Welcome to the School of Art

I'm delighted to welcome you to the School of Art at the University of Cincinnati. It's a great privilege to direct one of America's premier Schools of Art, now enjoying its fourth decade in the celebrated College of Design, Architecture, Art, and Planning. Coinciding with last year's commemoration of the 10th anniversary of the Peter Eisenman Aronoff extension to DAAP, the School of Art achieved several transformations of faculty, curricula, galleries, and studios, enhancing our profile in the national and international art communities.

Most of our graduate fine art students have now moved to an entire floor of larger renovated studios and seminar rooms in Scioto Hall on the edge of campus. This has allowed our advanced undergraduate painting and drawing students to take over the old graduate studios in DAAP, securing our commitment to provide private work spaces for our fine art students during their final years here. This year our MFA students will have their thesis shows during May in the Reed and Meyers Galleries on campus, with the intention of increasing community interest in graduate exhibitions. The undergraduate exhibition DAAPWorks, which follows in June, will feature fifty Fine Art seniors in the same two spaces.

This academic year the Cincinnati community has been extensively involved in School of Art activities. Local collectors, Michael Lowe, Andy Stillpass, and Sara Vance participated in the Graduate Painting class advising and buying work from students. In the Fall, the Reed Gallery's "Once Upon A Time In The Midwest" featured some 18 Cincinnati-based galleries and artist groups. The Reed Gallery has just closed "The Weight of the World," an exhibition on art and mourning curated by visiting faculty member Ryan Mulligan and Contemporary Art Center curator Maiza Hixson. In January 2008 Raphaela Platow, the new director of CAC, lectured at the School as part of the annual series of Art History Visiting Scholars. Introduced last year, our Comics classes, taught by local graphic novelist Carol Tyler, continue to be extremely popular with students, and have attracted national press coverage. The School, led by Art History faculty, has been successful in raising over $27,000 for the Jonathan Riess Memorial Scholarship Fund which will support student scholarships. We are particularly grateful to Jennifer Housh for her support in this fund-raising effort.

In the last two years the School of Art has benefited from a strong group of Visiting Assistant Professors joining our faculty and expanding our course offerings. In 2006-07 Michael Carrasco (now at the University of Florida) taught exceptional courses in pre-Columbian art. His successor Teresa Pac has been teaching classes in Medieval art and architecture that have been very popular with our Art History students. Starting last Fall, Jodi Kushins brings her extensive research into Art Foundations learning to inform her teaching in Art Education. With a refreshing inventiveness and enthusiasm, Ryan Mulligan took over managing our Foundations Studio courses last year, continuing in 2007-08 to update the curriculum and engage first year students with local art communities.

The School of Art will be represented at this year's College Art Association conference in Dallas by Professors Theresa Leininger-Miller, Matt Lynch, and myself. I hope we'll have a chance to speak with you if you are attending.

With regards,

Mark Harris
Director, School of Art