Faculty News Continued
- Sheila ffolliott was one of three speakers in the plenary panel on “Recent Trends: Women in the Renaissance” at the 2006 meeting of the Renaissance Society of America. She also participated in two conferences in Europe in September: the first at the University of Copenhagen on women patrons of the Renaissance; the second in Mainz, Germany, on Medici women art patrons. ffolliott contributed an essay on Italian women patrons for the catalogue of the exhibition, Italian Women Artists from Renaissance to Baroque, which will open in March at the National Museum of Women in the Arts in Washington, D.C. She hopes to host a special tour of the exhibition – watch for your invitation!
- Carol Mattusch has been on leave, pursuing a series of important projects relating to her studies of the buried cities of Mt. Vesuvius. She was the 2006 recipient of a significant award for her book, The Villa dei Papiri at Herculaneum: Life and Afterlife of a Sculpture Collection (Los Angeles: Getty Publications, 2005). Mattusch is also preparing a major exhibition expected to open at the National Gallery of Art in October 2008, Ancient Romans around the Bay of Naples. The exhibition will include about 100 Roman sculptures, paintings, mosaics, and luxury arts from Pompeii, Herculaneum, Oplontis, Stabiae, and Baiae, and about 40 18th- and 19th-century works related to the discovery of the ancient sites around the Bay of Naples, their publication, and their cultural impact on Europe and America. Happily, she returned this spring to teaching at Mason, where she has been active in developing the art collections on campus.
- Lawrence Butler led two overseas trips last year: a spring break trip to Istanbul and eastern Turkey (see related article, page 2) and the Cambridge University history summer school program. He also wrote an article on Silk Road art in American museum collections for East-West Connections: Review of Asian Studies and cowrote a guide to American art museums, The Museum Experience: East (Thomson Wadsworth, 2007). Last spring, he gave a series of lectures on Chinese ports of call in maritime Southeast Asia at the Smithsonian and is preparing an article on the cult of the Chinese admiral Zheng He based on those lectures. He has been invited back to Istanbul next year to give a paper on the Hagia Sophia and plans to lead a study tour of the Chinese Silk Road in June.