Upcoming public talk with Barbara Earl Thomas | Seeking Director of Sustainable Equity & Inclusion

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This issue's header image by Darnell Henderson, Graphic Design MFA '24.

News from New Haven

October 2022

To you, our current faculty and students, esteemed alumni, and greater community, we send word of what's up in New Haven, and ask that you might keep us updated in kind. Email us.
In this issue:

Join us in November to celebrate Barbara Earl Thomas & the new Hopper College windows

 Cross-generational conversation plus a New Haven library exhibition

View of Barbara Earl Thomas’s medallion Education is Freedom installed in the Hopper College Dining Room.

Join us on Monday, November 14 to celebrate the exhibition of Barbara Earl Thomas’s design mock-ups for the Hopper College Window commission at the New Haven Public Library:
 
Barbara Earl Thomas in conversation with
Christopher Paul Jordan


Monday, November 14
4:30 - 5:30PM
Ives Main Library, Community Program Room

133 Elm Street, New Haven

In conjunction with an exhibition of mock-up designs that led to her stained glass installations in Yale’s Grace Hopper College, Barbara Earl Thomas will discuss this recent commission in New Haven which confronts and contextualizes the history of the residential college’s name, which originally honored 19th-century statesman and slavery advocate, John C. Calhoun.

The twelve new windows, designed by Barbara Earl Thomas and Faith Ringgold, honor Grace Hopper’s legacy as a mathematician, computer scientist, teacher, and rear admiral in the U.S. Navy, and reflect cherished aspects of student life and staff contributions to the college community. In addition to the six new stained glass medallions, Thomas designed glass and metal portraits of Grace Hopper and Roosevelt Thomas (for whom the dining hall is named) which were recently installed in two stone niches of the Hopper Dining Hall. These stunning backlit niches, which extend beyond the original scope of the commission, involve an innovative approach to the medium of stained glass, and complete the artist's commission.

Thomas will be in conversation with a second-year MFA student in Painting/Printmaking at the Yale School of Art, Christopher Paul Jordan, whose own practice involves creating paintings, sculptures, and installations as time-capsules for displaced folks to hold, bury, connect, and reintegrate their stories.

Luis Chavez-Brumell, Deputy Director at the New Haven Free Public Library, shared, "The New Haven Free Public Library is delighted to exhibit Barbara Earl Thomas's design mock-ups for the Hopper College window commission to bring an important work to a wider audience. This is an opportunity to celebrate local history in real-time while acknowledging the role art plays in healing and humanizing communities."

The exhibition of Barbara Earl Thomas’ mock-ups of the windows in the Ives Library entrance will be on view from November 14 through December 31, 2022.

This event is hosted as a collaboration between the Yale School of Art, New Haven Free Public Library, Yale University Art Gallery, and Yale University’s Office of the President.


Full information available on the School of Art's public events calendar here >

Rina Banerjee appointed inaugural Post-Colonial Critic at the Yale School of Art

 Banerjee joins MFA students for critiques, lectures & museum walk-throughs

Rina Banerjee. Photo: Erin Patrice O'Brien.

The Yale School of Art is pleased to announce that Rina Banerjee has been appointed the inaugural Post-Colonial Critic for the Fall 2022 semester. An MFA alumna who has been a visiting critic at the School in Painting/Printmaking since 2020, Banerjee will join MFA students across the four areas of graduate study for critiques, lectures and museum walk-throughs, all executed through a post-colonial lens.

As part of her engagement, Banerjee will be joining the School of Art for three visits during the Fall semester, in a new interdepartmental position supported by the Cross-Cultural Curriculum Fund. “Rina approached me with this idea and I considered how she could have the most impact on students and faculty,” Kymberly Pinder, Stavros Niarchos Foundation Dean, shared of Banerjee’s appointment. “The critic’s role in art school is to assess an object and then provide questions about it that deepen the artist’s inquiry into what they are doing and its impact. Each critic has their lens—which is why we offer so many perspectives to our students.”

Rina Banerjee lives and works in New York City. She was born in Kolkata, India, lived briefly in Manchester and London before arriving to Queens, New York. Although Banerjee has been living in the United States for 50 years, she still draws the perception that she is foreign and other. Drawing on her multinational background and personal history as an immigrant, Banerjee’s work focuses on ethnicity, race, migration and American Diasporic histories. The artist’s sculptures feature a wide range of globally sourced materials, textiles, colonial/historical and domestic objects while her drawings are inspired by Indian miniature and Chinese silk paintings and Aztec drawings.

Learn more in the full news item here >

Seeking Director of Sustainable Equity & Inclusion as part of multi-year DEIB plan

 Diversity, Equity, Inclusion, & Belonging plan includes a new role, now hiring!

Click to access full application information for Director of Sustainable Equity & Inclusion role

Alexander Walk. Photo: Andrew Hurley.

As part of our multi-year plan for Diversity, Equity, Inclusion, and Belonging, we are actively seeking our first full-time Director of Sustainable Equity and Inclusion to lead long-term systemic change work at the Yale School of Art.

