss how what they learned from Professor La Follette has shaped their careers as academics and curators. Their discussions with attendees will help faculty and students at UMass think about today's teaching methods, especially in relationship to new digital platforms and AI. The conference will also be an alumni event for the college, attracting graduates from art history and other departments, such as classics, with which Professor La Follette has long collaborated.
These graduates of UM/A art history will speak:
Kim Cabrera, Manager of Social Media, The New York Historical Society
Daniel Healey, Provenance Specialist, Worcester Art Museum
Ewa Matyczyk, PhD, Assistant Professor, Modern and Contemporary Art, UNC Wilmington
Kaja Tally Schumacher, PhD, Assistant Professor, Landscape History, Harvard University
Hyewon Yi, PhD, Assistant Professor, Curator, Museum Director, Modern and Contemporary, SUNY Old Westbury
The 27th Annual Mark Roskill Symposium
The 26th Annual Mark Roskill Symposium
Art Without Barriers: Disability, Accessibility, & the Arts
Friday, September 19th, 2025
With keynote speaker Andrew Leland, Finalist for the 2024 Pulitzer Prize in Memoir
Every year, the second-year cohort of graduate students in the Department of the History of Art & Architecture at UMass Amherst plans the Mark Roskill Symposium. The 2025 Mark Roskill Symposium, Art Without Barriers: Disability, Accessibility, & the Arts, examined the intersections of disability and the arts, with a particular focus on questions of access and inclusion. Through a keynote address and panel discussion, the symposium aimed to challenge ableist assumptions and promote a more expansive and inclusive approach to art history. The keynote speaker was Andrew Leland, writer, audio producer, and author of The Country of the Blind: A Memoir at the End of Sight—a finalist for the 2024 Pulitzer Prize in Memoir. Leland’s talk expanded on the themes of chapter five, “Camera Obscura,” a thoughtful reflection on his—and the broader blind community’s—relationship to art and long-held assumptions about perception, interpretation, and self-expression. Following the keynote, a panel of esteemed respondents offered reflections: Jina B. Kim, Assistant Professor of English and the Study of Women & Gender, Smith College; Charlene Shang Miller, Educator for Academic Programs, Smith College Museum of Art; and Finnegan Shannon, Brooklyn-based artist experimenting with forms of access.The 26th Roskill Symposium was organized by four art history graduate students: Georgia Brabec, Gengwei Guo, Caelen Trujillo, and Sarah Zhang.
In the back from left to right: Gengwei Guo (MA '26), Georgia Brabec (MA '26), Charlene Shang Miller, Andrew Leland, Caelen Trujillo (MA '26), Sarah Zhang (MA '26).
In the front from left to right: Finnegan Shannon, Jina B. Kim.
Keynote speaker Andrew Leland at the Roskill Symposium.
Charlene Shang Miller (left) and Jina B. Kim (right) at the panel.
Finnegan Shannon at the panel.
Art History Awards
Anthony Roux Internship Scholarship funds internship in Venice
Undergraduate Art History major Sophia Lubin (BA '27) is the first winner of the Anthony Roux Internship Scholarship. Anthony Roux (BA ‘07) funded it in appreciation of the department’s support of him during a summer internship at the Springfield Art Museums when he was an art history major at UMass. The Roux Scholarship will fund Sophia’s internship at the Peggy Guggenheim Collection in Venice during summer 2026 where she will work in the museum and give gallery talks about its rich collection of modern and contemporary. Sophia believes the internship will be “transformative” for her. She says, “This experience is a major step for me in my academic and career trajectory, which will provide necessary skills and open doors for me in the art world.”
Sophia Lubin at the door to the Peggy Guggenheim Collection in Venice.
Anne Mochon Internship
The Anne Mochon Internship was established in honor of Anne Mochon, Professor of Modern Art, to provide financial support to a graduate student or a recent MA graduate of the Art History Program while they are working in an internship. This support is available to those participating in an unpaid internship and may also be used to supplement recipients who have secured a paid internship.
During summer 2026, the fund supported graduate students with internships at these institutions:
The Skyscraper Museum, New York City - William Ranyard
Smith College Museum of Art - Alan Yang, Ana Wawersik
UMass University Museum of Contemporary Art - Chaia Leibowitz
Summer Enrichment Grant
Gengwei Guo, MA ‘26 for a summer internship at the Smith College Museum of Art. Art History Majors graduating in spring 2026 received these department funded awards recognizing their scholarship and contributions to the life of the department.
