Two longtime Mason professors retire

Drs. Marion Deshmukh and Ellen Todd

At the end of spring 2015 semester two highly regarded members of the History and
Art History department, Drs. Marion Deshmukh and Ellen Todd, retired after many productive years at George Mason. Professor Deshmukh served as chair of the Department of History and Art History for more than a decade and played a major role in bringing the Phi Beta Kappa honor society to George Mason University. She received the David King Teaching Excellence Award in 2010 and the George Mason University Alumni Faculty Member of the Year Award in 2013.

Professor Deshmukh received her PhD from Columbia University and specialized in German cultural history and the history of art. Her publications include a book, Max Liebermann, Modern Painting and Modern Germany, numerous articles, and exhibit catalogs such as Iconoclash! Political Imagery from the Fall of the Berlin Wall to Unification. She also curated numerous exhibits including Postcards from the Trenches: German and American Artists Visualize the Great War.

Dr. Ellen Todd had a more than thirty-year-long career of teaching and scholarship at Mason where she offered courses on U.S. Art, 19th-century European Art, Women and Gender in U.S. Art and the Museum. Also a member of the Cultural Studies and the Women and Gender Studies faculties, she served as undergraduate and graduate director for the Art History program. In 1993, she published a seminal book on American realism, The "New Woman" Revised: Painting and Gender Politics on Fourteenth Street (University of California Press). Her service to the department was unparalleled and she is valued as a scholar, teacher, colleague, mentor, and friend.