The Department of Fine Arts is committed to inviting guest artists/scholars to represent the different programs and disciplines within the department. Fine Arts intends to invite at least one distinguished visiting artist/scholar per academic year, ideally each October, rotating between the various disciplines (art education, art history, and studio art). The goal of the Distinguished Visiting Artist and Scholar Series is to expose students, faculty, and the campus community to artists, art and architectural historians, art educators, museum curators, and other art professionals whose work has had a transformational impact in the visual arts. Visitors may conduct workshops or demonstrations, participate in class or studio visits, deliver a keynote lecture, or engage in guest critiques.
CALL FOR NOMINATIONS: Full-time faculty, staff, adjunct faculty, and students are
encouraged to submit nominations for the 2022-2023 Distinguished Visiting Artist and
Scholar. Submit your nomination using this form by December 12, 2022. Note: staff, adjunct faculty, and students will be requested
to submit a brief letter of sponsorship from a full-time Fine Arts faculty member
in support of their nomination.
October 24, 11 a.m. | Rutledge 119
The world’s largest Confederate monument is carved into the granite cliff face of Stone Mountain, outside Atlanta, Georgia. The park surrounding the monument remains the state’s most-visited tourist destination. Begun in 1915 and finished only in 1972, the monument has been used as a tool for embezzling donations, a rallying-point for resistance to integration, and an inspiration for the revival of the Ku Klux Klan – not once but twice. This talk argues that understanding the monument’s long history is crucial to current debates about whether it – and America’s many other controversial monuments – should be preserved, modified, or removed.
Based in Los Angeles, Edgar Arceneaux is an award-winning artist, director, and writer whose drawings, sculptures, and performance works often explore connections between historical events and present-day truths. His work has been featured on Art21 and in solo exhibitions in Montréal, Los Angeles, Paris, London, and New York, and is represented in over 17 public collections. Arceneaux has received several artist residencies and fellowships, including the Malcolm McLaren Award from Performa and the Rauschenberg Residency. Arceneaux screened his film Until, Until, Until, delivered an artist talk, and engaged in studio visits with undergraduate and graduate students.
Summary: The U.S. Civil War and Reconstruction were defined by intense racial politics as chattel slavery ended and frontiers were pushed west. Some of the first encyclopedic art museums in the U.S. were formed at this time, and prominent galleries gathered artworks from around the world to tell racialized narratives of progress. Acknowledging the ways in which art was involved in the politics of ethnology in the Civil War era can help us grapple with the legacy of this complicity.
Assistant Clinical Professor of Art, Alfred University
Kathryn Vajda discusses photo-based digital prints of structures constructed from ice and snow using disposable single-use plastic packaging. Plastics are extracted from fossil fuels, contribute to climate change, and never decompose. The work is created in a battle against the unsustainable use of resources.
