MA, Class of 2006

Jackie Killian completed a rewarding experience last spring as the Eleanor Norcross Fellow in Decorative Arts at the Fitchburg Art Museum where she assisted in the acquisition of a Louis C. Tiffany Favrile glass vase and a Philadelphia Rococo silver cream jug. In the fall she was a co-juror of the 68th annual Audubon Artists Society exhibition held at the Salamagundi Art Club.

Kate Montlack relocated to Cleveland, Ohio at the end of September where she is registrar and manager of museum records at the Museum of Contemporary Art.

Monica Obniski recently passed her preliminary doctoral exams in architectural and design history at the University of Illinois at Chicago. Her dissertation will examine the postwar design projects of Alexander Girard. Monica was also promoted to assistant curator of American decorative arts at the Art Institute of Chicago, where she works on decorative arts from the colonial era to the 20th century. She will return to the Wolfsonian later this year for a short-term fellowship on “Design and Health.”

Rebecca Tilles is a curatorial research associate for decorative arts and sculpture in the Art of Europe department at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston where she has worked since 2007. In addition to assisting with recent exhibitions including Symbols of Power: Napoleon and the Art of the Empire Style, 1800-1815 (2007) and Splendor and Elegance: European Decorative Arts and Drawings from the Horace Wood Brock Collection (2009), she was most recently involved with the installation of a new gallery dedicated to 18th-century European decorative arts in conjunction with the opening of the New American Wing. She is currently working on the reinstallation of 18th-century English period rooms which will open next year.

MA, Class of 2005

Jen Larson is currently the collections specialist for the Center for Book Arts, where she has compiled an in-house database and online digital collections catalogue of the Center’s fine art, reference materials, and institutional archive. She is also serving as the assistant curator for the Center’s upcoming exhibition, Multiple, Limited, Unique: Highlights from the Permanent Collection of the Center for Book Arts. Jen is a project archivist at the Parsons The New School: Kellen Design Archives, where she is processing the archival holdings of the award-winning designer and educator, Michael Kalil (1943-1991).

Martina Grünewald completed her doctoral studies at the University of Applied Arts Vienna. She successfully defended her dissertation “Doing Design, Practicing Thrift: Material Culture and the Social Construction of Value at Auctions in Vienna” in November 2010. Martina thanks the BGC community for the lasting support shown to her throughout her years of research and study.

MA, Class of 2000

Ayesha Abdur-Rahman has launched Lanka Decorative Arts (LDA), a society for the study and appreciation of the decorative arts of Sri Lanka. The LDA will organize a bi-annual international Symposium on the Decorative Arts of Sri Lanka: The Interconnected World of Eurasia in Colombo from August 21 through 31, 2011. Anyone wishing to attend, or know more can email lankadecorativearts@gmail.com, or visit lankadecorativearts.org for updates.

Caroline Hannah gave a talk last fall entitled, “Henry Varnum Poor, Wharton Esherick and Modern Craft in the USA,” at the Second Annual Anne d’Harnoncourt Symposium, held at the University of Pennsylvania in conjunction with the exhibition, Wharton Esherick and the Birth of the American Modern. She also spoke at the College Art Association’s annual conference in New York this year, as part of a panel organized by the Center for Craft, Creativity, and Design. She is currently teaching a course, “Craft and Modern Domesticity”, at Parsons School of Design and continues to work as a freelance writer and researcher, while writing her dissertation on Poor’s craft and design.