New Publications, A New Hire, and Some Student Thesis Topics

I'm pleased to announce that my article entitled "Gustav Stickley's Metal Shop: Reform, Design, and the Business of Craft," appears in the latest issue of Oxford University Press's Journal of Design History.  You can access the issue here.  For those more interested in flat art, I have also have an article on Copley's Watson and the Shark which appears in the latest issue of American Art.


It also gives me great pleasure to announce that Gerald W. R. Ward, the Katharine Lane Weems Senior Curator of American Decorative Arts and Sculpture at the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston will be teaching the decorative arts component in the American Fine and Decorative Arts Program curriculum at Sotheby's Institute of Art, New York this fall.  Ward's work as a curator, scholar, and editor will form an invaluable asset to our students and the program.  


Lastly, our students have begun the thesis writing process and I thought I would share some of the outstanding topics they are working on:


Bianca Molta, "Not Just Figureheads: The Influence of Women on the Arts Made Aboard 19^th Century New England Whaling Ships"


Anna Henger, "American Odyssey: Frederic Edwin Church and Sanford Robinson Gifford in Greece"


Melody Cleven, "Rockwell Kent’s ‘realization of the brotherly union of men:’ Interpretative Illustrations for Moby Dick"


Corinne Plumhoff, "Modern
 American
 Luxury:
 The
 Reception 
of 
High
 French 
Style 
in 
the
 United
States
 from 
1925‐1939
"


Other topics include the drawings of James Edward Deeds (outsider art), the career of Tommy Parzinger, the drawings of Dale Chihuly and their relationship to Abstract Expressionsim, Calder's Circus, the reception of the Power's Greek Slave, and Islamic design influence on the Arts and Crafts.