Art History Faculty
Molly Emma Aitken is a specialist in Asian art history. She received her Ph.D. from Columbia University in 2001 with a concentration on the art of South Asia. She has curated traveling exhibitions on South Asian jewelry and contemporary folk quilts, and has published numerous articles on Mughal and Rajput painting. Aitken's explorations of South Asian art began in India with a yearlong apprenticeship to a master painter of the Mughal and Rajput traditions. Her methodological interests include feminist approaches to South Asian art, questions of interpretation and reception, problems of Occidental conceptual taxonomies in non-Western studies and the role of formal analysis and of connoisseurship in contemporary art history. Aitken received CAA's Charles Rufus Morey book award in 2011 for her book The Intelligence of Tradition in Rajput Court Painting.
Selected publications:
"Sahib Ram." Masters of Indian Paintings. Eds. Milo C. Beach and Eberhard Fischer. Zurich: Artibus Asiae, 2011.
"Old Methods in a New Era: what can connoisseurship tell us about Rukn-ud-din?," with co-author Shanane Davis. In A Companion to Asian Art and Architecture. Eds. Rebecca Brown and Deborah Hutton. Oxford: Blackwell Publishing, 2011.
The Intelligence of Tradition in Rajput Court Painting. New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 2010.
When Gold Blossoms: Indian Jewelry from the Susan L. Beningson Collection. London: Phillip Wilson, 2004.
"Parataxis and the Practice of Reuse from Mughai margins to Mir Kalan Khan," Archives of Asian Art. 59 (2009): 81-103.
"Pardah and Portrayal: Rajput Women as Patrons, Collectors and Viewers of Painting." Artibus Asiae. 62, no. 2 (2002): 247–280.
Phone: 212-650-7413
Email: maitken@ccny.cuny.edu
Office: CG109B
Susan Elizabeth Gagliardi is a specialist in West African art history. She received her Ph.D. in Art History from the University of California at Los Angeles after conducting extensive fieldwork in Burkina Faso and Ghana. Her most recent research focuses on power associations, the great patrons for the arts in Senufo- and Mande-speaking towns across western Burkina Faso and southern Mali. Gagliardi examines the arts, knowledge, and interpersonal networks that power associations promote. She considers how power association leaders, artists, patrons, and audiences shape and respond to dynamic arts and performances. She also investigates diverse strategies for assemblage and tensions between the seen and unseen dimensions of the visual arts.
Selected publications:
Essays. In Helibrunn Timeline of Art History (online). New York: The Metropolitan Museum of Art, 2000 -.http://www.metmuseum.org/toah/ (January 2010).
"Arts of Power Associations in West Africa"
"Divination and Senufo Sculpture in West Africa"
"Senufo Arts and Poro Initiation in Norther Côte d'lvoire"
"Senufo Sculpture from West Africa: An Influential Exhibition at The Museum of Primitive Art, New York, 1963"
Catalogue essays. In See the Music, Hear the Dance: Rethinking African Art at The Baltimore Museum of Art, edited by Frederick J. Lamp. Munich: Prestel, 2004.
"When It Lies Behind You, Take It: Akan Goldweights (abrammuo)."
"Biographies of Lobi Wooden Sculptures: Their Conceptions, Creations, and Uses in Shrines, Divinations, and Collections."
"Lobi Stools: Gendered Seats Gendering Places."
"Virtuous Meats Against Sorcery: A Numu Mask (Gbain)."
Phone: 212-650-5253
Email: sgagliardi@ccny.cuny.edu
Office: SH 303C
Ellen Handy is a historian, curator and critic of photography and modern art. She teachers courses in the history of photography, art of the United States, art criticism, and research methods in art history. Previously, she was Executive Curator of Visual Collections at the Harry Ransom Humanities Research Center of the University of Texas, Curator of Collections and Exhibitions at the International Center of Photography, Senior Research Assistant in the Department of Photographs at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, and a regular columnist for Arts Magazine. She received her PhD from the Department of Art and Archaeology at Princeton University, and her BA from Barnard College of Columbia University. Her research interest include landscape and urban imagery in photography and other mediums, intersections of art and science in 19th century photography, women and photography, connoisseurship in photography, printed ephemera, and the rise of modernism in visual and literary culture in the United States.
