During the 2015-16 academic year, Rebele funds were used in three capacities: undergraduate grants, fieldtrips, and supporting HAVC 185, a course/speaker series focused on “critical praxis” (socially-engaged professional practice in Visual Studies).
Undergraduate Grants
The department’s Honors Committee awarded Rebele Grants to several undergraduate students. Funds were used to support research in Florence, New Zealand, California, New York, Mexico City, the Yucatán, and Washington, D.C. Research projects represented a range of scholarly interests such as: new media technologies in museum exhibitions; public art; Pre-Hispanic architecture and visual culture; museum efforts to address climate change; Italian art and architecture; African visual culture; and the confluence of Maori and Western architecture in New Zealand. Grants also supported some students in their academic coursework, preparing for graduate school, study abroad programs, and internships.
Fieldtrips
Rebele funding also supported three well-attended fieldtrips to regional art exhibitions and art institutions during the 2015-16 year. Students attended the Pacific Worlds exhibition at the Oakland Museum of Art. Pacific Worlds examined the deep and layered histories of California’s interactions with the Pacific as well as the on-going connections between Pacific Islanders, Filipinos, Native Californians, and American settlers and collectors. This exhibition was honored with the American Alliance of Museums’ “Excellence in Exhibitions Award, with Special Achievement in Contextualizing Collections with the Community” and the an Honorable Mention from the Western Museums Association’s “Charles Redd Center for Western Studies Award for Exhibition Excellence.”
HAVC students also attended Royal Hawaiian Featherwork: Nā Hulu Aliʻi at the de Young Museum. This exhibition (the first display of Hawaiian featherwork on the U.S. mainland) explored the distinctive art, culture, and history of Hawaiʻi. It included approximately 75 rare examples of featherwork garments, adornments, and sculptures and 18th-19th-century paintings and works on paper.
In the Spring, students witnessed Border Cantos at the San Jose Museum of Art. This exhibition brought together photographer Richard Misrach and experimental composer Guillermo Galindo “to document the unseen, human reality of the US-Mexico borderlands” through large-scale photographs, musical sculptures, and sound.
HAVC 185
In addition to grants and fieldtrips, Rebele support enabled the Rebele chair to offer the second iteration of a new course, “Critical Issues and Professional Practices in Visual Studies.” The course introduced undergraduate students to a range of professional practices related to art history and visual studies. Topics included: the academy, inter/disciplinarity, pedagogy, museums and communities, cultural property, heritage preservation, art conservation, community arts organizations, digital humanities, public arts administration, art and civic engagement, visual/material culture archives and collections, art and psychology, alternative exhibition/museum spaces (such as arts and cultural festivals), and the vital role of visual studies and the humanities in contemporary life. Rather than simply providing a broad overview of the ways visual studies is applied in a variety of professions, the course aimed to emphasize critical issues and current challenges central to socially-engaged professional practice.
Speakers included:
Kurt Behrendt – Museum Curation
Dr. Behrendt is Associate Curator of South and Southeast Asian Art at the Metropolitan Museum (NY) and is also affiliated with UCLA’s Center for Buddhist Studies. His museum research and exhibitions focus on the Buddhist, Hindu, and Jain art of South Asia and the Himalayas. He has reinstalled the permanent galleries at the Met and his recent curatorial projects include Buddhism Along the Silk Road (2012), Tibet and India: Buddhist Traditions and Transformations (2014), and Sacred Traditions of the Himalayas (2015). Dr. Behrendt’s current research focuses on Buddhist art and archaeology of the 6th-9th centuries on the Indian subcontinent. His numerous publications include The Buddhist Architecture of Gandhara (2005), Gandharan Art in the Metropolitan Museum of Art (2007), Tibet and India: Buddhist Traditions and Transformations (2014), and the co-edited volume Gandharan Buddhism: Art, Archaeology, Texts (2006).
Patricia Walsh – Public Art & Arts Organizations
Ms. Walsh is the Public Arts Programs Manager for Americans for the Arts (Washington, D.C.). Prior to her current position, she was a cultural programming specialist for the public art program at the Arts Commission for the City of Las Vegas. She previously served on the City of Palo Alto Public Art Commission and as a committee member for genARTS Silicon Valley, an initiative of the Arts Council Silicon Valley dedicated to improving the quality of life for Santa Clara County residents by creating and fostering arts and culture throughout the region. Ms. Walsh also worked as the program coordinator for the City of San Jose Public Art Program where she managed the conservation and maintenance of the public artwork collection, worked on community engagement initiatives and managed temporary public art projects. One of the projects she managed was recognized with a 2010 Year in Review Award. Additionally, she volunteered with the City of Oakland public art program.
