The Grapevine

A MEMORIAL SYMPOSIUM FOR PROF. MARLENE S. PARK (1931-2010)
Friday, October 21, 2011, 1:00-6:00 P.M. in Segal Theater (1st floor)
The Graduate School and University Center of the City University of New York
365 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY 10016
212-817-8035 / Ph.D. Program in Art History
www.gc.cuny.edu

The Ph.D. Program in Art History at the Graduate School of the City University of New York is sponsoring a symposium to honor the life, scholarship, and mentoring of Prof. Marlene S. Park (1931-2010). Prof. Park was an art historian who specialized in 20th-century American art and was particularly known for her work on American art of the 1930s, art of the New Deal, and public art. She taught at John Jay College of Criminal Justice, CUNY for over thirty years and was a member of the faculty of the CUNY Ph.D. Program in Art History for over twenty of those years. As a member of the CUNY Art History doctoral faculty, she taught a variety of courses and mentored and advised countless students, many of whom have emerged as important scholars, educators, and curators in their own right.

The symposium will feature a dozen presenters, all of them former graduate students who studied with Prof. Park. The speakers will include Mary Abell, Michele Cohen, Russell Flinchum, Ilene Susan Fort, Valerie Ann Leeds, Herbert R. Hartel, Jr., Ruth Pasquine, R. Sarah Richardson, Will South, Susan Valdes-Dapena, and James Wechsler. Gerald Markowitz, Distinguished Professor of History at John Jay College of Criminal Justice, and William H. Gerdts, Professor Emeritus of Art History at the CUNY Graduate School, were good friends and close colleagues of Prof. Park and will also speak at the symposium.

For more information, please contact co-organizers Michele Cohen at mcohen.art@gmail.com or Herb Hartel at hartel70@aol.com. More information is available at the web site of the CUNY Ph.D. Program in Art History at http://web.gc.cuny.edu/dept/arthi/.

Schedule of the conference:

1:00-1:30 P.M. Welcoming remarks

Kevin Murphy, Professor of Art History and Chair of the Ph.D. Program in Art History at the CUNY Graduate Center

Gerald Markowitz, Distinguished Professor of History, John Jay College, CUNY

William H. Gerdts, Professor Emeritus of Art History in the Ph.D. Program in Art History at the CUNY Graduate Center

Michele Cohen, Co-organizer of the Memorial Symposium

1:30-3:10 P.M. Early Modernism in America

Valerie Ann Leeds, independent curator, “At the Brink of Modernism: Robert Henri and Ireland”

Will South, Chief Curator, Dayton Art Institute, “”Synchromism and Synaesthesia: A Not-So-Lucky Strike””

Ruth Pasquine, independent scholar, “The Theosophical Paintings of Emil Bisttram”

Russell Flinchum, Archivist at The Century Association, “Why Teague Matters”

Mary Abell, Chair of the Department of Art, Dowling College, “The Teaching and Critical Reception of Edwin Dickinson”

3:20 -4:20 P.M. American Art during the 1930s

R. Sarah Richardson, Hollis Taggart Galleries, “Historic America and the Precisionist Impulse”

Ilene Susan Fort, Curator of American Painting and Sculpture, Los Angeles County Museum of Art, “The United States Education of a Mexican Surrealist: Bridget Tichenor”

James Wechsler, independent scholar, “Reddening the Record: Revolutionary Art Between the World Wars”

4:30-5:30 P.M, Issues in Public Art

Susan Valdes-Dapena, independent scholar, “‘Painting Section’ in Black and White: Ethel Magafan’s ‘Cotton Pickers'”

Michele Cohen, independent scholar and public art consultant, “Civilization: Its Rise and Fall in New Deal Murals”

Herbert R. Hartel, Jr., John Jay College, CUNY, “The Sculptural Paintings of Abraham Joel Tobias: The Shaped Canvas in 1930s New York”

5:30 P.M. Closing remarks