Academic Achievement Award
Dexter Veitch (BA '26)
Recognition Awards
Natasha Jones (BA '26)
Eli Amoroso (BA '26)
Celebrating the Class of 2026
Congratulations to the graduates! We extend our warmest congratulations to the undergraduate and graduate members of the Class of 2026. The department is proud of all they have accomplished and looks forward to following their future achievements. Graduate Program Director Professor Sonja Drimmer and Department Chair Timothy Rohan participated in the ceremony at the William D. Mullins Memorial Center on May 15th for the students receiving the Masters in Art History degree. Everyone joined a fun sit down lunch in South College afterwards with family and friends.
Front, from left to right: Emmanuel Nkuranga, Gengwei Guo, Professor Timothy Rohan, Sarah Zhang, and Georgia Brabec
Back: Professor Sonja Drimmer
Professor Gülru Çakmak and Sarah Zhang
Professor Sonja Drimmer and Gengwei Guo
Professor Karen Kurczynski and Sarah Zhang
Regina Bortone de Sá and Professor Karen Kurczynski
Professor Meg Vickery and Emmanuel Nkuranga
Professor Monika Schmitter and Georgia Brabec
Over 20 undergraduate students received their BA degrees in the College of Humanities and Fine Arts ceremony in the Campus Recreation Center on May 16th, 2026. Undergraduate program director Professor Margaret Vickery led them to the podium where they were congratulated by Dean Lupe Davids and department chair Professor Timothy Rohan. Students, families, friends and faculty gathered afterwards for lunch in South College.
Undergraduate News
Success Stories
On November 26, 2025, Professor Margaret Vickery, Undergraduate Program Director, hosted Success Stories, bringing together History of Art and Architecture alumni to discuss their careers, professional journeys, and advice for current students.
From left to right: Ren Rennick (’24MA), Tim Rohan (Chair of Art History), Olivia White (’25MA), Clara Witty (’22BA), Owen Embury (’23BA), and Margaret Vickery (Undergraduate Program Director).
Olivia White (MA '25) works at the Emily Dickinson Museum.
Owen Embury (BA '23) works at the Mead Art Museum, Amherst College.
Ren Rennick (MA'24) works at Mass MoCA in North Adams, MA.
Clara Witty (BA '22) works at the LAVA Center in Greenfield, MA.
Controlled or Controlling? Interpreting Venus in Paolo Veronese’s Venus Disarming Cupid
April 11, 2026
Anna Bailey (’26BA) spoke at 2026 SUNY New Paltz Undergraduate Art History Symposium
Undergraduate Anna Bailey presented at the 2026 SUNY New Paltz Undergraduate Art History Symposium on her paper, “Controlled or Controlling? Interpreting Venus in Paolo Veronese’s Venus Disarming Cupid,” from Professor Monika Schmitter’s Fall 2025 course, High Renaissance and Mannerist Art in Italy.
Spotlight on a Recent Graduate: Emma Hoffman ’BA 25
Since graduating, Emma has been working at the ICA/Boston as a Visitor Assistant. There, she assists visitors with questions they have about the artwork on view and participates in public programming, such as giving gallery talks and doing children’s book readings. She enjoyed working with all kinds of visitors and hearing visitors’ interpretations of the artwork on view. She is also given time to research new exhibitions before they open, and love learning more about upcoming shows. Emma has also been working part-time at the MassArt Art Museum, another contemporary art museum in Boston, where she supervises a team of MassArt students who work at the museum. She also assists with creating the museum’s educational programs, including art making activities and special events. Emma loves working with her team of students, and helping them develop their interests and career goals. The MAAM team is very small, so every day is a new experience in the job! She is grateful for her time at UMass for developing her interest and knowledge in art history, and she uses those skills every day when educating others and discussing specific artworks. In the future, Emma hopes to continue working in museum education and operations.
In the picture at the ICA/Boston, Emma is standing next to and giving a talk about Toyin Ojih Odutola’s 2018 work, Heir Apparent.
Graduate News
Graduate Summer Development Funding
Each summer, graduate students receive funding from the department and the Graduate School to assist with their professional development. Students may, for example, intern at a local museum or enrich their language skills. The class of 2026 provided the following statements about their experiences in the summer of 2025.
