* * ART, ART HISTORY & VISUAL STUDIES * *

Barkley. L. Hendricks, Visiting Artist-in-Residence, is completing his stay at Duke this month. Photographers Tom Rankin and Alex Harris of the Center for Documentary Studies at Duke led a discussion with Hendricks, a contemporary American painter best known for his life-size portraiture of people of color, called “Photography, Documentary, and the Making of Art: A Conversation with Barkley Hendricks” on November 18 at The Nasher Museum of Art at Duke University. Hendricks’ photographic work, which is extensive yet less well known, was the catalyst for this discussion.

New Faculty Publication

The University of Chicago Press has just published Cutting a Figure, Fashioning Black Portraiture, a new book by Richard J. Powell, John Spencer Bassett Professor of Art and Art History.

Deborah Willis, University Professor and Chair, Tisch School of the Arts, New York University, comments on the book: “A significant study based on truly original research. Richard Powell presents a critical assessment and exploration of the portrait as both object and subject of art and fashion. One of the many important aspects of Powell’s book is his reinterpretation of the different ways the black body is represented within the context of the observer and the observed. By focusing on such representations within and outside the boundaries of art, Powell offers a conceptual exploration of agency and resistance as he questions the existing historiography. Cutting a Figure will make a significant mark in the fields of American art history, fashion, visual culture, American studies, photography, and African American studies.”

Powell currently serves as Editor-in-Chief of the Art Bulletin, which is the leading scholarly English-language journal covering all aspects of art history and published by the College Art Association.

Faculty Artist in Madison

Merrill Shatzman, Mayaglyphs #2, 2007, 22” x 30”, woodcut

Merrill Shatzman was a visiting artist and lecturer November 4-5 at the University of Wisconsin-Madison as part of the UW Art Department Colloquium Lecture Series. In her lecture she discussed her work as questioning and examining the “universal language” created by signs, symbols, and pre-imagined images such as maps, charts, photographs, texts, and written language. In analyzing these graphic sources, their need to communicate, and acknowledging the beauty of their visual marks and forms, her prints show the comparison, contradiction, and universality of language within landscape. Shatzman also met with graduate students and gave two artist workshops in printmaking while at the University of Wisconsin.

Essay Contributed to French Publication

Neil McWilliam, Walter H. Annenberg Professor, contributed "Erudition et engagement politique: la double vie de Louis Dimier" to Histoire de l'histoire de l'art en France au XIXe siècle, R. Recht et al, eds. (La Documentation française, Paris, 2008).

Visual Resources Center Update

VRA

Jack Edinger, Photographer, has recently had his position reclassified and upgraded to Web Manager/Imaging Specialist to better reflect his expanding Web, digital imaging, and design responsibilities in the VRC and the department. Jack recently designed the banners announcing Barkley L. Hendricks’ Duke residency that are currently hanging across the university (see top of this NewsByte). He has also designed the new website for the Visual Resources Association annual conference, to be held in Toronto in March 2009. Please see http://www.vraweb.org/conferences/toronto2009/index.html).

IRIS

Julie Doring, Associate Curator, has been elected the first chair of the IRIS Collaborative, a consortium of over twenty universities that develops and uses the Image Information Resource System (IRIS) software program for cataloging images. The IRIS Collaborative, which includes universities such as Bard, Brown, Colgate, MIT, Rice, RISD, Vassar, Wellesley, in addition to Duke, holds an annual Collaborative members meeting in June and a larger public user group meeting at the annual conference of the Visual Resources Association.

John Taormina, Director, is guest editor of an upcoming issue of the Visual Resources Association Bulletin on “Digital Collaborations.” The issue contains eighteen articles by image curators and librarians from universities, museums, and archives in the United States and abroad. Taormina will also be serving on a National Endowment for the Humanities panel in November and December.

Please refer all relevant departmental information for inclusion in our weekly announcement to John Taormina, Director, Visual Resources Center, at taormina@duke.edu.