CCL/Mellon Foundation Seminar

In 2014, with the support of the Mellon Foundation, CCL launched a summer seminar intensive, which introduces art history doctoral candidates at the outset of their careers to the daily challenges and strategic questions of museum practice.

 


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Katie Apsey - Project Assistant, Institute for Research in the Humanities

Katie Apsey

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Program

CCL Mellon Foundation Seminar 2014

Institution

University of Wisconsin, Madison

Title

Project Assistant, Institute for Research in the Humanities

School

University of Wisconsin, Madison

Mentor

Jay Sanders, Artists Space

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Katie Apsey is an Art History Ph.D. student at the University of Wisconsin, Madison and holds an MA in Art History from Concordia University in Montréal. Her research focuses on Contemporary Native American performance art, dance, and staged demonstrations as they relate to consumption, cosmopolitanisms, and spectatorship. Before returning to graduate work, Katie worked for many years at the Brooklyn Museum of Art as curatorial assistant for the Asian, African, and Islamic Art collections and also organized film, music and performance programming for the museum’s “First Saturdays” programs while working in the museum’s education department. Katie will also be taking part in the Smithsonian’s Summer Institute in Museum Anthropology this year working with the National Museum of Natural History’s collections. In addition to her curatorial interests, Katie is also a Contemporary dancer and performs with the Li Chiao- Ping Dance company. 

Claire Brandon - Editor

Claire Brandon

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Claire Brandon is Editor at TASCHEN, where she is responsible for artist monographs and books on art, art history, and visual culture from the 19th century to the present. Previously, she oversaw Artist and Editorial Projects at Ivorypress, where she published a three-volume publication about the history of and current practices surrounding the medium of the artist’s book: Books, Words, and Stories (Madrid: Ivorypress, 2021). Prior publications include contributions to Tate InFocus Projects/Terra Foundation of American Art: Norman Lewis, Adrianna Campbell, ed. (London: Tate Modern, 2018); Shahzia Sikander: Apparatus of Power Claire Brandon, ed. (Hong Kong: Asia Society, 2016); William N. Copley, Germano Celant, ed. (Milan: Fondazione Prada, 2016); Global/Local 1960-2015: Six Artists from Iran,Lynn Gumpert, ed. (New York: Grey Art Gallery NYU, 2016), Shahzia Sikander: Heart as Vector, Ecstasy as Sublime, Hou Hanru, ed. (Rome: MAXXI, 2016); Graphite,Sarah Urist Green, ed. (Indianapolis: Indianapolis Museum of Art, 2013); and Illuminations/Illuminazioni,Bice Curiger, ed. (Venice: Marsilio, 2011). She holds a Ph.D. from the Institute of Fine Arts, New York University and A.B. magna cum laude from Bryn Mawr.

Ashley Dunn - Assistant Curator, Department of Drawings and Prints

Ashley Dunn

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Program

CCL Mellon Foundation Seminar 2014

Institution

The Metropolitan Museum of Art

Title

Assistant Curator, Department of Drawings and Prints

School

Northwestern University

Mentor

Rebecca Rabinow, The Menil Collection

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Ashley E. Dunn is a Ph.D. candidate in art history at Northwestern University focusing on 19th-century French visual culture with a particular interest in print media. Her most recent museum experience includes an internship in the Department of Prints & Drawings at the Art Institute of Chicago and a graduate fellowship at Northwestern’s Mary & Leigh Block Museum of Art. Born in Canada and raised in Bermuda, Ashley received her Bachelor’s degree summa cum laude in French from Emory University. An internship at the Musée d’Art Américain in Giverny first sparked her interest in curatorial work and she gained subsequent experience at the Addison Gallery of American Art, the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, the Archives of American Art, and International Arts & Artists in Washington, D.C., before completing a Master’s with distinction in history of art and visual culture at the University of Oxford. This fall, Ashley will begin research in Paris for her dissertation “Graphic Paris: A Study of Urban Etching, 1850-1880.” 

Anne Feng - Assistant Professor

Anne Feng

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Program

CCL Mellon Foundation Seminar 2014

Institution

Boston University

Title

Assistant Professor

School

University of Chicago

Mentor

Michael Hearn, The Metropolitan Museum of Art

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Anne Feng is a Ph.D. candidate at the University of Chicago. Her research interests include religious murals, Pure Land Buddhism, Dunhuang art, and Japanese Buddhist painting. She received her BA with Honors from New York University in 2010, with a thesis on the 12th centuryTen Kings of Hellpaintings from Metropolitan Museum of Art. In 2008, Anne interned at the Palace Museum in Beijing, and worked for exhibitions on Qing dynasty court culture. From 2008-09, she worked as a research intern at the Metropolitan Museum of Art for the Special Collection “The World of Kublai Khan: Chinese Art in the Yuan Dynasty”. At the University of Chicago, she has organized the Contemporary Chinese Art Yearbook and the Xiangtangshan Digital Caves Project for the Center for the Art of East Asia. She is also the coordinator for the Visual and Material Perspectives on East Asia workshop at the University. 

