News

Saintly: Christian Women in Early Modern Europe

Thursday, April 11 2024 - Thursday, May 9 2024

Emile H. Mathis Art Gallery

Saintly: Christian Women in Early Modern Europe, showcases our unique opportunity for students to complete a Master’s Thesis in the form of an exhibition. Saintly explores the relationship between laywomen and holy women from the Christian canon by examining depictions of the Virgin Mary and Women Saints in works from the 16th through 18th centuries. Curated by graduate student Nikki Ranney, this thesis exhibition brings perspective to the religious lives of women during this period and the expectations to which they were subjected.

April 11 through May 9, 2024

Opening Reception: April 11th from 5 to 7pm with curator remarks at 5:30pm

UWM Emile H. Mathis Gallery
Mitchell Hall 170
3203 N. Downer Ave.
Milwaukee, WI 53211

What the Folk? American Objects from the UWM Art Collection

Thursday, April 11 2024 - Thursday, May 9 2024

Emile H. Mathis Art Gallery

Accompanying a course on American Folk Art taught by the UWM Art History Department, What the Folk? explores the terminology and history that have shaped understandings of folk art, self-taught art, Americana, outsider art, and visionary art. It asks which artists and objects are included in such categories, why people have invested in the concept of folk art, and how we can uncover the stories of American artists whose work deserves greater attention, no matter what it is called.

Co-curated by Dr. Kay Wells and Leigh Mahlik

April 11 through May 9, 2024

Opening Reception: April 11th from 5 to 7pm with curator remarks at 5:30pm

UWM Emile H. Mathis Gallery
Mitchell Hall 170
3203 N. Downer Ave.
Milwaukee, WI 53211

John Stiff American Coverlet

John Stiff American Coverlet Object #: 2019.005.16 Carly Neil, Mathis Art Gallery Graduate Student Intern Fall 2023 This coverlet was accessioned into the Mathis Gallery collection in 2019. It was woven in 1843 by John Stiff in Milford, Pennsylvania. It… Read More

Glass from the Past: An Ancient Roman Amphoriskos in the UWM Art Collection

Katie Batagianis In the ancient Roman world, glass was ubiquitous.  It was used to create jewelry and other ornaments, to form the designs in floor mosaics, and to insulate the famed Roman baths.[1]  It was also an extremely popular material… Read More

Article Features Art History Student Maggie Kennedy

UWM student’s research explores the human mind, World History Magazine Read article

Graduate Student Mirel Crumb Presents at SECAC 2023

Mirel Crumb visiting the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts in Richmond, VA, during SECAC 2023

Graduate student Mirel Crumb recently presented her ongoing thesis research at SECAC 2023. SECAC is an academic conference that brings together art historians, art educators, museum professionals, and artists. This year’s conference had the theme of Crossroads and was held… Read More

Friends of Art History Meet and Greet

Wednesday, November 15 2023 11:30am - 12:30pm

Mitchell 159

You are invited on Wednesday, November 15 from 11:30am to 12:30pm for an Art History meet and greet in Mitchell Hall 159!

Dear Friends of Art History and Auditors,

Join fellow art lovers and Art History faculty and staff members to learn more about the UWM Art Collection over snacks and coffee. Our Collection and Gallery Director David Pacifico and Academic Curator Leigh Mahlik will be sharing exciting news on recent gifts from our generous donors. We will also discuss plans for the Friends of Art History (FOAH) support group and ways to promote and sustain our programming, including the unveiling of our renewed “Adopt Art” program. If you’re an auditor but not yet an official “Friend,” we would love for you to come and learn more! Information on supporting FOAH is also available here.

Please RSVP by November 13 to arthistory@uwm.edu.

We look forward to seeing you!

Beauty’s Mirror

Fitzgerald's Beauty's Mirror

Emma Alburg Beauty’s Mirror is an intriguing but simple piece. Created by Karen Fitzgerald, a Wisconsin born artist, in 1992, this tondo stands out amongst the many other pieces in the Emile H. Mathis Gallery collection. While working as an… Read More

Gorfinkel Lecture: Sleeping in the Movie Theater

Tuesday, November 14 2023 3:30 pm

Curtain 939

Image of Wanda Entering a Movie Theater

Sleeping in the Movie Theater (After Wanda Goronski)

Navigating recent interest in nocturnal imaginaries and the valence of sleep for understanding cinematic spectatorship, this talk takes up the sleeping spectator as it figures in Barbara Loden’s landmark independent film Wanda (1970) to examine the function of night, weariness, precarity and itinerancy in the film, exploring some tensions that inhere in analyses of sleep as a domain of repose or abandon. Following an essayistic and meandering logic that mimes the perambulations of the titular Wanda Goronski herself, this talk enacts a series of experiments with forms of description, the unraveling of archival aporias drawn from the film’s shooting script and other historical anecdotes, and larger theorisations of cinema as medium of exhaustion. The talk emerges as one product of several years of archival research on Barbara Loden, sketching out a path from one research project (a monograph on Loden’s film Wanda) to another about Barbara Loden as a feminist film historical subject and site of thorny questions about authorship, biography, the unfinished, and feminist film writing.

Bio

Elena Gorfinkel is Reader in Film Studies at King’s College London. Prior to King’s she was Associate Professor of Art History & Film Studies at UW-Milwaukee. Her research interests concern independent, adult, & experimental cinemas and women’s film practices. She is the author of Lewd Looks: American Sexploitation Cinema in the 1960s (Minnesota, 2017), and co-editor of Taking Place: Location & the Moving Image (Minnesota, 2011), and Global Cinema Networks (Rutgers, 2018). Forthcoming in 2024 are two books, Wanda (BFI Film Classics, Bloomsbury), and The Prop, with John David Rhodes (Fordham/ Cutaways series). She is at work on two projects, a book on “cinemas of exhaustion” which was awarded an Andy Warhol Foundation Arts Writers Grant, and a history of Barbara Loden’s creative life and feminist legacies. She is a member of the London Film Critics Circle and her criticism appears in Criterion, Sight & Sound, Artforum, among other venues. More info at: elenagorfinkel.com

More info: https://uwm.edu/c21/event/gorfinkel-lecture-sleeping-in-the-movie-theater/

Flyer:

Flyer for Elena Gorfinkel Lecture

UWM Art Collection Halloween Video

Because it’s the Halloween season! Created by Professor Sarah Schaefer!