Thomas Howe, Prof. of Art and Art History, was invited by Dr. Joey King to attend the Summit and the Symposium of the National Institute for Technology in Liberal Education in Arlington, VA, April 15-17. With Prof. Hal Haskell of SU and Prof. Kenny Morrell of the Center for Hellenic Studies/Rhodes College, he will be co-presenting a paper on “Saving Study Abroad Through Synchronous Distance Learning.” The paper is an initial technical proposal as to how to develop synchronous distance learning as an integral part of the proposed semester abroad program of SU at the Vesuvian Institute Restoring Ancient Stabiae Foundation at Stabia in Italy where Howe is coordinator general. SU tentatively may launch the first step to that program in May term 2013.

Thomas Howe, Professor of Art and Art History, and Chair of Art History, published a book review of: John R. Senseney, The Art of Building in the Classical World; Vision, Craftsmanship and Linear Perspective in Greek and Roman Architecture, (Cambridge University Press, 2011), for American Journal of Archaeology, (planned for publication in AJA 116.2 or 116.3, April, 2012). The book’s author built an interesting argument that the development of the use of ruler and compass to aid Greek architects in designing developed in the later classical period (c. 400-330 B.C.) and begins to influence the way architects think in terms of overall graphic patterns in the Hellenistic period, and in particular the development by Roman architects of the use of curve and line to revolutionize design in the first century A.D. Howe’s own work on Vitruvius is part of a generation of studies of Roman architecture since the 1990’s which emphasize context and process.

Thomas Howe, Professor of Art and Art History, has been invited to contribute a book chapter to a new reference book on Greek architecture: “Hellenistic Architecture in Italy: Consuetudo Italica,” in A Companion to Greek Architecture, ed. Margaret M. Miles, U.C. Irvine, for Wiley-Blackwell publishers, 2012. Prof. Howe’s original graduate work was in Greek architectural history, but for the past twenty years has been working in the architectural tradition of the later Roman Republic and Early Empire. 

Thomas Howe, Professor of Art and Art History, submitted in February 2012 a lead article for a publication on recent work on Roman Villas in the Mediterranean: “Was Stabiae a Senatorial Suburb?” in, Roman Villas in the Mediterranean Basin: History, Archeology, Art, An International Seminar at Mishkenot Sha’ananim, Jerusalem, December 16-17, 2008, to be published in the Acts of the conference, tentatively for Cambridge University Press, 2012 (this is the article version of lecture originally entitled: “How Elite Were the Villas of Stabiae?”). Only one owner of any of the Villas of Stabiae is known (one Pomponianus). Howe concludes that due to size and prominence (they are among the largest known, and similary to a couple other probably senatorial properties), some of the villas of Stabiae may have been owned by senators from Rome, but argues that senators and “municipal” elite (i.e., the town councilors and magistrates of the various cities) tended to mingle, and therefore Stabiae was likely a mixed community of local and “national” elite. Howe, as representative of the Restoring Ancient Stabiae Foundation, was co-organizer of the conference together with the Mishkenot Sha’ananim.

Thomas Howe, Professor of Art and Art History, was invited to give a presentation at a conference on Roman Architecture at the American Academy in Rome on Dec. 6, 2011 : “Was Stabiae a Senatorial Suburb on the Bay of Naples?”, (conference: Paradigm and Progeny: Roman Imperial Architecture and Its Legacy, The American Academy in Rome, Dec. 6-7, 2011). To be published in the acts of the conference as: “Early Augustan Innovations in the Panoramic Villas of Stabiae.”

Thomas Howe, Professor of Art and Art History, in December 2011 submitted articles which serve as the first formal scientific publication of the discovery of the large garden of the Villa Arianna at Stabiae: “Stabia, Attività della Fondazione Restoring Ancient Stabiae,” with Paolo Gardelli, and “Stabiae, Villa Arianna: scavi e studi nel giardino del Grande Peristilio, 2007-11,” with Kathryn Gleason and Ian Sutherland, forthcoming in Rivista di Studi Pompeiani, 22 (2011).

