Art History Faculty Listing

Adrienne Bell
Associate Professor of Art History
Director College Honors Program
email
212-517-0676

Degrees
B.A. , with Honors in Art, Smith College
M.A., The Institute of Fine Arts, New York University
M.Phil., Columbia University
Ph.D. , with Distinction, Columbia University

Adrienne Baxter Bell’s scholarship centers on American art and cultural history from the pre-colonial period to the present, with a focus on the nineteenth century. Her graduate work at Columbia University was supported by grants from Columbia and the Smithsonian American Art Museum, as well as the Charlotte W. Newcombe Doctoral Dissertation Fellowship from The Woodrow Wilson National Fellowship Foundation. It culminated in her dissertation, “George Inness: Painting Philosophy,” an analysis of the metaphysical underpinnings of Inness’s life and work. While at Columbia, she authored George Inness and the Visionary Landscape (George Braziller, Inc., 2003) and curated an exhibition of the same name (National Academy of Design, New York, 2003-04; San Diego Museum of Art, 2004). She published her second book, George Inness: Writings and Reflections on Art and Philosophy, in 2007. Dr. Bell has delivered lectures and participated in symposia at New York University; the Thomas Cole National Historic Site; the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston; the Museo di Santa Giulia, Brescia; and other locations. She recently presented her work at the annual conferences of the College Art Association and the Nineteenth Century Studies Association. Her current research explores the impact of spirituality and the growing understanding of consciousness on the visual vocabulary of early American and European modernists; she is also conducting research on how these ideas continue to resonate with contemporary artists. At MMC, she teaches both sections of the Western Art Survey, seminars in Ancient and Classical Art, Medieval Art and Architecture, American Art, and the Senior Art History Seminar. She also co-teaches interdisciplinary study-abroad courses in France and Italy, such as “Art and Philosophy in Venice."

Recent Publications:

Le filosofie di Asher B. Durand.” (“The Philosophy of Asher B. Durand.”) Pittura Americana del XIX secolo: Atti del convegno. Ed. Marco Goldin and H. Barbara Weinberg. Treviso: Linea d’ombra Libri. 2008. 40-56.

“Review of George Inness: A Catalogue Raisonné, by Michael Quick.” Archives of American Art Journal. 47:1-2. April, 2008. 51-57.

Recent Presentations/Productions:

Charles Caryl Coleman: Framing Eccentricity.” Symposium: The Transforming Power of the Frame: Makers, Marriages, and Materials: Exploring American Frames and Frames in America. The Graduate Center, City University of New York, in conjunction with Initiatives in Art and Culture: New York, September 19, 2008.

Jason Rosenfeld
Distinguished Chair and Professor of Art History
email
212-517-0677

Degrees
B.A. Duke University
M.A. Institute of Fine Arts, New York University
Ph.D. Institute of Fine Arts, New York University

Jason Rosenfeld has been a member of the faculty at MMC since fall 2003. Dr. Rosenfeld received his B.A. from Duke University and his M.A. and Ph.D. from the Institute of Fine Arts, New York University with a dissertation titled “New Languages of Nature in Victorian England: The Pre-Raphaelite Landscape, Natural History and Modern Architecture in the 1850s.” He has previously taught at Assumption College in Worcester, Massachusetts, New York University, and Queens College, New York. Academic interests include Nineteenth-Century European Art, British Art, specifically Victorian and the Pre-Raphaelites, Art and Architecture in New York City, Modern Architecture, and Contemporary Art.

Recent research interests have revolved around the life and career of the Victorian painter Sir John Everett Millais (1829-1896) and his monograph on that artist for Phaidon Press Ltd. was published in 2012. He co-curated the major exhibition on Millais at Tate Britain, London, the National Gallery of British Art, with Alison Smith, Senior Curator of Paintings, which traveled to the Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam, followed by venues in Fukuoka and Tokyo, Japan. The exhibition was seen by in excess of 660,000 visitors. His most recent co-curated exhibition is “Pre-Raphaelites: Victorian Avant-Garde,” seen by 242,000 at Tate Britain from September 2012 to January 2013, the second most heavily attended exhibition in that institution’s history. The show is traveling to the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C. (February – May 2013), the State Pushkin Museum of Fine Arts, Moscow, Russia (June – September 2013), and the Mori Art Museum in Tokyo, Japan (January – April 2014).
http://www.tate.org.uk/whats-on/tate-britain/exhibition/pre-raphaelites-victorian-avant-garde
http://www.nga.gov/exhibitions/preraphaelites.shtm

He has published many articles and reviews on British art and architecture and contemporary art and has been a frequent reviewer for Art in America. He was a co-curator of the exhibition, "The Post-Pre-Raphaelite Print" at the Wallach Art Gallery, Columbia University, New York, in 1995, and contributed to the "Pre-Raphaelite and Other Masters: The Andrew Lloyd Webber Collection" exhibition at the Royal Academy of Arts, London, in 2003. He also contributed an essay to the catalogue of Marcel Dzama's exhibition at the David Zwirner Gallery, New York, in 2005. In addition, he has been the lead contributor on a monograph on the contemporary American artist, Stephen Hannock, published by Hudson Hills Press in the summer of 2009 and curated an exhibition of Hannock’s new work at Marlborough Gallery, New York (April – May 2012), a version of which will travel to London in February 2014.

Recent Publications:

Rosenfeld, Jason, Martha Hoppin, Garrett White, and Mark C. Taylor. Stephen Hannock. Manchester, VT: Hudson Hills Press (forthcoming 2009).

---. “J.M.W.Turner at the Metropolitan Museum of Art.” Victorian Studies (forthcoming 2009).

---. “Absent of Reference: New Languages of Nature in the Critical Responses to Pre-Raphaelite Landscapes.” Writing the Pre-Raphaelites: The Textual Formation of a Victorian Avant-Garde. Ed. Tim Barringer and Michaela Giebelhausen. Aldershot: Ashgate Press (forthcoming 2009): 151-70.

---. and Alison Smith. John Everett Millais. Amsterdam: Van Gogh Museum (Dutch and English editions). 2008.

---. and Alison Smith. John Everett Millais. Tokyo: The Asahi Shimbun. 2008.

---. “John Everett Millais, English Pre-Rapahelite.” Numen Art Magazine (Spain). 5 (November 2008).

Recent Presentations/Productions:

Rosenfeld, Jason. “Not Stokstad-Worthy?: Mainstreams of Modern Art and John Everett Millais.” “Why Victorian Art?” Conference. Department of Art History: CUNY Graduate Center. February 6, 2009.

---. Timothy Barringer, Paul Mellon Professor of Art, Yale University, Elizabeth Prettejohn, Professor, Department of the History of Art, Bristol University (UK), and Cassandra Albinson, Assistant Curator, Yale Center for British Art, “Material Culture Sessions: Victorian Paintings in the Yale Center for British Art.” North American Victorian Studies Association Conference: Yale University. New Haven, CT, November 14 and 15, 2008.