Caelen Trujillo
The professionalization grant allowed me to intern at the Smith College Museum of Art this summer. I was able to shadow one of the curators, Emma Chubb, and help conduct research and write an object label for an exhibition of contemporary art. This gave great hands-on experience on what the everyday work of a curator at a university museum is like.
Emmanuel Nkuranga
The summer funds were instrumental in enabling me to pursue Arabic language immersion abroad in Oman. I was able to integrate this experience with my research by examining Omani Islamic buildings that reflect pre-colonial East African coastal architecture. This fieldwork has provided valuable insights and is now forming the basis of a paper I am developing on the hybrid building styles that emerged between East Africa and Oman from the seventeenth to nineteenth centuries.
Gengwei Guo
Over the summer, I used the professionalization grant to support my internship at the Smith College Museum of Art. This experience allowed me to gain hands-on curatorial training and further develop my research skills in East Asian art.
Georgia Brabec
This grant supported my participation in two development opportunities this year: a week-long graduate seminar at the Vatican Apostolic Archives in Rome, where I learned about archival research and access, and a ten-week curatorial internship at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, in the Art of Europe department. In particular, the funds enabled me to secure housing and spend the summer fully immersed in my role at the Museum.
Marcela Pareja
During the summer I had the opportunity to Intern at the Smith College Museum of Art, under Danielle Carrabino's mentorship. I was tasked to write 2 museum labels, one for a rosary bead from the 16th century and one for a Peruvian Portrait from the late 17th century. I also did provenance research for a Diego Rivera drawing that was gifted to the museum. I attended meetings with the curatorial team and we also did a trip to Harvard where we visited the conservation lab. It was a great experience to work with Danielle and I learned a lot from her and from the work I did at the SCMA.
Sarah Zhang
This past summer, I worked at the George Walter Vincent Smith Museum in Springfield, researching their collection of Chinese cloisonné. I wrote interpretive texts that highlighted the medium’s global origins, situating Smith’s acquisitions within 19th-century collecting practices and the history of international expositions in the U.S. In addition, I took two summer session courses in elementary French.
First Year Graduate Students
This year, the department welcomed seven students into the cohort of 2026: Yuqiu Bai, Evelin Figueroa, Sharice Johnson, Chaia Leibowitz, William Ranyard, Ana Wawersik, and Alan Yang.
Evelin Figueroa
Evelin Figueroa (she/er/ella) is a first-year candidate in the MA in History of Art and Architecture program. Evelin is originally from Union City, New Jersey and was formatively raised in Louisville, Kentucky. Evelin earned her BFA in Arts Management from Long Island University Post and has worked in museums, academic and cultural institutions, and in nonprofits. She most recently served as a Residence Hall Coordinator at UMass Amherst, where she supported student success by fostering safe, inclusive communities and coordinating residential programming. Evelin looks forward to sharing her passion for art history in the classroom and learning more about Afro-Caribbean art through her research.
Our recipient for the 2027 cohort Diversity Fellowship is Evelin Figueroa. In the fall of 2020, our department committed to offering a recurring two-year Diversity Fellowship to support Masters students who seek to pursue an academic or professional career in art history but face significant historical or economic barriers to further graduate study.
Chaia Leibowitz
Chaia Leibowitz (she/they) is a first year MA candidate specializing in New Media Art and Museum Studies. She holds a Bachelors with Individual Concentration in Experimental Video and a B.A. in Communications with a concentration on Impacts of Mass Media, both from UMass Amherst. She has worked at the Student Union Art Gallery, ICA Boston, and most recently was the Sacerdote Post-Baccalaureate Fellow in Museum Education at Smith College Museum of Art.
William Ranyard
William is a first-year MA student from Lincolnshire, United Kingdom. He received his BA in Architectural Studies and Film and Media Studies from Amherst College. He is interested in the use of architecture as a form of political expression, particularly in instances of its use by 20th-century authoritarian political movements. He is also interested in the representation of architecture in film and art.
Ana Wawersik
Ana Wawersik is a first year M.A. student in the History of Art and Architecture program at UMass. She earned her Bachelors in Art History and Biology at Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland, Ohio, but she grew up here in Massachusetts (and she's very happy to be back!). Her primary research focus is in medieval art, with particular interests in manuscripts and personal devotional objects. She also has a soft spot for the gothic revival of the 19th century and did her undergrad thesis on the early stages of the movement in Vermont and New England. Most of all, however, she is passionate about increasing public engagement and access in the field of art history, especially through museum work!