Selected publications:
"Cézanne and Modernist American Photography: How a Few Corking Cézannes Helped Reshape Photographic Art in America." In Cézanne and American Modernism, edited by Gail Stavitsky. New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 2009.
Reflections in a Glass Eye: Works from the International Center of Photography Collection. Boston: Little, Brown in association with the International Center of Photography, 1999
Pictorial Effect/Naturalistic Vision: The Photographs and Theories of H.P. Robinson and P.H. Emerson. Norfolk, Va.: Chrysler Museum, 1994.
Phone: 212-650-7413
Email: ehandy@ccny.cuny.edu
Office: CG 244
Craig Houser received his Ph.D. in art history from the CUNY Graduate Center in 2011. His scholarship focuses on modern and contemporary art in relationship to issues related to gender and sexuality, as well as institutional and social politics. He also has substantial experience working in museums as a curator and educator. He was a curatorial fellow in the Whitney Museum Independent Study Program and an assistant curator at the Solomon. R. Guggenheim Museum in New York. In addition, he was also an editor for College Art Association, which publishes The Art Bulletin and Art Journal.
Selected Publications:
"Rachel Whiteread: Vienna Holocaust Memorial." In Theories and Documents of Contemporary Art. Berkeley: University of California Press, forthcoming 2011.
"The Changing Face of Scholarly Publishing: A History of CAA's Publications." In The Eye, the Hand, the Mind: The College Art Association and the Visual Arts Since 1911, edited by Susan Ball. New Brunswick, N.J.: Rutgers University Press, 2011.
"Richard Long.” In Percepciones en transformación: La Colección Panza del MuseoGuggenheim. New York: Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation; Bilbao, Spain: Guggenheim Museum Bilbao, 2000.
Catalogue entries. In Rendezvous: Masterpieces from the Centre Georges Pompidou and the Guggenheim Museums. New York: Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation, 1998.
Review of Arthur Danto, Playing with the Edge; Edmund White, Mapplethorpe Altars; Patricia Morrisroe, Mapplethorpe. Art Journal 55, no. 3 (1996): 99.
"I, Abject." in Abject Art: Repulsion and Desire in American Art, exh. cat., 84-101. New York: Whitney Museum of American Art. 1993.
Phone: 212-650-5963
Email: chouser@ccny.cuny.edu
Office: CG 109A
Anna Indych-López received her Ph.D. from the Institute of Fine Arts of New York University in 2003 and specializes in the modern art of Latin America, specifically Mexico. Her work focuses on exhibition culture, cross-cultural perceptions, reception analysis, and the relationship between art and politics. She received the College Art Association's Wyeth Foundation for American Art Publication Grant for her book
Muralism without Walls: Rivera, Orozco and Siqueiros in the United States, 1927-1940.
Selected Publications:
"Making Nueva York Moderna: Latin American Artists, The International Avant-Gardes, and the New School." In Nueva York, edited by Edward Sullivan. New York: New York Historical Society and El Museo del Barrio, 2010.
Muralism without Walls: Rivera, Orozco, and Siqueiros in the United States, 1927-1940. Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 2009.
"'An Abstract Courbet': The Cubist Spaces of Diego Rivera's Murals." In Diego Rivera in Paris: The Cubist Portraits. Dallas, Tex.: Meados Museum, Southern Methodist University, 2009.
"Mural Gambits: Mexican Muralism in the United States and the 'Portable' Fresco." Art Bulletin 89, no. 2 (June 2007): 286-304.
"'None of Those LIttle Donkeys for Me':Tamayo, Cultural Prestige, and Perceptions of Modern Mexican Art in the United States." In Tamayo: A Modern Icon Reinterpreted, exh. cat. Mexico: Turner Libros and Santa Barbara Museum of Art, 2007.
Phone: 212-650-5163
Email: aindych@ccny.cuny.edu
Office: CG 251
Lise Kjaer teaches graduate courses in twentieth century and contemporary art. Her areas of research includes issues of identity in modern and contemporary art, as well as global art history. Kjaer received her Ph.D. from the CUNY Graduate Center in 2008. Her dissertation "Awakening the Spiritual: James Turrell and Quakerism" considered the artist’s light installations in view of his renewed interest in Quakerism, specifically Quaker tenets, history, and tradition. Her current research involves an anthology (co-edited with Dr. Will Wroth) on the scholar Ananda K. Coomaraswamy’s influence on twentieth-century art, tracing the impact of his publications, exhibitions, and scholarly involvement with Southeast Asian art on twentieth-century American, Asian and European art and art history.