Patrick Hajovsky, assistant professor of art history, published a book review in the Journal of Anthropological Research, vol. 67 (2011). He reviewed Eduardo de J. Douglas’ In the Palace of Nezahualcoyotl: Painting Manuscripts, Writing the Pre-Hispanic Past in Early Colonial Tetzcoco, Mexico (UT Press, 2010). Douglas will be coming to campus this semester to give a lecture on his research.

Allison Miller, assistant professor of art history, chaired a panel on “Chinese Historical-Political Complexities” at the 40th Southwest Conference on Asian Studies in San Antonio, Texas, on October 1st. She also presented a paper entitled “Gifting, Identity, and Burial in Early China: A Reassessment of the Social and Political Context of Early Funerary Art and Architecture”.

Kimberly Smith, associate professor of art history, presented a paper at the 35th annual German Studies Association conference in Louisville, KY on September 25th. The talk was entitled “Ekphrasis, Empathy, and the Critical Imagination in Art History”, and was included on the panel “Einfuhlung and the Modern Aesthetic”. Smith also moderated a related panel, on the topic of “Einfuhlung after 1900”.

Thomas Howe, Herman Brown Professor and Chair of Art History, in fall 2010, contributed a short book chapter on the theoretical approach to the Stabiae Master Plan,  “The Archaeological Park at Stabiae and the Cultural Panorama of Roman Campania,” in Progettare il Paessaggio Archeologico/Designing the Archaeological Landscape, ed. Alessandro Camiz, Atti del Convegno Internazionale, 23 gennaio 2008, Castel Madama, Castello Orsini, Sala Baronale, Universita’ di Roma, La “Sapienza,” (being published in Rome, 2011?).

Thomas Howe, Herman Brown Professor and Chair of Art History, in Sept. 17-25. 2010, presented three lectures (on the villas, planning concepts and the site) to an international teaching seminar and design workshop, dealing with the touristic presentation of several archaeological sites around Pompeii: “Beyond Pompeii: The Vesuvian Cultural and Tourist District,” Participants included the schools of architecture of the University of Maryland, University of Miami, University of Oregon, Cornell University, Università di Bari, Università di Roma “la Sapienza,” Università di Napoli Federico II, He also served as substitute professor for students from Cornell University, Department of Landscape Architecture. Howe is the principal author of the 2001 Master Plan for the large archaeological park at Stabiae, which launched the long term Restoring Ancient Stabiae Foundation project. 

Thomas Howe, Herman Brown Professor and Chair of Art History, summarized his and his colleagues interpretations of the historic discovery of an enormous Roman formal garden at the Villa Arianna, Stabiae, in the lecture presentation: “The Excavations in the Garden of the Villa Arianna at Stabiae,” Invitational conference: “Approaches to Ancient Roman Luxury Villas: Oplontis and Beyond,” Organizer John Clarke, University of Texas, April 1-2, 2011. The garden of the Villa Arianna (discovered 2007-2010) is the first archaeological evidence for the existence of a supposedly “rustic” type of garden which is otherwise known only in the frescoes of the villa of the Empress Liva at Prima Porta. Howe presented an interpretation that the discovery may represent the development of something very much like a true profession of “landscape architect,” at the same period that Roman architecture and painting was developing a powerful sense of the picturesque and of reaching out to environment and panoramas. 

Thomas Howe presented the lecture: “The Garden of Flora: New Discoveries at the Roman Seaside Villas of Stabiae near Pompeii,” University of Virginia, Charlottesville, 2007-2011, Jashemski endowed Lecture, National Lecture Program of the Archaeological Institute of America, Sept. 23.

Thomas Howe, Prof. of Art and Art History, and Chair of Art History, will speak on “Was Stabiae a Senatorial Suburb on the Bay of Naples?”, invited lecturer in conference: Paradigm and Progeny: Roman Imperial Architecture and Its Legacy, The American Academy in Rome, Dec. 6-7, 2011. Howe will present evidence that the site of Stabiae is probably almost the only place in the world where archaeology will be able to recover physical evidence of the physical environment of the powerful Roman senatorial elite. 