Alan Yang
Alan Yang is a first-year M.A. student from China. He earned his bachelor’s in Art History and Economics at Washington University in St. Louis. He focuses on 15th–16th-century Italian art. He aspires to approach art history with an artist’s imagination, a writer’s romance, a historian’s acuity, and a passion for technical explorations.
Graduate Students on the Go
Graduate Students tell us about some of the exciting places they visited this academic year
The Met, the Cloisters, and Opera
October 18, 2025
We left Amherst at 5:30 am to see Divine Egypt. Replacing Sargent and Paris in the Exhibition Gallery 899, more than a few flights from the main Egyptian Wing, the new MET exhibition reads as a remote bureau of the Egyptian pantheon, a compendium of the Egyptian divinity. Call it a gazetteer, every bay in the gallery holds a deity, filed in a tidy dossier—artifacts, a hieroglyphic nameplate, and a diagram of their crown. Divine Egypt is a deity-by-deity poll, yet we still can’t confidently name the candidates.
Egyptian deities were highly mutable. Many shared forms—serpent, feline, hippo—and a single god could take multiple guises. Thoth, for instance, could appear as an ibis or a hamadryas baboon. A few, however, keep consistent forms: Sobek as a crocodile, Min with twin feathers and a flail, and Ptah tightly wrapped in shroud. Hathor, with the cow-horned sun disk, reappears as emblematic face we’d later notice in Napoleon’s Description de l’Égypte from the library special collection visit in Methods class; her hieroglyph is a “walled” falcon—literally the mansion of Horus. The child Horus, born in the marshes while Isis fled Seth’s hunt, is the only case where a deity is shown nude, and represented in their youthful form: a boy with sidelock sucking his finger. Some deities were abstract ideas as much as divine beings: Maat, identified by a curled ostrich feather on her headpiece, is the embodiment of a complex concept of rightness. Some deities were as real as they were mythic: Khnum’s horizontally orientated corkscrew horns testify to a domesticated ram species long extinct since the Middle Kingdom. Seth’s mythological animal head marks him not only as a usurper but also a protector of Re, the creator of sun.
Re, the most important deity of all, merges forms and syncretizes names with many other deities. Like Re, we found ourselves quickly absorbed by New York’s shifting spirit. Every event, every destination, and every spectacle felt both essential (well, it was the last rooftop opening for five years) and optional—so naturally, we split up.
Forty blocks north and 2.90 dollars lighter, some of us found a different kind of resurrection at The Cloisters. Spectrum of Desire: Love, Sex, and Gender in the Middle Ages was installed within one gallery room, the Romanesque Hall (G1) adjoining the Langon Chapel, and walking in felt like attending a theatrical mass. The exhibition queers the medieval past with wit and candor. There are jokes. The satirical vignette of St. Jerome in a woman’s dress played for laughs but candid about gender variance. There is the patriarchal gaze: the gendered warning against seduction in Phyllis riding Aristotle; the Riddles of Sheba where gender would supposedly reveal itself through action; and the risqué exploration of sadomasochism in the ivory-carved Virgil and Febilla. There is the ideal beauty the Cinquecento returned to admire in the impervious suffering of the youthful St. Sebastian and the pair of wooden angels whose androgyny reads as proximity to the divine. And there is the divine courtship. The gentle closeness of Christ and John, St. Catherine’s mystical marriage to him, and the delicate brushstrokes that invite a slow perusal of his naked body—admired by some, averted by others wary of impure thoughts. On a carved tablet cover, Christ appears as Cupid. Love and pain go hand in hand in the medieval imagination.
We regrouped in front of Lincoln Center at 8:00 pm for curtain. Harrison’s formalist façade, Chagall, and a serif Turandot poster greeted us in full spectacle. Turandot’s gilded chinoiserie set against the hollow pop of the dark bamboo stage floor, Ping, Pang, and Pong’s ricocheting antiphony, and Puccini’s arias—all seen and heard from our distant but comfortable perch in the Family Circle.
We left the city near midnight, stopping once more at the foot of Fort Tryon for a double filet and Coke before the four-hour drive home. In E. B. White’s New York sense, we were “tolerant not only from disposition but from necessity.”