Daria Rose Foner -

Daria Rose Foner

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Daria Rose Foner is entering her third year as a doctoral candidate at Columbia University, where she focuses on Italian Renaissance painting and sculpture. She received her B.A. from Princeton University in 2011, where her senior thesis, “Suzy Frelinghuysen: Cubist Painter and Classical Performer,” was awarded the Grace May Tilton Senior Thesis Prize. In 2012 she earned her M.Phil. from the University of Cambridge. For her master’s thesis on depictions of Saint Catherine of Alexandria in Renaissance Italy, she received a Brancusi Travel Award from Kettle’s Yard to conduct research in Venice and Rome. Daria has held internships at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Uffizi Gallery, and the Marianne Boesky Gallery and has volunteered at the Fitzwilliam Museum. Last fall she co- organized the exhibition, “Goddess, Heroine, Beast: Anna Hyatt Huntington’s New York Sculpture, 1902-1936” at Columbia’s Wallach Gallery. Prior to attending Princeton, Daria danced as a member of the Norwegian National Ballet. 

Kimberli Gant - McKinnon Curator of Modern and Contemporary Art

Kimberli Gant

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Program

CCL Mellon Foundation Seminar 2014

Institution

Chrysler Museum

Title

McKinnon Curator of Modern and Contemporary Art

School

University of Texas, Austin

Mentor

Eva Respini, The Institute of Contemporary Art/Boston

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Kimberli Gant is a Ph.D. candidate at the University of Texas Austin pursuing research on photographic depictions of Lagos, Nigeria since 1960. She is the Graduate Research Coordinator for UT’s Center for the Art of Africa & Its Diasporas (CAAD) and was the 2012 inaugural Curatorial Fellow at The Contemporary Austin. Prior to her graduate work, Kimberli was the Curator of Exhibitions and Public Programs at the Museum of Contemporary African Diasporan Art (MoCADA) in Brooklyn, New York where she curated exhibitions focused on contemporary artists of African Diaspora. Kimberli has also published articles inArt LiesandAfrican Artsand written catalogues essays for The Contemporary Austin, the Studio Museum of Harlem and the Centre for Contemporary Art Lagos. 

Carolyn Laferrière - Postdoctoral Associate with Archaia, Yale Program for the Study of Ancient and Premodern Cultures

Carolyn Laferrière

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Program

CCL Mellon Foundation Seminar 2014

Institution

Yale University

Title

Postdoctoral Associate with Archaia, Yale Program for the Study of Ancient and Premodern Cultures

School

Yale University

Mentor

Griffith Mann, The Metropolitan Museum of Art

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Carolyn Laferrière is a Ph.D. candidate in the History of Art Department at Yale University. Carolyn completed a B.A. magna cum laude from Carleton University in Art History, Classics, and Religious Studies, and an M.A. in Classical Art and Archaeology at the University of British Columbia. She acted as curatorial assistant for an exhibit on 18th-century French gouache paintings at the National Gallery of Canada, and as a research assistant in the Ancient Art Department at Yale University Art Gallery. She has also undertaken research at the American School for Classical Studies at Athens. Her dissertation, entitled “The Complex Sensations of Divine Music in Archaic and Classical Greek Art,” argues that classical Athenian cult practice used the visual arts and music together as media for visualizing sound, so that vase painting and relief sculpture from that period employed both media to create epiphanies of divine presence. 

Perrin Lathrop - Predoctoral Fellow

Perrin Lathrop

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Perrin Lathrop is a doctoral student in the Department of Art and Archaeology at Princeton University. She graduated summa cum laude with honors in Art History and Business Studies from New York University in 2009 and received her MA in the History of Art from the Courtauld Institute of Art in London in 2011. Before coming to Princeton, Ms. Lathrop worked as Curatorial Associate, Arts of Africa at the Newark Museum, New Jersey, where she solidified her commitment to the study of African Art. She has published her research in the Savvy Journal of contemporary African art and presented papers at conferences at Boston University, Rutgers University and the University of South Africa. In 2013 she curated the New York Times-reviewed exhibitionThe Art of Translation: The Simon Ottenberg Gift of Modern and Contemporary Nigerian Art. At Princeton, she plans to expand her research into the development of modernism on the African continent. 

