On Thursday, October 29, the UWM Department of Art History faculty, staff, and close friends of Andrea Stone gathered at the North Star Bistro in Shorewood to celebrate the life of Andrea Stone with Andrea’s sisters, Sue Marshall and Karen Stone.
In Memoriam: Andrea Joyce Stone (1949-2014)
Andrea J. Stone, Professor emeritus of Art History, University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee died on February 18, 2014, of complications from a terminal illness. Andrea was a renowned Maya scholar and archaeologist, dedicated teacher and highly regarded colleague.
Andrea received her B.F.A. in studio art from the University of Florida in 1974. She then attended the University of Texas, Austin, where she initiated her career interest in Maya art under the mentorship of Dr. Linda Schele, the pioneer of revisionist Maya scholarship. There she earned her M.A. in 1977, her thesis title: Jaina Style Figurines: A Study in Gesture and Pose, and in 1983 completed her Ph.D., her dissertation: The Zoomorphs of Quirigua, Guatemala.
A well-respected archaeologist, Andrea conducted field work throughout Central America including Yucatan, Mexico, Belize, Guatemala, Honduras, El Salvador, and Nicaragua. She also traveled to Peru and Bolivia. Her transformative research garnered recognition from Mayan archaeologists and scholars with whom she collaborated. Andrea’s dedicated scholarship resulted in three major books: Images from the Underworld: Naj Tunich and the Tradition of Maya Cave Painting, (University of Texas, Austin, 1995), an authoritative source on Maya cave art; with Marc Zender, Reading Maya Art: A Hieroglyphic Guide to Maya Painting and Sculpture, (2011, Thames and Hudson, London), an interpretive contextual study of Maya hieroglyphs; and in progress at her death, Rock Art at the Crossroads: the Carved Boulders of Lake Güija, El Salvador (future publication by Universidad Nacional de El Salvador). In tribute to her mentor, Andrea edited the book Heart of Creation: The Mesoamerican World and the Legacy of Linda Schele. She contributed essays to edited books and wrote numerous articles for academic journals. In addition to her landmark publications, Andrea received numerous awards and fellowships from various institutions including Dumbarton Oaks, The Foundation for the Advancement of Mesoamerican Research, Inc., The National Geographic Society, and a Fulbright-Hays Fellowship.
In 1984, Andrea Stone began her thirty-year teaching career in the Department of Art History at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, where she also served as department chair from 1999-2001 and from 2003-2005. She taught various courses including Precolumbian art, Maya art, Mesoamerican art, African, New World and Oceanic Art and Architecture, and African Art. A dedicated teacher, Andrea enthusiastically shared with students her encyclopedic knowledge of Maya and Mesoamerican art, introducing them to the exciting arena of Precolumbian art. In her teaching as in her archaeological research, Andrea held the highest standards. Andrea will be remembered as a generous and compassionate, sometimes tenacious, and always liberal minded, colleague.