Museum of Modern Art, New York City
February 28, 2026
Gengwei, Will, Chaia, Evelin, and Sharice went to New York City to visit museums. Will and Chaia visited the MoMA. The MoMA is Will's case study for Karen Kurczynski's Museum Studies Class. Will took pictures of the building and its architectural details, and took pictures of the current architecture exhibition and the Wifredo Lam exhibition. Chaia viewed works in the MoMA Film department's installation space and the Face Value exhibition. Gengwei, Sharice, and Evelin went to the Studio Museum in Harlem. The Studio Museum is Sharice's case study for the Museum Studies class. They viewed Tom Lloyd's light sculptures and saw the new Studio Museum building, which opened in late 2025.
Clark Art Institute's Collage Club
March 18, 2026
Our graduate students Marcela Pareja-Araujo, Georgia Brabec, and Gengwei Guo spent their Wednesday afternoon at the Clark's Collage Club. As Georgia put it: "My favorite part was spending quality time with my cohort members in such a cozy and inspiring environment. The Clark provided beautiful collage materials that really brought out our creative sides."
Catskill
April 19, 2026
Over the weekend, nine of us MA students took a day trip across the Berkshires to Catskill, New York. We began the day at the Thomas Cole House, where we learned about Cole’s artistic process and saw his work displayed alongside botanical illustrations made by his daughter, Emily Cole. After a delicious lunch in town, we crossed the Hudson to Olana State Historic Site, the estate of Frederic Edwin Church. Our guided tour led us through the artist’s eclectic hilltop home. The Catskill Mountains were obscured by rain and fog, but the natural beauty that inspired Church, Cole, and other Hudson River School painters still shone through. It was a memorable day spent enjoying early American landscape painting and the environment that inspired it!
Alumni Spotlight
Alumni tell us why their UMass education was important to them in their exciting careers
Kaelan Burkett (BA ’16)
Media Installation, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, NYC
It's interesting to look back on my experience at UMass and see the ways that my education laid the foundation for my future, in ways that didn't feel planned or focused at the time. I took my first art history class on the recommendation of my sister (Jess Burkett '98BA and '03MA), and just like her, I became so enthralled with the subject that I decided to major in it. I eagerly delved into the wide range of subjects taught in the department, and gained practical experience by working at Hampden Gallery and co-curating an exhibition at Greenbaum Gallery.
Like many art historians, by interests are not contained to a single geographic or chronological area. As a budding photographer and videographer, I was especially drawn to studying the relationship between multiple mediums. This interest is reflected in my undergraduate thesis, under guidance of Professors Margaret Vickery and Karen Kurczynski, which examined the photographic documentation of Philip Johnson's Glass House.
After graduating from UMass, I was fortunate to find an internship at the cross-section of these interests, learning about the production of art documentaries and interpretive media at The Metropolitan Museum of Art. This experience solidified my desire to pursue a career working in museums and using media technology to help share stories about art history.
After years of moving around the country – cutting my teeth working with art institutions as a photographer, video producer, and editor/animator – I moved back to New York City in 2022. As luck would have it, there was an opening at The Met to work with my former colleagues in media installation.
The field of media installation is undergoing rapid growth and change, as museums grapple with emerging technologies and artists embrace new mediums. My team is responsible for the audio and video installations you'll find around the museum, from the projected signage and assistive listening induction loops in the Great Hall, to time-based media artworks in the galleries. It's an exciting moment to engage with this work, as the museum's collection is growing with acquisitions ranging from works on film to software-based art.
Some of my most enjoyable projects involve the production of interpretive media. My team works with curators, designers, and media producers to find innovative uses of technology that help tell the story of an exhibition, or improve access for different audiences. These projects may call for animation, projection blending, or experimental interactives, and offer an opportunity to try out new techniques. A recent project brought me right back to that first survey class at UMass, while working on a projected reproduction of Raphael's School of Athens.
Much like my experience at UMass, the greatest joy in this work comes from learning new histories and engaging with art from around the world. You can see (or hear) the range of this work in some of The Met's exhibitions this summer: including Raphael: Sublime Poetry, Costume Art, and Musical Bodies. Never content to stop learning, I'm excited that, ten years after graduating from UMass, I'm about to start my next adventure, enrolling in Hunter College's MFA program for Integrated Media Arts. We'll see where these foundations lead me next.
