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.