Julia McHugh - Trent A. Carmichael Director of Academic Initiatives & Curator of Arts of the Americas

Julia McHugh

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Program

CCL Mellon Foundation Seminar 2014

Institution

Nasher Museum of Art, Duke University

Title

Trent A. Carmichael Director of Academic Initiatives & Curator of Arts of the Americas

School

University of California, Los Angeles

Mentor

Ronda Kasl, The Metropolitan Museum of Art

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Julia K. McHugh, Ph.D., is the Trent A. Carmichael Director of Academic Initiatives and Curator of Arts of the Americas at the Nasher Museum of Art at Duke University. In this position, she oversees the museum's holdings of ancient and colonial art from across the Americas and develops exhibitions and interdisciplinary collaborations with Duke faculty, students, and staff. She also serves as Adjunct Assistant Professor of Art History and directs the Museum Theory and Practice concentration. McHugh specializes in ancient and colonial Peruvian art and earned her Ph.D. in Art History from the University of California, Los Angeles. Prior to the Nasher, she was the Douglass Foundation Fellow in American Art at The Metropolitan Museum of Art and a Research Assistant at the Getty Research Institute, where she assisted with the production of Golden Kingdoms: Luxury and Legacy in the Ancient Americas, a major exhibition of Pre-Columbian art. She has also held positions in the curatorial and education departments of the Los Angeles County Museum of Art and the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco.

Natalie Musteata -

Natalie Musteata

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Natalie Musteata is a Ph.D. candidate at The Graduate Center, CUNY, where she is completing her dissertation on the post-war history of artist-curated exhibitions. At The New School, she teachesArt in the XXI Century,Art into Action: Socially-Engaged Practices in the 20th Century, andPerformance and Participation in the 20th Century. She has organized conferences and presented papers internationally on the subjects of exhibition history and the intersection of art and politics for such institutions as Centre Georges Pompidou, The Vera List Center for Art & Politics, College Art Association, and The Center for the Humanities, The Graduate Center. She writes regularly for artforum.com, Performa Magazine, and Art21, and is the curator of several exhibitions of socially engaged art, includingUNREST: Revolt against Reason, apexart, 2012, andif I can't dance to it, it's not my revolution, Haverford College, 2014. 

Stephanie Pearson - Lecturer and Researcher

Stephanie Pearson

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A Ph.D. student in the History of Art Department at the University of California, Berkeley, Stephanie Pearson is currently completing her dissertation while living in Berlin and working at the Pergamon Museum. For this museum and the other branches of Berlin’s Antikensammlung, Stephanie writes and translates texts for both the permanent collections and major international exhibitions. She has conducted fieldwork around the Mediterranean for the past seven years — most importantly at Pompeii — including excavation, digital mapping, and 3-D topographical survey. The wall painting in Pompeian houses and other sites across the ancient Mediterranean constitute the focus of her research. Alongside her own studies, Stephanie has also led student advocacy groups in art history and archaeology and regularly organizes colloquia for the Archaeological Institute of America. 

Katherine Rochester - Curatorial Graduate Intern

Katherine Rochester

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Program

CCL Mellon Foundation Seminar 2014

Institution

The Getty Research Institute

Title

Curatorial Graduate Intern

School

Bryn Mawr College

Mentor

Vivien Greene, Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum

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Katherine is a fourth year Ph.D. candidate in the History of Art at Bryn Mawr College, with interests in German Romanticism, twentieth- century European Modernism, Contemporary art, and film. Her dissertation explores the history of early experimental animation, focusing on the work of Lotte Reiniger in Weimar Berlin. Katherine has worked at the Walker Art Center, The Soap Factory, and the Whitney Museum of American Art. From 2011-2013 she was the Curatorial Research Assistant forJason Rhoades, Four Roadsat the Institute of Contemporary Art in Philadelphia. Katherine sits on the Curatorial Committee for the artist-in-residence Program at Eastern State Penitentiary and is a critic at the Philadelphia Weekly and Artforum. She recently presented papers at the Society for Cinema and Media Studies and the Institute of Fine Arts. In the fall, she will begin a yearlong fellowship at the Center for Advanced German and European Studies at the Freie Universität Berlin. 