Kjaer received an MFA with Distinction from the Academy of Fine Arts in Warsaw, Poland, in 1992. She has exhibited internationally in Denmark, Finland, Germany, Poland and the United States. She was awarded a Fulbright Scholarship and the Bamse Kragh-Jacobsen’s Award, and has been a fellow of NIFCA, a Nordic artist in residency program in Helsinki, Finland. Along with her scholarly work in art history, Kjaer continues her art practice exhibiting sculptures and installation pieces that are often time-based, ephemeral, and participatory by inviting the viewer to become a part of the work.
Selected Publications:
”Natur i Det Store Æble: Olafur Eliasson’s New York City Waterfalls.” Kunstavisen 28 (August/September 2008): 21.
”James Turrell.” Sculpture Magazine 27 (January/February 2008): 75.
Recent One-Person Exhibitions:
”White Whispers – Silent Dreams.” Galeria Stefan Szydlowski, Warsaw, Poland, 2010.
”Beginnings.” Galeria XS, The Institute of Fine Arts, Kielce, Poland, 2010.
”Once We Were Butterflies.” Galeria AT, Poznan, Poland, 2010.
Phone: 212-650-7429
Email: lkjaer@ccny.cuny.edu
Office: CG 230
Harriet F. Senie is the Director of the M.A. Program and its museum studies concentration. Her chief research areas are public art, memorials, memory and material culture, the American landscape tradition (e.g. themes of the road in American art and culture), and contemporary pilgrimage practice.
In fall 2000 Professor Senie was visiting distinguished professor at Carnegie Mellon University. She previously served as Associate Director of the Princeton Art Museum and Gallery Director at SUNY, Old Westbury. In 2008, she co-founded, with Professor Cher Krause Knight (Emerson University, graduate of the M.A. program at CCNY), Public Art Dialogue, an international organization that is also one of CAA affiliated societies. The organization's journal, Public Art Dialogue, which she co-edits with Professor Knight, will appear twice annually beginning in January 2011 and is the only peer-review journal devoted to public art. Professor Senie is currently completing a book entitled Memorials to Shattered Myths: Vietnam to 9/11, which analyzes official memorials to events that have shattered myths of national identity: the Vietnam War, the Oklahoma City bombing, the Columbine shootings, and 9/11.
Selected Publications:
"Gendered in Stone: Women in New York City's Public Art."In Blaze: Discourse on Art, Women and Feminism, edited by Karen Frostig and Kathy A. Halamka. New Castle, UK: Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2007.
"Louis Nevelson's Public Art." In The Sculpture of Louise Nevelson, edited by Brooke Kamin Rapaport. New York: The Jewish Museum; New Haven Conn.: Yale University Press, 2007.
"Mourning in Protest: Spontaneous Memorials and the Sacralization of Public Space. In Spontaneous Shrines and the Public Memorialization of Death, edited by Jack Santino. New York: Palgrave MacMillan, 2006.
"Reframing Public Art: Audience Use, Interpretation, and Appreciation." In Art and its Publics: Museum Studies at the Millenium, edited by Andrew McClellan. Oxford: Blackwell Publishing, 2003.
Dangerous Precedent? The 'Tilted Arc' Controversy. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2001.
"Perpetual Tension: Considering Richard Serra's Jewish Identity." In Complex Identities: Jewish Consciousness and Modern Art, edited by Matthew Baigell and Milly Heyd. Rutgers University Press, 2001.
"Implicit Intimacy: The Persistent Appeal of Henry Moore's Public Art." In Henry Moore: Sculpting the Twentieth Century, edited by Dorothy Kosinski. Dallas Museum of Art and Yale University Press, 2001.
Co-editor. Critical Issues in Public Art: Content, Context, and Controversy. Washington, D.C.: Smithsonian, 1998.
Contemporary Public Sculpture: Tradition, Transformation, and Controversy. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1992.
Phone: 212-650-7430
Email: hsenie@ccny.cuny.edu
Office: CG 230
