Department News

Ross Elfline, Associate Professor of Art History, has recently published an article titled, “Haus-Rucker-Co LIVE! and Commoning the Museum” in the most recent issue of Architectural Theory Review. This essay considers the…

Rembrandt’s Slaughtered ox, 1655, has long been seen as an allegory in the tradition of memento mori, suggesting correspondences between a dead animal and a dead human being. This paper does not dispute such cautionary readings. It expands and complicates those readings. Here, as in Rembrandt’s late history paintings, his concentrated pictorial rhetoric encouraged multiple responses. These extended to agricultural and socio-economic factors; the domestic provision of meat; links between oxen and social status; scientific and philosophical enquiry; and Rembrandt’s own creative capacity in rendering a creature naer het leven. They point to an artist rethinking animal-human relationships in a deeply interconnected world.

Tim Lloyd, Class of 1941 Professor of Art and the Liberal Arts, Emeritus, is currently exhibiting work at The Portland Museum of Art in Portland, Maine and at Raymond Avenue Gallery in St. Paul.

Associate Professor of Art History Ross Elfline presented a paper titled “Learning to Live with Radical Design: Haus-Rucker-Co LIVE! in New York” at a conference co-sponsored by the European Architectural History Network and the Design History Society of the UK.

Associate Professor of Art History Ross Elfline wrote an essay titled “Diane Simpson: Performance, Ornament, and Crime,” on the occasion of Chicago-based artist Diane Simpson’s Twin Cities residency with FD13. The performance work, the artist’s first, was staged on Saturday, June 1 in Minneapolis, and will be reprised at the Graham Foundation for Advanced Studies in the Fine Arts in Chicago on Thursday, July 25.

Associate Professor of Art History, led a Los Angeles art gallery tour for alums on April 27 as part of Carleton’s regional alumni clubs program. Whether joining for part or all of the day, 32 alums, family, friends, and parents of current students enjoyed the diversity of the galleries, Professor Elfline’s expertise, and captured a glimpse of the vibrant LA art scene within three very distinct neighborhoods: Culver City, Hollywood, and Downtown. Learn more about the event and the galleries visited.

Associate Professor of Art History, Baird Jarman, presented a paper titled “The Trouble with Thomas Nast,” about Gilded-Age political caricature in the United States. He spoke at Washington University in St. Louis on March 22 at the multi-disciplinary symposium Illustration Across Media: Nineteenth Century to Now, organized by the Rockwell Center for American Visual Studies.

Levi Atkinson ’19, a studio art and art history double major from Albany, Oregon, tells us about his senior capstone experience, or “Comps,” in support of both degrees.

Amanda Zeilinger ’19, a studio art and art history double major from Shaker Heights, Ohio, tells us about her senior capstone experience, or ‘Comps,’ in support of her studio art degree.