Thomas Howe, Herman Brown Professor and Chair of Art History, is contributing an article: “How Elite Were the Villas of Stabiae?”  to a volume summarizing recent work on Roman Villas across the entire Mediterranean. The book is the publication of a conference which Howe co-organized with the Mishkenot Sha’ananim Center in Jerusalem, December 16-17, 2008: Roman Villas in the Mediterranean Basin: History, Archeology, Art.

Thomas Howe, Professor of Art and Art History, has been chosen for the honor of being a traveling lecturer for the American Institute of Archaeology for the 2011-2012 year. On Sept. 23rd he presented a summary and interpretation of recent work at Stabiae at the AIA chapter of the University of Virginia, Charlottesville: “The Garden of Flora: New Discoveries at the Roman Seaside Villas of Stabiae near Pompeii, 2007-2011,” (endowed Jashemski Lecture, National Lecture Program of the Archaeological Institute of America, Sept. 23, 2011).

Victoria Star Varner, professor of art, presented her prints and paintings on a panel titled “PROOF: Printmaking as Evidence” at the annual meeting of the College Art Association in New York in February and participated on the CAA Committee on Standards for Retention and Tenure of Visual Arts Faculty charged with establishing national standards in the profession in May. In June, three of her prints from the “Crossed Paths” series were exhibited in an invitational exhibition at Gallery 311 in Raleigh, N.C., titled “The Elegant Line.” In July, she produced a trial proof of “Centripetal Forces: San Francisco” at Crown Point Press during their summer workshop.

Thomas Howe presented a paper on Jan. 14, 2011 on integrating distance learning with study abroad at the Hong Kong Institute of Education. (“Under the Volcano: Saving Study Abroad Through Distance Learning in Italy,” with William Joseph King (Director, National Institute for Technology in Liberal Education), Fourth World Universities Forum, 14-16 January, 2011, Hong Kong Institute of Education, Hong Kong, New Territories.) The study is part of the development of a center for study abroad at the Vesuvian Institute of the Restoring Ancient Stabiae Foundation in Italy, of which Howe is coordinator general for archaeology and planning.

On January 12, 2011, Thomas Howe presented a lecture to the Friends of the Hong Kong Museum of Art at the Hong Kong Club, downtown Hong Kong: “Otium and Wu Wei: the Gardens and Landscapes of Stabia and Suzhou,” Friends of the Hong Kong Museum of Art,” The Hong Kong Club, Jan. 13, 2011. He presented a comparison of traditional Chinese gardens with the palatial garden which he is excavating at the site of the ancient Roman villas of Stabiae. “

Kim Smith, associate professor of art history, presented a paper titled “Vision and Primitivism in Franz Marc’s Slow Paintings” at the Southeastern College Art / Mid-America College Art Association joint conference held in Richmond, Va., Oct. 21-23.

Mary Visser, professor of art, is giving a presentation at the INTERSCULPT 2010 symposium to be held in Paris Oct. 23-31. The conference selected one of Visser’s works to incorporate into the logo for the conference. 

A work by Kate Nelson, studio technician in the Art Department, received an Honorable Mention Award in an exhibit titled “Red Heat Contemporary Work in Clay” at the University of Tulsa.

Thomas Howe, Herman Brown Professor and Chair of Art History, in Sept. 17-25. 2010, participated as faculty co-organizer of an international teaching seminar and design workshop, dealing with the touristic presentation of several archaeological sites around Pompeii: “Beyond Pompeii: The Vesuvian Cultural and Tourist District.” He presented three lectures (on the villas, planning concepts and the site). He also served as substitute professor for students from Cornell University, Department of Landscape Architecture, who developed a project for the site of the Villa of Pollio Felix at Sorrento (image). Participants included the schools of architecture of the University of Maryland, University of Miami, University of Oregon, Cornell University, Università di Bari, Università di Roma “la Sapienza,” Università di Napoli Federico II, Howe is the principal author of the 2001 Master Plan for the large archaeological park at Stabiae, which launched the long term Restoring Ancient Stabiae Foundation project.

