On Tuesday, April 26th from 5:00 – 6:00 PM at the Binghamton University Art Museum in the Fine Arts building, Fall 2021 Student Curators will introduce their ongoing exhibitions and discuss the curatorial experience they gained through the BUAM’s internship program. This special event is part of Binghamton University’s annual Research Days, a week-long celebration of faculty and student research over the past year.
Designing, researching, and educating, alumnus Jesse McCormick is literally building an impressive career as an architect on a foundation that was laid at Binghamton University. He initially started his undergraduate career studying English Literature, but eventually added a second major in Art History with a concentration in Architecture and Urban Studies. While he always had an interest in architecture, this passion was further fostered by coursework taken in the Art History department.
McCormick also cites his advisor, Professor Julia Walker, with helping him achieve his goal to eventually go on and work in the field as well as continue his education at Columbia University’s Graduate School of Architecture, Planning, and Preservation. After receiving a Master’s degree in architecture from Columbia in 2018, McCormick has taught in various schools of architecture around New York and is currently an instructor at Syracuse University. His work and research have been recognized at the Istanbul Design Biennale, the Museum of Modern Art’s Young Architects Program, and the Oslo Architecture Triennale.
While already having accomplished so much, McCormick feels that his favorite moments after graduating from Binghamton University were not the occasions in which he received awards or when his projects are completed, but instead are the instances in which he collaboratively solves a problem with others, either in an academic or professional setting. Problems are plenty in the field of architecture, and one pressing issue he seeks to address is the growing moral dissonance that architects endure throughout their careers. He hopes that in his teaching he can give his students the tools and opportunities to think in certain ways that will empower them not to make the compromises that the field currently demands.
Many years after his undergraduate career, Binghamton always has a place in McCormick’s mind. He believes that the area could benefit from a community land trust or from following the guidance of groups such as Binghamton Tenants United. Collectives and cooperatives seeking to uphold and expand tenants’ rights could further serve Binghamton University students and more adequately meet students’ varied spatial needs in a deindustrialized city filled with single-family homes.
Art History and Mathematical Sciences major Nate Craig will be presenting a paper on Saturday, April 10th, at the third annual SUNY New Paltz Undergraduate Art History Symposium:
Etruscan Pigments: A Chronological Examination
Often when viewing art of ancient cultures, we tend to see exactly what’s given, a story, and try to piece together the puzzle of their culture that way. The same can be said of Etruscan art as a large part of Etruscan art is the story it tells us about what Etruscans valued and how they interacted as a culture. However, if we take a different vantage point and look a little deeper into how the art itself is made, namely the pigments being used, we can create a different story about how they are creating these works–specifically, the chronology of pigments in Etruscan society. The development of the Etruscan palette changes over time due to the introduction of new pigments during the Orientalizing, Archaic, Classical and Hellenistic. These insights into the use of pigments do tell us how they are making these fantastic works but, more importantly, are an integral part of the larger puzzle of understanding the Etruscan culture. This might mean understanding how they valued certain figures or who might have been important. These kinds of answers have been made possible by using technology like multi-spectral imaging, x-ray diffraction and x-ray fluorescence. Through these methods we are beginning to understand Etruscan culture better and painting a clearer picture of the Etruscan palette and its uses. Thus, by combining science with art we can then better comprehend the Etruscan culture.
Congratulations to Art History majors Emily Jelen (’19) and Nathan Goldberg (’20), whose work has been published in the most recent volume of Alpenglow, the Binghamton University Undergraduate Journal of Research and Creative Activity. The volume features Goldberg’s essay “Picturing a Pandemic: Zoe Leonard’s Analogue” and Jelen’s Summer Scholars research project “Moorish Revival Synagogue Architecture: Community and Style, Past and Present.” The journal is published annually and is blind reviewed by Binghamton University’s faculty, staff, and advanced graduate students.
Senior Art History major Peter Farquharson was featured today in the Press & Sun-Bulletin for his volunteer work at the Community Hunger Outreach Warehouse (CHOW). Read the full story here.
Art History faculty, students, and families celebrate the graduates with a Zoom toast on May 17, 2020.
The Art History department congratulates this year’s graduating BA students!
Alyssa Abesamis
Denilson Alvarez
Jess Brody
Nathan Goldberg
Aliza Hornblass
Emily Jelen
Nikhil Jani
Veronica Liszewski
Claire McLagan
Thomas Pellegrino
Caelum Rogers
Kelly Ryan
John James Santiago
Art History major Caelum Rogers will be presenting a paper on April 18 at the second annual SUNY New Paltz Undergraduate Art History Symposium:
A Century of Photography: History of Japanese Photographic Expression in the Past 100 Years and the Legacy of Realism in Post-War Japan
This presentation aims to situate the exhibition, A Century of Photography: History of Japanese Photographic Expression in the Past 100 Years, held in Tokyo in 1968, within the larger context of twentieth-century debates in Japan on the nature and role of photographic realism. It examines the central roles played by Taki Koji and Nakahira Takuma in shaping the way that the history of Japanese photography was presented in the exhibition, and the close relationship between that history and the larger photo-critical project Taki and Nakahira pursued in their short-lived photo-magazine, Provoke. Tracing the development of realist photographic aesthetics in the period before 1945, the presentation seeks to show how that aesthetic laid the basis for the dominant forms of post-war Japanese photography. It was an aesthetic challenged, however, by Taki and Nakahira, and analysis of the structure of the 1968 exhibition shows that the exhibition’s narrative of history directly engaged contemporary aesthetic and political debates around photography through Taki and Nakahira’s use of nineteenth-century archival photography to critique Japanese photography’s claims to truth and to offer a radically different understanding of photographic realism.
Junior Art History major Peter Farquharson was recently featured in Discover-e for his summer research on political meaning in South American murals. Read more here.
Event is co-sponsored by the Undergraduate Art History Association
L-R: Emily Greenberg, Annemarie Maag-Tanchak, and Erin Livingston celebrate at commencement.
The Art History department congratulates this year’s graduating BA students!
Olivia Baerga
Marisa Davila
Jennifer Dioguardi
Emma Fishbein
Emily Greenberg
Erin Livingston (honors)
Annemarie Maag-Tanchak
Keara McAdams
Lauren Rachel Poretsky
Thomas Rice
Sabrina Soffer
Congratulations to Art History major Emily Jelen, who has received the President’s Award for Undergraduate Student Excellence. The award recognizes students who have enriched the Binghamton University community through a record of accomplishment and leadership in such areas as scholarship, student life, and community life, all of which reflect the University’s purposes and priorities.
Binghamton Art History 