Projects of 2019

Here's my annual list of professional "projects" that I was involved in and overseeing during 2019. (You can read previous lists here and here.) As I've mentioned in the past, it's good to take stock of these accomplishments because it helps remind me how busy things have been, particularly as I have a tendency to always move on to the next project and forget what I've already done. The photo you see here is of me giving the introductory remarks at an event I coordinated in April, an "Evening at Avery: British Portraiture", to coincide with the exhibition I co-curated (more on that below; no idea whose head that is in the photo!). The event had a surprisingly good turn-out, and our two speakers were Mateusz Mayer, PhD student in art history, who co-curated the exhibition with me, and Dr. Meredith Gamer, assistant professor of art history at Columbia who gave a riveting talk about alternative concepts of 18th-century British portraiture for those who are often forgotten by history and society.

Here is the 2019 list...

• I published two book reviews, which I mentioned about in my Books of 2019 post as well. The first was a short review on Beyond the Face: New Perspectives on Portraiture, about which I posted even more. The second was a review essay in Nineteenth-Century Art Worldwide on Anthea Callen's new book Looking at Men: Art, Anatomy and the Modern Male Body.
• I curated at work a summer exhibition entitled Animalia: The Essence of Animals in Art, with artwork from the permanent collection dating from 3rd-century Mexican dog sculptures to contemporary Inuit sculptures. During the winter/spring, I co-curated the exhibition Hoppner, Beechey, Fisher, Lavery: Researching Columbia's Portraits with M. Mayer, and we published online a catalogue of the exhibition with essays by both of us, which you can download and read here. My staff and colleagues at work deserve lots of credit for all their help in making these exhibitions possible.
• I acted as curatorial project manager with Dr. Frederique Baumgartner on the "MA in Art History Presents" exhibition at Columbia entitled Clodion (1738-1814) and "Clodion Mania" in Nineteenth-Century France, which has a fantastic online exhibition component you can see here.
• Tomas Macsotay and I co-chaired a panel session entitled "Transnationalism and Sculpture in the Long Nineteenth Century (ca. 1785-1915)" at the annual conference of the College Art Association in February in NYC.
• I served on the selection committee & jury for the 16th annual graduate student symposium co-sponsored by the Association of Historians of Nineteenth-Century Art and the Dahesh Museum of Art in March in NYC.
• I was the guest speaker at a Columbia Alumni Association of New Mexico event, where I spoke about the collections and our educational programs to alumni. This took place in Santa Fe, New Mexico in September.
• Columbia's Department of Art History and Archaeology had received a small grant to coordinate an international project called Parallel Heritages, with some of their students and students at The Sorbonne, Univ. Paris I, for an international research project on archaeological objects in both collections. I gave presentations at both components, in NYC in March, and in Paris at The Sorbonne in November.
• I also gave a paper entitled "British Portraits at Columbia University: Opportunities for Object-Centered Learning" at the annual Understanding British Portraits seminar, held at the National Portrait Gallery in London in November.
• I participated in the annual conference of the Association of Academic Museums and Galleries in June in Minneapolis, Minnesota.
• Totally not work-related, but worth documenting... in February AA & I took a fantastic wine-tasting class that was incredibly informative (we are doing a repeat, focused version on Italian wines later this month), as well as a fun cocktail making class in December. We also went to go see the opera The Magic Flute at the Metropolitan Opera and Moulin Rouge on Broadway.

All in all, another incredibly productive and fulfilling year!