Artwork by Professor Mary Visser has been selected for the International Conference on Information Visualisation to be held in London and the International Conference on Computer Graphics, Imaging and Visualisation to be held in Sydney, Australia. Visser’s gallery of artwork can be found here.

Work by Mary Visser, professor of art, will be permanently exhibited at the Beijing Tomorrow Art Gallery in China. The gallery is devoted to the works of digital sculptors from around the world.

Kim Smith, associate professor of art history, published an essay in the anthology Postcards: Ephemeral Histories of Modernity (Penn State University Press, 2010). In the article titled “Ambivalent Utopia: Franz Marc and Else Lasker-Schüler’s Primitivist Postcards,” Smith examines a series of watercolor postcards that Marc made for the poet Lasker-Schüler in 1913, reading them as objects born of both modernist radicalism and Germany’s imperialist imagination.

Several works by Mary Visser, professor of art, will be featured in an exhibition titled “Drawing On Sculpture,” which will be on display in the Beatrice M. Haggerty Gallery at the University of Dallas in Irving through May 2.

Thomas Howe, Herman Brown Professor and Chair of Art History, organized a session of the Roman Archaeology Conference at the Ashmolean Museum, Oxford University: “The Villas of the Bay of Naples Roman Archaeology Conference IX, Ashmolean Museum, Oxford University, March 28, 2010. Presenters included: Domenico Esposito (archaeologist, Pompei), Paola Miniero (Director, the Archaeological Site of Baia, Bay of Naples), Mantha Zarmakoupi (Freie Universität, Berlin), John Clarke and Michael Thomas (University of Texas and Oplontis Excavation, and Howe also co-presented paper: “Recent Work at Stabiae,” with Kathryn Gleason, Ian Sutherland, John Foss, Lindley Vann, Meg Watters.

Duncan Alexander received Southwestern’s 2010 Fayez Sarofim Passion for the Arts Award. The award is presented annually to the graduating senior who, regardless of major, has demonstrated throughout his or her entire undergraduate career at Southwestern an unusual passion for the arts. Read more about Alexander here.

On Feb. 11-12, 2010 Thomas Howe, Herman Brown Professor and Chair of Art History, organized and hosted Brown Symposium XXXII:  IMPERIVUM: The Art of Power in Rome and America. Speakers included: Karl Galinsky (U.T. Austin): Margaret Malamud (New Mexico State University, Las Cruces); Edward Lucie-Smith (art critic, London); Edward Luttwak, (Center for Strategic and International Studies, Washington, D.C.); Alexander Stille (New Yorker, New York Times, Columbia University) and the opening lecture by Howe. He co-curated exhibit, with Edward Lucie-Smith: “Who Owns Classicism?” February 11–March 7 with artists Mersad Berber (Zagreb and Sarajevo), Francisco Benitez (Santa Fe), and Edward Lucie-Smith (London). Installation by Jeremy Burks. The Symposim featured a concert of ancient music by: Philip and Gayle Neuman, “Organographia,” Portland, Oregon and a “Roman” banquet, with an ancient Roman menu prepared by Sodexho staff and chefs, for speakers and guests.

Mary Visser, professor of art, had several of her works featured in a rapid prototyping sculpture and science symposium titled “From the Earth to the stars: The Darwinautes’ travels” that was held in Paris and Metz, France.

Patrick Hajovsky, assistant professor of art history, had an article titled “Andre Thevet’s ‘true’ portrait of Moctezuma and its European legacy” published in the fall 2009 issue of the journal Word & Image. Hajovsky also contributed several entries for a catalog that was published in conjunction with an exhibit titled Moctezuma: Aztec Ruler, which is on display at the British Museum through Jan. 24. 