Akili Tommasino - Associate Curator of Modern and Contemporary Art

Akili Tommasino

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Program

CCL Mellon Foundation Seminar 2014

Institution

The Metropolitan Museum of Art

Title

Associate Curator of Modern and Contemporary Art

School

Harvard University

Mentor

Leah Dickerman, Museum of Modern Art

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Akili Tommasino joined The Metropolitan Museum of Art as Associate Curator of Modern and Contemporary Art in 2021. At The Met, he organized The Facade Commission: Nairy Baghramian, Scratching the Back (2023) and is planning forthcoming 2024 exhibitions Afterlives: Contemporary Art in the Byzantine Crypt (along with Dr. Andrea Achi) and Flight into Egypt: Black Artists and Ancient Egypt, 1876-Now. He was the 2023 Cynthia Hazen Polsky/ Metropolitan Museum of Art Visiting Curator at the American Academy in Rome. Previously, Tommasino held curatorial positions at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, where he organized the inaugural editions of The Banner Project featuring Lauren Halsey (2021) and Robert Pruitt (2019) and co-curated Frank Bowling’s Americas: New York, 1966-75(2022), and at The Museum of Modern Art where he organized Projects 107: Lone Wolf Recital Corps (2017). In 2017, he founded the Prep for Prep/ Sotheby’s Summer Art Academy to foster new generations of cultural leaders and in 2020, along with his wife, Dr. Amanda Herrera Tommasino, he launched Pana Projects, an arts and education initiative in the Caribbean. A former Fulbright Fellow at the Centre Pompidou, Tommasino is a PhD candidate at Harvard University, where he earned his MA and BA.

John Tyson - Assistant Professor

John Tyson

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Program

CCL Mellon Foundation Seminar 2014

Institution

University of Massachusetts

Title

Assistant Professor

School

Emory University

Mentor

Massimiliano Gioni, New Museum

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John A. Tyson is a Ph.D. candidate at Emory University; he holds an MA from Tufts University. Focusing on modern and contemporary art history, John is presently working on a dissertation on the artwork of Hans Haacke (“Hans Haacke: Beyond Systems Aesthetics”). He is additionally interested in African art and art of the African diaspora and presented a paper analyzing Alain Locke’s vision of black art at the 2014 CAA conference. In 2011-2012 John was a Helena Rubinstein Fellow of Critical Studies at the Whitney Museum of American Art’s Independent Study Program. He will be the recipient of a Henry Luce Foundation/ACLS Dissertation Fellowship in American Art during 2014-2015. Committed to education, he was teaching fellow at Harvard University in 2008. John has taught courses on the history of African art, twentieth century art, and the survey of art history at St. John’s University, the Fashion Institute of Technology, and St. Francis College. 

Kjell Wangensteen - Assistant Curator of European Art

Kjell Wangensteen

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Program

CCL Mellon Foundation Seminar 2014

Institution

Indianapolis Museum of Art

Title

Assistant Curator of European Art

School

Princeton University

Mentor

Xavier Salomon, The Frick Collection

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Kjell Wangensteen is a Ph.D. candidate at Princeton University studying Northern Baroque art. His dissertation, "Hyperborean Baroque: Sweden and the European Landscape Tradition, 1644-1718," focuses on the artistic milieu of Sweden's so-called "Era of Greatness." He is a recipient of the Theodore Rousseau Fellowship at the Metropolitan Museum of Art and has held positions at the Philadelphia Museum of Art, the National Gallery of Art, and the J. Paul Getty Museum. He received his B.A. with honors in art history from Yale College, an M.B.A. from the Yale School of Management, and an M.A. from the Williams College Graduate Program in the History of Art. 

Robert Wiesenberger - Associate Curator of Contemporary Projects

Robert Wiesenberger

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Program

CCL Mellon Foundation Seminar 2014

Institution

Clark Art Institute

Title

Associate Curator of Contemporary Projects

School

Columbia University

Mentor

Brett Littman, The Drawing Center

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Robert Wiesenberger is associate curator of contemporary projects at the Clark Art Institute and lecturer in the Williams Graduate Program in the History of Art. His interests span modern and contemporary art, design, and architecture. From 2013–18 he was critic at the Yale School of Art and from 2014–16, he was Stefan Engelhorn Curatorial Fellow at the Harvard Art Museums. He is coauthor of Muriel Cooper (MIT Press, 2017), and his writing has appeared in publications for the Clark Art Institute, Harvard Art Museums, Museum of Modern Art, and Walker Art Center. He holds a B.A. in history and German from the University of Chicago and a Ph.D. in art history from Columbia University.