If you haven’t been by in the last year or so, come see us in our new building! We are now housed in a spectacular suite of new offices, on the top floor of the Mildred Lane Kemper Art Museum. We now overlook a central plaza, so we have ready views of our old offices in Steinberg Hall, which are being renovated for new use this coming fall.

The new building announces a new era. While we remain, as always, in our home in the School of Arts and Sciences, we are also now part of a large arts complex, with new physical and intellectual connections to the College of Art and the College of Architecture and Urban Design in the Sam Fox School of Design and Visual Arts. Our Visual Resources Collection has an impressive new home as well, and our classes are held n state-of-the-art new classrooms. It is all worth a visit, if you haven’t been by.

New courses, new partnerships!
We are taking advantage of many new collaborative opportunities, some within Arts and Sciences, and some with our new neighbors in the Sam Fox School of Design and Visual Arts. More of us have been exploring the pleasures of collaborative teaching. Professor Bill Wallace participated in a “Focus” cluster of courses, in which students took Western Civilization in the fall, a small seminar on Michelangelo with Professor Wallace in spring, and completed the series with a week-long trip to Rome, Assisi and Florence. Professor Angela Miller recently co-taught a course based in the history department on the art, history and literature of the American Civil War, and she and Professor Childs subsequently taught a course on the cultures of encounter in the wake of the European arrival in America. In fall 2006, Professor Childs enjoyed the chance to co-teach in a “studio seminar” environment a print course with Prof. Lisa Bulawsky in the College of Fine Arts (and we had a chance to use the beautiful new Teaching Gallery in the Kemper art museum for a display related to the course). In spring 2007, Professors Eric Mumford and visitor John Klein co-taught a course on the history and architecture of the modern art museum, and took students on a weekend field trip to see modern art museums in the region by such figures as Eliel Saarinen, I. M. Pei, David Chipperfield, and Louis Sullivan. New collaborative ventures are in the planning, including at least one seminar each year with an ambitious travel component.

In the light of Italy
Big news in the last two years includes the development of our new Art History in Florence Program. Fall 2005 saw Prof. Bill Wallace take a dozen art history majors over for an unforgettable semester of learning about Renaissance art and architecture, on site. The semester flew by with on-site lectures, daily visits to the incomparable museums, field trips to watch specialists in art conservation work on precious and fragile objects, not to mention group excursions to Bologna, Venice, Rome and Modena. And then there is that delicious food, and the great chance to live with Italian families or in a chic little apartment near the Washington University facility on the Via del Prato, just blocks from the Duomo. The program is a great success, and continues, in collaboration with art and architecture in the Sam Fox School. Prof. Angela Miller is taking a group over this fall (2007), and will be offering courses that focus on the American Experience of Italy, and also Collections and Collecting in Italy. Stay tuned, as we continue to develop this great opportunity for our students in the years to come!

New Department trips!
We have continued to offer at least one major field trip to our majors and graduate students each year. In spring 2006, an energetic group took a three day trip to Washington DC and Baltimore. Highlights included the Baltimore museum of Art, the Walters Art Museum, The Cézanne in Provence show at the National Gallery of Art, a Lautrec, Whistler and Sickert show at the Phillips, and a visit to the new Museum of the American Indian. Fall 2006 took a group to Minneapolis, while the weather was still reasonable, for a quick tour of museums, and sculpture gardens. This fall we are off to Chicago. We love connecting with alumni when we can on these trips, so please let us know if you would like to meet a current group of our majors and graduate students!

New faculty!
In fall 2006, we added a vibrant new faculty member to our department. Professor Alicia Walker came to us having completed her doctorate at Harvard, and a post-doctoral fellowship at Columbia University. Her interests are varied, including Islamic art, European medieval art and architecture, and the connections, both artistic and ideological, between these seemingly diverse worlds. This summer she conducted research in Egypt and Tunisia. Please see more about her work in our faculty profile section.

New internships!
In 2005, we started offering a new internship for graduate credit, available to our students doing graduate coursework. Students work under the supervision of a local curator, and one of our faculty members. Students can work on projects at our own Kemper Art Museum, the St. Louis Art Museum, or the Pulitzer Foundation, to name some possibilities. Projects pursued thus far include preparation of educational materials for a major Pre-Raphaelite exhibition, creation of an installation plan for a Byzantine Icon collection, and the preparation of a catalogue entry on an Italian trecento crucifix. There are many more good opportunities to come, and we hope to be developing more courses with a focus on exhibition and museum studies in the future.

New graduates!
Several students completed those all important degrees. Dr. Mike Murphy (PhD, 2007) now is enjoying a position as a Lecturer in the Women and Gender Studies Program right here at Washington University. Lauren Melo, (MA 2007) just found a very exciting job as an archivist at the Alexander Calder Foundation in New York. For a complete list of our recent graduates and their impressive accomplishments, please see the Department News pages!

New staff!
A change in staff has brought us Nancy Rubin as our new Administrative Assistant. Nancy has been with the university for several years, but primarily in the School of Engineering, so we are very glad to lure her over to the arts. We look forward to hearing from friends near and far. If you are an alum, please send Nancy your news (artarch@artsci.wustl.edu). If you are a prospective student, you can also contact Nancy Rubin for more information, or the faculty member whose area interests you! We would love to hear from you!

Best wishes for a good fall! Look for an update of these pages next spring.


--Professor Elizabeth C. Childs, Department Chair