Thomas Howe, Herman Brown Professor and Chair of Art History, presented the recent of his team’s work at Stabiae to the national conference of the 112th Annual Meeting of the Archaeological Institute of America, San Antonio, TX January 6 – 9, 2010. The presentation dealt largely with the discoveries of the large formal garden in 2007-2010, and included a new type of root casting technology developed by Prof. Kathryn Gleason of Cornell which records even small hair roots (see image). Field director was Prof. Ian Sutherland of Middlebury College.

Kimberly Smith, associate professor of art history, attended the German Studies Association annual conference in early October, where she organized and chaired two panels titled “Munich’s Modernism: Visual Culture at the Turn of the 20th Century.” The paired panel sessions ended with a commentary delivered by Smith.

Thomas Howe, professor of art history and coordinator general of the Restoring Ancient Stabiae Foundation, hosted the second international conference on recent work at the ancient Roman villa site of Stabia at the foundation’s center in Castellammare di Stabia, Italy, Oct.13-17. Howe made two presentations to the Italian national archaeological community and led discussions with a delegation from the Hermitage State Museums in St. Petersburg, Russia, that may to open the way for the archaeological department of the Hermitage to open an excavation at Stabia as early as summer 2010.

Mary Visser, professor of art, has had one of her sculptures selected to be featured in the Winter 2009 issue of Creative Quarterly. The sculpture is titled “Circle of Life” and features nine female gymnasts in a circle. Visser made it using rapid prototyping. The sculpture received the Silver Award in the Fine Arts Professional division. A second sculpture of Visser’s, “Women in Movement,” was selected as a runner-up for the issue and will be featured in a special online gallery on the magazine’s Web site.

Senior art major Carlos Barron and Mary Visser, professor of art, had artwork selected for the  Banner Project sponsored by Georgetown Art Works and the Georgetown Arts and Culture Board. During the month of October, the work of 55 artists will be displayed on light post banners around the Georgetown Square and the Georgetown Public Library.

Visser’s sculpture “Color at Play” was selected for a banner and a close-up photo Barron took of a damselfly was selected for a banner.  

The banner with Visser’s artwork will be located on the north side of the Georgetown Public Library on 8th Street. The banner with Barron’s artwork will be located on 7th Street, just east of Main Street. The public is invited to vote for their favorite banner. To see a map of the banner locations, go here. Ballots will be available at the Library, the Williamson Museum and the Georgetown Visitor Center.

Duncan Alexander, a senior studio art major, won the 2009 Austin Critics Table Award for video design for his work on “The Color of Dissonance,” which premiered at Southwestern in April.

Thomas Howe, professor of art history, participated in a symposium held at the Getty Villa in Malibu June 4-6. The symposium was held in conjunction with an exhibit at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art titled “Pompeii and the Roman Villa: Art and Culture around the Bay of Naples,” which runs through Oct. 4. Howe was part of session on “New Research in Roman Villas.”

Thomas Howe, professor of art history, spoke at the opening of an exhibit sponsored by the Restoring Ancient Stabiae Foundation that is on display in Ravenna, Italy, March 14-Oct. 4. The exhibit is titled “Otium Ludens” (The Game of Leisure, or The Play of Leisure). Howe is Coordinator General of the Restoring Ancient Stabiae Foundation. For more on the exhibit, visit here.

Junior art major Paloma Mayorga created a portrait of composer Antonin Dvorak that is being used on the poster and brochures publicizing this year’s Festival of the Arts in Georgetown, which is focusing on the music of Dvorak.

Mary Visser, professor or art, currently has two works installed in a gallery in Wenzhou, China. The pieces are part of the touring e-Form exhibition of 30 international artists that is part of the cultural programs related to the 2008 Olympics in Beijing. The exhibit has already travelled to the Duolun Museum of Modern Art in Shanghai and the Today Art Museum in Beijing and will appear later this spring in the Jinse Gallery in Chongqing. Visser’s works can be seen on this website, which was created for the exhibition by Autodesk.