Just one of many changes focused on bettering the experience within the academic, curricular, administrative, and student life engagements, the Director of Sustainable Equity and Inclusion will oversee the continued development and implementation of the School’s mission to uphold values of diversity, equity, belonging, respect, and anti-racism. The Director will integrate new and existing initiatives and procedures into a cohesive platform that supports the school’s diverse community, implementing a vision of creating programs to improve the quality of student life and academic engagement, reconceptualize the curriculum to include Non-Western forms of art-making and knowledge production and build a sustainable culture of equity and anti-racism amongst students, faculty, and staff.

As a leading graduate institution of contemporary art and design, the Yale School of Art recognizes its responsibility, privilege, and opportunity to contribute to culture and creativity in society at large. The School commits to uphold principles of anti-racism, equity, diversity, and inclusion as integral to its mission, and will work towards achieving an educational environment that rejects inequity, advances social justice, and amplifies historically underrepresented voices.

We aim to realize a vibrant, equitable, and sustainable future for our School that assures accountability to our espoused values and principles of belonging for all students, faculty, staff, and alumni. This critical unit plan requires Yale to confront violent histories upon which our institution continues to benefit.

Find full information on the Director of Sustainable Equity and Inclusion role, and the application here >

New roles filled as staff support strengthens

 Join us in welcoming Carole Amarakoon and Ryan Martins

Left: Carole Amarakoon. Right: Ryan Martins.

As the fall semester continues, we’re actively expanding the School of Art staff, bolstering support structures for our faculty and students. We’re excited to welcome two wonderful new staff members as they join us in new roles that will serve to strengthen our incredible staff in the crucial work they do facilitating our academic programs.

On October 31, Carole Amarakoon will begin her role as Senior Administrative Assistant supporting the Sculpture and Photography programs. Carole has been working at Yale University since 2017. An experienced administrative professional & program coordinator, Carole has a background in non-profits, startups and the life sciences. In her most recent role, Carole coordinated the Epilepsy fellowship program while providing administrative support to a team of world-renowned Neurologists at Yale School of Medicine.

Carole joins us as the first Senior Administrative Assistant to support the areas of Sculpture and Photography, as Kris Mandelbaum becomes Senior Administrative Assistant for Painting/Printmaking and the Galleries and Larissa Hall transitions to support Graphic Design and Interdepartmental initiatives.

On November 7, Ryan Martins will start his position as the School of Art’s first full-time IT Support Technician, overseeing the management and support of technology-based mediums for art-making, as they continue to expand. Ryan was previously with Yale University’s Next Generation Network project where he worked closely with offices and labs across campus in order to smoothly transition all networking equipment. His passion and expertise is deep-rooted in the Macintosh ecosystem. Having worked for Apple Inc. before coming to Yale, he served as a Senior Technician—addressing any and all Apple related issues, from the extraordinary to the mundane. 

In the past, IT at the School had been supported by a central Yale-ITS position with time split between three organizations at Yale, so we are very excited to be welcoming a technology professional whose time will be fully dedicated to IT needs at the School of Art.
            
Please join us in welcoming Carole and Ryan to the School of Art staff!

Celebrating two years of MacArthur alums

 Congrats to Tavares Strachan '06 on his 2022 MacArthur fellowship

Tavares Strachan, MFA '06. Photo: John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation.

Earlier this month, the Yale School of Art was excited to learn that Tavares Strachan, 2006 MFA alum of the Sculpture program, was one of twenty-five individuals named a 2022 MacArthur Fellow by the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation.

This marks two years in a row that recent Yale School of Art alums have been named as fellows, after Jordan Casteel, MFA '14, was awarded a MacArthur in 2021. While no alums were named in 2020 or 2019, Titus Kaphar, MFA '06, was named a MacArthur Fellow in 2018 and Yale School of Art alums have historically been recognized as what were formerly called MacArthur "geniuses" since the fellowship program began in 1981.

Strachan's practice merges scientific, historical, and aesthetic investigations in projects that exemplify the power of human ingenuity, with extensively researched works that weave through various media and disciplines. 

Themes of visibility and invisibility run through Strachan’s practice, as manifested in his endeavor to lift up the contributions of marginalized figures in history who have been left out of official records. Through a rare combination of historical and scientific inquiry made visible through an artistic practice that reaches across media, Strachan is creating work that inspires curiosity and pushes the limits of what is possible in art.

Learn more about the artist on his MacArthur Fellow page here >

School of Art alums are invited to submit events and exhibitions to be added to the new School of Art in the World calendar, as well as publications and initiatives to be archived on the wiki.

Members of the public are invited to subscribe to the School of Art in the World calendar, and visit the full wiki archive.
 

Thank you for dedication to and interest in the Yale School of Art.

We welcome your support of the school and students, and we are grateful to the many alum and friends who generously donate. Give here >

We appreciate your support!
 
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