Kaelan assists with the installation of the projection room featuring Raphael's Stanze for Raphael: Sublime Poetry at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, March 29-June 28, 2026.
Catherine Shotick (MA ‘13)
Cynthia D. and Thomas P. Sculco Director at the Westerly Museum of American Impressionism
The Westerly Museum of American Impressionism is a brand-new museum in the seaside town of Westerly, Rhode Island. The museum opened in October 2025 and is, to our knowledge, the only museum in the United States focused solely on this movement. It was founded by collectors Cynthia D. Sculco and Thomas P. Sculco, whose collection—built over more than forty years—forms the foundation of the institution. The museum occupies a 20,000-square-foot building with eleven galleries and has been designed to emphasize natural light and a close visual relationship to the surrounding landscape, particularly views of the Pawcatuck River, which echo the subject matter of many works on view.
As Inaugural Director and Curator of the Westerly Museum of American Impressionism, my role has required building the museum from the ground up—establishing its curatorial vision, shaping its public identity, and implementing the systems necessary for sustainable operation. On the curatorial side, I led the development of the museum’s inaugural installation, organizing the galleries to present American Impressionism within a clear historical and thematic framework. This includes interpreting the movement’s roots in France, its transatlantic development, and its distinct expression within American artist colonies such as Old Lyme, Cos Cob, Ogunquit, and Cape Ann. The collection includes approximately 350 paintings dating primarily from the 1880s through the 1920s, with about half on view at any given time, and features artists such as Childe Hassam, John Singer Sargent, Edmund Tarbell, and Lilla Cabot Perry.
Operationally, I direct all aspects of the museum’s daily function—managing a small but highly capable staff, vendor relationships, and administrative systems. I have implemented ticketing and membership structures, developed policies for visitors and volunteers, and established procedures for front-of-house operations. I also collaborate with a network of contractors who contribute expertise across fundraising, facilities, IT, and marketing.
Education and public engagement are central to the museum’s mission. This February, the museum launched a docent program and now offers regular guided tours. In summer 2026, the museum will introduce its inaugural speaker series, and a catalogue highlighting the collection and the founding of the museum is currently in production. Since opening in October 2025, the museum has welcomed nearly 10,000 visitors and built a strong and growing membership base, reflecting sustained community interest and engagement.
It is striking to me how much this role brings together my training and professional experience. My time studying art history at University of Massachusetts Amherst provided a critical foundation—not only academically, but through the relationships and perspectives that continue to impact my life and work today. My role as the inaugural director is both demanding and deeply rewarding, and it represents a culmination of the path that led me into the field of American art.
Alumni News
Jenny Carson (MA ’88) and Beth Burke (MA ’91)
Jenny Carson (MA ‘88) and Beth Burke (MA ‘91) are co-authors of the book Echoes from the Archives: Stories and Histories told through the Cather Family, 1851–1891 (University of Nebraska Press, estimated publication date 2027). Illustrated with many never-before-published photographs and documents drawn from the rich Cather archives at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln and the National Willa Cather Center in Red Cloud, Nebraska, the book presents a pictorial and contextual history of Willa Cather's family’s life in Virginia around 1851 to their journey and settlement in Nebraska about four decades later. While the underlying theme is the Cather family, the book presents a much broader history of aspects of the lives of many everyday Americans during the second half of the nineteenth century.
Taylor Emmons (MA ’19)
At the end of 2025, Taylor founded her own art advising and cultural strategy firm in Spartanburg, South Carolina. Through her firm, she partners with local galleries, the hospital system, the City of Spartanburg, and other civic organizations to strengthen the role of art and culture in public life. She is passionate about weaving creative initiatives into the fabric of the community and sharing her knowledge across Spartanburg. In her spare time, Taylor and her husband, Dakota, love doting on their toddler, Noa. They may have lost all sense of objectivity, but they are certain Noa is the cutest two-year-old in all of South Carolina.
Jennifer L. Hegarty (MA ’92)
I recently celebrated 26 years at PAYETTE, an award-winning architectural firm in Boston, where I am the Director of Marketing. My MA focused on American Art and Architecture and I was particularly inspired by my courses in architectural history, which turned out to be an excellent foundation for a marketing professional in an architecture firm. PAYETTE has work on campus, including the new Sustainable Engineering Laboratories, which will complete construction this spring. This living laboratory is a shared research hub for the entire College of Engineering; a hive for collaboration focused on sustainable initiatives.
