Undergraduate Studies Update

Last year, we returned fully to the joys of in-person teaching. This was a welcome return for many of us, and despite some residual weariness from the pandemic, that return reminded us of the importance of those moments of shared absorption and connection that occur in an art history classroom. In this, we were – and remain – well supported by the superlative museums and special collections at Penn State, which offered our undergraduates opportunities not only for hands-on work and immersive, close looking but also many occasions to learn from the University’s curators and conservators.

With the loosening of COVID-19-related travel restrictions, our undergraduate courses also traveled beyond campus: Cassie Mansfield’s undergraduate seminar (ARTH350w) to MoMA, and Aaron Ziolkowski’s contemporary art survey to Dia Beacon and Storm King, to name but two such trips. Some of our undergraduates traveled further still: to Italy, France, and New Zealand, among other places, where they spent a semester or summer session studying art history abroad, and seeing artworks in person.

Many of our undergraduates shared the fruits of their research, not just in Borland’s classrooms but at conferences. In what has become something of a tradition, our art history majors presented papers at the Southeastern College Art Conference (SECAC), convened last year in Baltimore, on topics ranging from Afro-Cuban surrealism (Rónan Shaw), and 1930s American print (Jordana Bach), to Black leadership through the Black lens (Sureaya Inusah). This fall Rónan Shaw and Hails Reilly presented at the same conference in Richmond. At the 2023 Intercollegiate Art History Symposium – another fixture of our undergraduate program – one of our senior majors, Peter Marcellino, presented his findings on the Kasubi Royal Tombs in Uganda.

We had a host of majors, minors, architectural history minors, and recipients of the Museum Studies certificate graduate this past May – 66 in all! Some received awards for their academic achievements and commitments: Katie McRury, received the Diane and Craig Zabel Scholarship in Architectural History, awarded to an outstanding undergraduate minoring in that field; and Abby Mikalauskas, the Alumni Society Scholarship. In further recognition of her academic accomplishments, Abby was selected as our department’s student marshal at graduation. Abby is now pursuing an M.A. in art history at the University of Oklahoma, with a particular focus on the Indigenous art of North America.

In late October, Robin Thomas and Dan Zolli led an informational workshop for undergraduates applying to art history graduate programs. The Undergraduate Committee is also planning a series of art history job-related talks, which we expect to feature alumni of our program, in fields ranging from curatorial, and museum education, to conservation, to non-profit work. One of our most energetic undergraduate majors, Hails Reilly, has taken the reins for the Art History Club and another, Megan Neely, is serving as vice president of the Arts & Architecture Student Council.