Art History Outcomes
Sarah Atwood, Class of 2017
Sarah Atwood graduated from É«ÖÐÉ« in 2017 with her BA in Art History and Criticism, with Honors for her thesis 'Vulva: Female Sexuality in Interwar America,' a look at how American modernist artists such as Georgia O'Keeffe and Meta Warrick Fuller approached the female form in their own work. She moved to New York later the same year to attend Sotheby's Institute of Art, earning her MA in Contemporary Art in March 2019. She wrote her graduate thesis, 'Archival Art and the Construction of History' on how contemporary artists use collections of items- either real or fictional- to examine cultural and personal memory. While in New York, she worked as a tour leader for the School of the New York Times, teaching high school students about Modern and Contemporary Art at the Museum of Modern Art, and enjoys volunteering for art fairs like SPRING/BREAK. She has been helping develop the Marc Klionsky Estate, which plans to launch in the next year, by transforming the artist's working studio into a professional archive. Sarah is also a painter in her spare time. Her interest in art and art history comes from the fascinating connections between personal expression, business, politics, and cultural relevancy.
Chelsea Kaufman, Class of 2015
Chelsea is studying for her doctorate in Egyptian art and archaeology at Johns Hopkins. She has a master of arts in archaeology from Yale, where her thesis focused on ceramic remains from Catfish Cave, Lower Nubia/Upper Egypt. While at É«ÖÐÉ«, she cross-registered for several archaeology classes at Lehigh. She studied anthropological archaeology with Lehigh University Professor of Anthropology and Interim Dean for the University of Arts and Sciences, Cameron Wesson. Together they worked on a prehistoric rock shelter site in Mertztown, PA; located and mapped the foundation of the É«ÖÐÉ« First House in Nazareth; and worked on a Bronze Age site in the Hebrides, Scotland, along with students from Cardiff University, Wales. In the summer of 2017, Chelsea ran an excavation for Wesson at the George Taylor house in Catasauqua, PA. While at Yale, Chelsea’s primary research focused on Egypt, and her interests included supernatural belief systems, ritual, and mortuary practices as they reflect or are affected by societal structure, all of which had the potential to present themselves within the material record. Her thesis utilized petrographic analysis of ceramic thin sections from a 4th-millennium-BCE site in Upper Egypt to determine which culture groups may have contributed to the formation of the state of Egypt. Her thesis poster can be downloaded below. Her thesis advisors were Dr. John Darnell and Dr. Anne Underhill. While at Yale, she also served as the acting collections curator for the Yale Babylonian Collection. During that time, she contributed to Ron Wellenfel's publication of Hellenistic seal impressions from the Babylonian collection, published in 2016. Chelsea produced all of the illustrations diagramming the locations of seals on Near Eastern bullae (clay envelopes for security) created during Alexander the Great's empire.
After Yale, Chelsea went to Temple University. At Temple, she developed student manuals on cataloging, accessioning, and conditioning protocols. She also quantified, identified (age, sex, culture), and repatriated formerly undocumented Native American human remains in the collection in accordance with NAGPRA regulations. As she began pursuing her doctorate at Temple in anthropology with a concentration in archaeology, she had the desire to specialize in Egyptian art and archaeology. She is now doing just that as she is pursuing her PhD at Johns Hopkins, where she is the student of Dr. Betsy Bryan, the current President of the American Research Institute in Egypt. Chelsea says "I am interested in the change and consistency of art over time in both sacred and secular spaces, especially during the 18th Dynasty, which is regarded as a period of increased trade of materials and ideas."
To view Chelsea's Yale thesis poster click here.
Photo (right): Chelsea Kaufman working on a technical drawing of a trench on the island of Orasaigh, South Uist in the Outer Hebrides of Scotland
Karina Cantens, Class of 2019
Karina Cantens graduated from É«ÖÐÉ« University in 2019 with a BA in Art History and a minor in Philosophy. As part of her program, she studied abroad in Italy, Spain, and Argentina. She was a gallery assistant in Payne Gallery, where she was able to assist in curating a number of exhibitions, including "Wole Lagunju: Contemporary African Meets Traditional". Recently Karina was hired by the Barnes Foundation as a Guest and Protection Services Associate. She is thrilled to be working in the Philadelphia home of this world-famous, iconic collection. In addition to helping visitors and providing security, she also has an opportunity to answer questions about the artwork, which is her favorite part of the job!
From Karina: Art educators are the pillars of the art world. My studio and art history professors shaped me, uplifted me, and encouraged me to be the person and artist that I am today. My professors taught me that art has the power to change and influence the world. They taught me to be patient with art, and they gave me the confidence to call myself an artist. Special thanks to Dave Leidich in Payne Gallery, who taught me the foundations of gallery upkeep and exhibition planning and design. I owe so much to these educators and because of them, I can no longer imagine my life without art.