The Bob Lancaster Award: This award is given in the spring semester to the outstanding graduating majors in studio art and art history. It was established in memory of the late Robert L. Lancaster, sculptor and chair of the Art Department in the Sarofim School of Fine Arts. Selection of the recipients of the award is made for studio art on the basis of a portfolio and general performances as judged by the studio art faculty, and for art history on the basis of general performance and special projects as judged by the art history faculty. As a merit-based award, it is given only to those students who have met the departmental standards and, therefore, may not be awarded in some years.

 

Honors Convocation presentation by Ms. Victoria Star Varner, Chair, Studio Art:

“Ms. Christine Harris is the recipient of the Lancaster Award for the outstanding senior in art, established in memory of the late Robert Lancaster, sculptor and chair of the art department. Christine was selected unanimously by the studio art faculty on the basis of her contributions to the department, the university and the community.  Her senior exhibition “Abstract Voids” of large painted abstractions is inspired by a range of interdisciplinary sources, including a doctoral dissertation in philosophy, titled Absence and Presence in 20th c. Literature and Painting. Christine’s work weaves sophisticated abstract notions into atmospheric pictorial spaces in ambitious works that - in her words -“contemplate time and our shifting relationship to its fluctuating presence in our lives.”

She has received several university scholarships and King Creativity grants, is a Paideia scholar and a campus leader, administering Art Association events including a salon discussion for Brown Symposium XXXIII titled ‘Art Talk.”  She has participated in many art exhibitions on campus and in a solo exhibition at the GLCA house in New York during her internship. She also gives of her time to benefit – for example - the Empty Bowls project in support of the Georgetown Food Bank.

Christine Harris is the ideal liberal arts student in art – an intelligent, well-read, talented and mature student whom we treasure and award this book inscribed by world-renowned art critic and author Eleanor Heartney: After the Revolution: Women Who Transformed Contemporary Art, along with a cash award from the Lancaster family.  Congratulations!”