Cecily Hughes (MA ’22)
Cecily Hughes is now a fourth-year PhD candidate studying medieval Scandinavian art at Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland, Ohio. This past fall, Cecily also began working at the Cleveland Museum of Art as a research assistant to Dr. Gerhard Lutz, the Robert P. Bergman Curator of Medieval Art. Recently, Cecily has presented papers at conferences in Iceland and Finland, and she was particularly delighted to return to Amherst (and South College!) to give her paper about St. Olaf pilgrim badges at the 2026 Meeting of the Medieval Academy of America, hosted by the Five College Consortium. In the picture, Cecily is standing in front of the Alskog church sacrament niche.
Celia Rodríguez Tejuca (MA ’19)
Celia Rodríguez Tejuca (MA ’19) has published “Antonio Parra’s Curious Cabinet: Crafting Imperial Desire in Colonial Havana” in The Art Bulletin 108, no. 1 (2026). The article examines eighteenth-century naturalist Antonio Parra’s innovative method of fish taxidermy, the specimens he displayed in a natural history cabinet, and the first intaglio-printed book in Cuban history.
John White (MA ’21)
John White is a PhD candidate in early modern art history at Princeton University. For the academic year 2025-2026 he is a predoctoral fellow at the Rubenianum (also known as the Rubenshuis) in Antwerp, with support from the Belgian American Educational Foundation. He is writing a dissertation on ivory carving in seventeenth-century northern Europe. In spring/summer 2026, his essay on Netherlandish images of beached whales will be published in the edited volume Uncanny Environments by Textem Verlag.
Ashley Williams (MA ’18)
Ashley is currently the Stainman Research Assistant in the Metropolitan Museum of Art's American Wing. In May 2026, she will receive her PhD in art history from Columbia University. This past year, she married Marcel Alvarez and they are expecting their first child. In the picture, Ashley is standing next to a Lilly Martin Spencer painting that she’s been researching in the conservation lab.
Giving to the Department
We are grateful for the generosity of our many alumni and friends. Your gifts to the Department of the History of Art & Architecture support annual events like our guest lecture series, the Mark Roskill Symposium, and commencement prizes for graduating seniors. Gifts to the Anne Mochon Internship and the Walter Denny Fund provide our students with grants that support them in summer internships and help them gain the interactive experience so critical to their professional development. They also contribute to our ability to fund the Diversity Fellowship that promises to make a lasting, positive impact on the field of art and architecture history. You know what your art history education means to you. Please help us continue to assist students by making a gift on our website: umass.edu/arthistory/history-art-and-architecture.
For gift inquiries, please contact:
Robby O’Sullivan
Executive Director of Development
College of Humanities & Fine Arts and the Fine Arts Center
UMass Amherst Foundation
@email
Iris Cheney Fund
In 2024, UMass graduate William McCrea (’75BA) established a new undergraduate fund in memory of Professor Iris Cheney. An excerpt of McCrea's remarks from the May 2024 Newsletter is copied below. The Department of the History of Art & Architecture welcomes donations to the Iris Cheney Fund. Donate now »
When I began talking with faculty, I was clear that I wanted to do something to support undergraduates—an idea that they enthusiastically embraced. Iris Cheney immediately came to mind as a former professor worthy of honoring. With the approval of her family, the Professor Iris Cheney Memorial Endowment has been launched. When matured, the fund will provide support to undergraduates in the areas of research, travel, and conferences. The faculty will make decisions on the best use of funds in support of art history majors. - William McCrea ’75BA |
Walter Denny Fund
Gifts to the Walter Denny Fund honor his remarkable decades of teaching and scholarship at UMass Amherst and support the education, research opportunities, and professional development of graduate students in the Department of the History of Art & Architecture. The department welcomes donations to the Walter Denny Fund. Donate now »
Anne Mochon Internship Fund
Gifts to the Anne Mochon Internship Fund provide our graduate students with grants that help support them in unpaid or poorly paid internships so they can gain the interactive experience so critical to their professional development. The Department of the History of Art & Architecture welcomes donations to the Anne Mochon Internship Fund. Donate now »
General Department Fund
Gifts made to the department are used to support a wide range of activities that benefit all students, including the annual newsletter, guest lectures, the Annual Roundtable, and the Mark Roskill Symposium.