Michelle Bulos – Visual Archives & Collections
Ms. Bulos is a Research Archivist at the Lucas Research Library, (Skywalker Ranch, CA). She has substantial experience with other Bay Area film and image archives (including those of American Zoetrope, MGM, Universal, and RKO), which support art direction, production design, and story development. As the head archivist at the Lyman Museum and Mission House (Hilo), Ms. Bulos spearheaded the “Collecting Memory: John Howard Pierce Photo Identification Project” (2013), a collection of nearly 50,000 images that forms an major contribution to the state of Hawai’i’s historical record. She previously worked in the cultural programs department at the Asian Art Museum (San Francisco), where she managed film and video programs, literary events, performances, and festivals.
Richard Kennedy – Curating Folklife Festivals; Intangible Cultural Heritage
Dr. Kennedy was Deputy Director of the Smithsonian Institution’s Center for Folklife & Cultural Heritage (Washington, D.C.), where he co-curated festival programs on Hawai’i, Indonesia, Thailand, the Philippines, Russian music, Tibetan culture, the Silk Road, Oman, the Mekong River, and Bhutan. Previously, he was Associate Director of the National Council for the Traditional Arts and Chair of South Asian area studies for the U.S. State Department's Foreign Service Institute. He currently serves on the boards of several organizations in Honolulu, including the East-West Center Foundation and ‘Iolani Palace. He recently contributed a chapter on Asian festival programs to Curatorial Conversations: Cultural Representation and the Smithsonian Folklife Festival (2016).
Parme Giuntini – Art History Pedagogy & Practice
Dr. Giuntini is Professor of Art History and Director of the Art History Program at Otis College of Art & Design (Los Angeles). In addition to researching 18th-century English portraiture, gender, and family representation, she co-edited GARB: A Fashion and Culture Reader (2008), which examines postmodern attitudes toward dress, fashion, and identity. Dr. Giuntini’s current research and writing focus on curriculum design, educational technology, and innovations in art history pedagogy. She is contributing editor of Art History Teaching Resources (AHTR) and is helping to launch Art History Pedagogy & Practice, an e-journal supported by the Samuel H. Kress Foundation that is devoted to the scholarship of teaching and learning in art history.
Ann Stockwell — Careers in Art Therapy
Ms. Stockwell is a Registered Art Therapist of the American Art Therapy Association and a licensed Marriage Family Therapist. Her passion is in using Art Therapy techniques to teach resilience, communication and coping skills to at-risk youth populations in the Bay Area. She co-developed the Student Wellness Program for at-risk grade school students in east Palo Alto, culminating in her recently published article “The Art of Wellness: A 14-week Art Therapy Program for At-Risk Youth” (2015). Ms. Stockwell has travelled internationally to deliver Art therapy training to staff and caregivers at an NGO in Ethiopia serving women escaping the sex trade and an orphanage/youth counseling center serving homeless children in Kiev, Ukraine. She is currently working with children at South San Francisco low income housing center through Drawbridge: an Arts Program for Homeless Children (www.drawbridge.org) and is running a pilot Wellness Art Program for homeless parents at LifeMove’s (http://lifemoves.org) Redwood House in Redwood City.
Glenn Wharton – Activist Art Conservation
Dr. Wharton is Clinical Associate Professor of Museum Studies at NYU who specializes in art conservation and the study of modern and contemporary art collections. From 2007-13 he served as Time-Based Media Conservator at MoMA (NY), where he cared for the video, performance, and electronic collections. With colleagues from MoMA, Tate, San Francisco Museum of Art, and New Art Trust, he served on the Matters in Media Art project to establish guidelines for best practice in managing time-based media. In 2008, Dr. Wharton established the non-profit Voices in Contemporary Art (VoCA), serving as founding executive director. He authored The Painted King: Art, Authenticity, and Activism in Hawai’i (2012), which presented a case for doing cultural work through conservation, using community-based conservation. In 2014, the College Art Association honored him with its Heritage Preservation Award for Distinction in Scholarship and Conservation.