Alumni Award Recipient
In September of 2025, the department welcomed Janalee Emmer back to Penn State as our Alumni Award recipient. Dr. Emmer completed her Ph.D. in 2009 under the supervision of Prof. Nancy Locke, and since 2021 has been director of the Brigham Young University Museum of Art. A specialist in nineteenth-century art, her research has focused on women artists in France. Before becoming director, she was a curator and head of education at the BYU Museum, and held previous teaching posts at Ohio Wesleyan University, the University of Tennessee, and Bucknell University. She has curated numerous exhibitions, including Far Out: The West Re-Seen, Photography by Victoria Sambunaris, Danae Mattes: Where the River Widens, Brian Kershisnik: The Difficult Part, Patrick Dougherty: Windswept, and A Studio of Her Own: Women Artists in the Collection. Under her leadership, the BYU Museum of Art has brought world-class art exhibitions to campus, such as Spain and the Hispanic World: Treasures from the Hispanic Society, showcasing 163 objects spanning 4,000 years of art, and The Sense of Beauty: Six Centuries of Paintings from Museo de Arte de Ponce.
During her visit, Dr. Emmer gave an inspiring talk about her career path and the value of art in society. She met with department faculty and students, toured the new Palmer Museum, and attended the College of Arts and Architecture Alumni Award ceremony. It was a privilege for the department to recognize her many past accomplishments and her ongoing contributions to our field.
Alumni Updates
Jessica Boehman, M.A. (2002)
Jessica Boehman was recently named chair of the Humanities Department at CUNY LaGuardia Community College, the largest department in the college, where she oversees ten programs, including the Fine Arts (with Art History) program.
Sydney Braatz, B.A. (2022)
Sydney Braatz has been at the Butler Institute of American Art in Ohio for two years as their membership director. Annual donations reached a record high, and she has held events with 100+ attendees since starting this position.
Alena Brown, B.A. (2016)
In 2025, Alena (Howe) Brown moved back to the east coast, got married, and started her new role as the director of donor relations and annual giving at the University of North Carolina School of Education in Chapel Hill, NC. She and her husband founded a tangible marketing company, Stickymade, with a goal of helping nonprofits and small businesses promote their brands, missions, and products.
Marlise Brown, B.A. (2008), M.A. (2011)
Marlise Brown joined the Allen Memorial Art Museum in 2023, where she now serves as associate curator of European and American art before 1900. In 2024, she reinstalled the Allen’s permanent galleries of early modern European art and co-curated an exhibition on ancient Mediterranean and Western Asian art. Most recently at the Allen, she curated the exhibition Picturing Paris: Monet and the Modern City. Prior to joining the Allen, she co-curated an installation at The Metropolitan Museum of Art that reconsidered racialized porcelain figurines in the museum’s Jack and Belle Linsky collection. In 2025, she also authored a catalogue essay for the exhibition Monstrous Beauty: A Feminist Revision of Chinoiserie at The Metropolitan Museum of Art.
Theresa Kutasz Christensen, Ph.D. (2018); M.A. (2008)
Last year Theresa Kutasz Christensen developed a practical course in provenance research methods and best practice for the International Foundation for Art Research. She is currently a research fellow at Winterthur Museum, Gardens, and Library and is contracted as interpretive curator for the Toledo Museum of Art's upcoming exhibition Rembrandt to Goya, which opens in Seoul, South Korea, in March 2026.
Gillian Greenhill Hannum, Ph.D. (1986); M.A. (1981)
Gillian Greenhill Hannum's most recent book project, Pedagogical Reckoning: Decolonizing and Degendering the Art Historical Canon in the Classroom and Museum (with Sooran Choi, University of Vermont), was published in September 2025 by Vernon Press. She continues to teach part-time at Manhattanville University and to be involved with the Print Club of New York, the Print Club of Albany, and the International Print Collectors' Societies, writing and editing newsletters.
Frida Kahlo, M.A. (1971)
Frida Kahlo is my pseudonym and my collective, Guerrilla Girls, opened an exhibition at the Getty Research Institute in Los Angeles on November 18, 2025. The Guerilla Girls were also featured in an article in the New York Times on September 15, 2025.
Yasmeen Khazindar, B.A. (2024)
Yasmeen Khazindar started a master’s program at University of Arts London (UAL), specifically at the Chelsea College of Arts. She is completing her master’s in curation and collection, focusing on works that interact with archives and by diasporic artists (primarily SWANA or Middle Eastern artists).
Melissa L. Mednicov, Ph.D. (2013); M.A. (2007)
Melissa L. Mednicov's second monograph, Jewish American Identity and Pop Art, was published by Routledge in 2024 and will be available fall 2025 in paperback. Her co-written and edited volume, Monumental: The Art of David Adickes, was published by Texas A & M University Press in 2025. She was promoted to professor at Sam Houston State University in fall 2025.
Marshall N. Price, M.A. (1997)
Marshall N. Price is the chief curator and Nancy A. Nasher and David J. Haemisegger Curator of Modern and Contemporary Art at the Nasher Museum of Art at Duke University. He recently organized Second Nature: Photography in the Age of the Anthropocene that opened at the Nasher and traveled to the Cantor Arts Center, Stanford; the Anchorage Museum, Alaska; and will conclude at the Kemper Museum of Contemporary Art, Kansas City, in 2026. He is also adjunct faculty in Duke's Department of Art, Art History and Visual Studies, where he teaches on the history and theory of curatorial practice.
Angela Jarrad (Fuentes) Sedlacek, B.A. (2006)
Angela Sedlacek, a product manager in technology, reported her Penn State education and work ethic helped her transition across industries. The research and critical thinking plus imagination mixed with openness to creation are what helped her succeed.
Alicia Skeath, M.A. (2020)
Alicia Skeath co-curated an exhibition at the Palmer Museum of Art titled Public Spaces/Private Lives, on view September 11–December 21, 2025, in the Greider Family Gallery. She co-curated this exhibition with Keisha Oliver, graduate assistant and doctoral candidate in art education and African American and diaspora studies. This special exhibition presented a selection of works on paper to explore how we live, navigate, and express ourselves in both private and public settings.
Tom Waynick, M.A.(1967)
Tom Waynick served as Naval officer, USS Duxbury Bay; worked in Corning Glass Works management; and was president, Jordan Manufacturing. He retired in 2021.
Lindsay Wells, B.A. (2013)
Lindsay Wells has been working in Los Angeles since completing her art history Ph.D. at the University of Wisconsin-Madison in 2021. In addition to teaching for UCLA Extension, she recently began a new position as a 2025-26 Barbara Thom Post-Doctoral Fellow at the Huntington Library. Her research focuses on the visual culture of botany, gardening, and imperialism in nineteenth-century Britain.