Greetings from the Art History Program. We have had a wonderful year and, once again, I have the privilege of sharing with you some of our recent accomplishments. As always, it is the support of our current and past students that helps make all this work possible. Despite recent budget cuts, we are doing our best to continue growing the program and bring our students another exciting year of courses and opportunities.
Our master’s degree program is now entering its fourth year and is still growing. We are up to an ideal number of approximately 20 master’s students. Many of these students are former Mason undergraduates who have returned to us, ready to take on the challenges of graduate work, and even more have come to us from programs outside Mason.
In addition, we just finished securing a deal with the online image database Artstor. In the very near future, it will host thousands of scanned images that were previously only available through the Art History Program’s slide collection. Now those images will be freely available to all Mason faculty and students. All you will need is a Mason e-mail address, and you may use those images for any educational purpose.
Professors Michele Greet and Larry Butler have returned from a year of research leave, where they have been hard at work on new and continuing projects. I am happy to report that Ellen Todd and I have been awarded research leave for the spring semester to give us a chance to work on our book projects as well. With all this research going on, you may be interested in hearing more about what has been keeping us so busy. Look in the Faculty News section in this newsletter for some of the specifics regarding our work or, as always, feel free to ask us about our work.
Speaking of staying in contact, I invite all current and former students to join our growing community of friends on the Friends of Art History, George Mason University group site on Facebook. We’ll do our best to keep you informed of upcoming events or important news.
Also, please mark your calendars for Thursday, March 4. The Art History and Art and Visual Technology departments are pleased to announce our sponsorship of a fourth public lecture in the Visual Voices series. This year’s lecture will be given by the respected curator of sculpture and decorative arts from the National Gallery of Art, Mary L. Levkoff. I am sure it will be captivating. The talk will be held at the Harris Theater, and no tickets will be necessary. Please visit today.gmu.edu as we get closer to March 4 to confirm place and time. We hope to see you there.
Robert DeCaroli
Director, Art History Program