Art History

The longtime chairman of art history has been appointed dean of arts and sciences at the Johns Hopkins University, assuming leadership of a school that has been troubled by the defection of distinguished faculty members.Herbert L. Kessler, the Charlotte Bloomberg professor of art history, was approved as dean of the Zanvyl Krieger School of Arts and Sciences during a telephone conference yesterday of the executive committee of the university's board of trustees.Kessler, 56, is the second new dean announced this week.

The Harford County Cultural Arts Board is holding its annual Arts Gathering at the Liriodendron Mansion, 502 W. Gordon St. Bel Air, on Wednesday, March 20 from 5 to 7 p.m. The Arts Gathering is free and open to any Harford County arts organization's administration, staff, board members and volunteers. The evening's agenda will include beverages with lite fare, 5 to 5:30 p.m.; a presentation featuring artist Linnea Tober on Marketing for the Artist, 5:30 to 6:30 p.m.; and networking, 6:30 to 7 p.m. Tober, a Havre de Grace resident, holds a bachelor of arts in art history from Keen University and a master of arts in teaching from Monmouth University.

Is there anything new under the sun? And if so, what difference does it make? Postmodern artists would answer the first question with a resounding "no." In recent columns and reviews, I've explored some of the views of these artists, who reject the idea of originality. They also argue that an artwork has no meaning outside the context of political, historic and social networks in which it is placed. I owe much of my understanding of these issues to Joel Eisinger, who teaches in the art history department at the University of Minnesota at Morris, and is the author of "Trace and Transformation: American Criticism of Photography in the Modernist Period."

Carole Lynn Maier, a stained-glass artist and former House of Ruth board president, died of an autoimmune lung ailment Feb. 24 at Greater Baltimore Medical Center. The Kingsville resident was 60. Born Carole Lynn Smith in Baltimore and raised in Kingsville, she was a 1970 graduate of Perry Hall High School. At age 18, while living her grandparents, she changed her name to theirs, Maier. As a young woman, she moved to the Tuscany-Canterbury neighborhood. "She loved the city," said her husband, Mark Wiesand, who sells jet fuel for corporate aviation.

The longtime chairman of art history has been appointed dean of arts and sciences at the Johns Hopkins University, assuming leadership of a school that has been troubled by the defection of distinguished faculty members.Herbert L. Kessler, the Charlotte Bloomberg professor of art history, was approved as dean of the Zanvyl Krieger School of Arts and Sciences during a telephone conference yesterday of the executive committee of the university's board of trustees.Kessler is the second new dean announced this week.

A hundred years ago, people were still debating whether photography was art. Fifty years later, the debate was over, but photography's victory was meager: It remained for years afterward the orphan stepchild of the museum and gallery world. Ironically, photography, the quintessential art of the modern era, didn't really get its due until Modernism was overthrown in the 1970s by a new generation of Postmodern artists, who upended its time-honored conventions and turned it into a cutting-edge contemporary art medium.

On a beautiful spring day with temperatures in the 80s, cicadas whirring and the sun shining, students can be forgiven for yearning for the end of school. But on such a day, a classroom at Howard County Community College was filled with students who had volunteered to stay indoors and study all day. The students had actually paid to take a class even though they were not working toward a degree, or even being graded on their work. Participants in the Senior Adult Summer Institute - a program run through the college and the county's Department of Recreation and Parks - were learning simply because they love to. Each spring, after the college lets out for the semester, SASI offers four daylong courses.

NEW YORK -- A new and powerfully beautiful exhibition at the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum does something that similar presentations almost never do. The established way we think about a pivotal artist gets turned inside out, and the revision is right on target. No Limits, Just Edges: Jackson Pollock Paintings on Paper says something essential - and in previously unconsidered ways. Curator Susan Davidson erases the conventional distinction between drawing and painting in the classic works Pollock made with the drip method.

William J. Evitts, a noted writer, editor and historian who was a former college professor, died Dec. 14 of pancreatic cancer at Gilchrist Hospice Care. He was 68. The son of a U.S. Department of Labor official and a homemaker, Dr. Evitts was born in Chicago and raised in Arlington, Va., where he graduated from Washington and Lee High School. He earned his bachelor's degree in 1964 from the Johns Hopkins University and was a Thomas Jefferson Fellow at the University of Virginia, where he earned a master's degree in 1966.

Throughout her career, Grace Hartigan has repeatedly mined history and art history for inspiration. She has done it again for her latest show, a group of large- and medium-scaled watercolors collectively titled "The Medieval Hunt." The results are impressive and show the artist continuing to pursue new developments.Not strictly confined to the hunt, the show's 13 works contain both hunt scenes and individual figures. A few of these are based on specific pictures, such as her "Man with Red Hat," based on Hans Memling's "Portrait of a Man," but most are composites drawn from several sources.

It's entirely possible that one of the august and influential guest curators for "Public Property," the summer exhibit opening Sunday at the Walters Art Museum , was none other than your plumber. Ditto for your postal carrier and your daughter's softball coach. "Public Property" consists of 106 items — paintings, sculptures, manuscripts and jewelry — adhering to the theme of "creatures" and taken from the Walters' holdings. What makes the exhibit unique in Baltimore history is that the show's title, themes and artworks were chosen by more than 53,000 votes cast online and by museum visitors.

Kitsch can be cool, according to Nick Ramey. The 29-year-old ceramic artist from Aurora, Ind., is always looking for the perfect image or object to add to his artwork. His pieces are meant to be functional and sculptural - they can be used on a daily basis or simply sit as curious decorations on a shelf. Ramey is a resident artist and instructor at Baltimore Clayworks, where he teaches classes in wheel-thrown and altered pottery. On Sunday, Clayworks will be teaching a workshop as part of Free Fall Baltimore.

William J. Evitts, a noted writer, editor and historian who was a former college professor, died Dec. 14 of pancreatic cancer at Gilchrist Hospice Care. He was 68. The son of a U.S. Department of Labor official and a homemaker, Dr. Evitts was born in Chicago and raised in Arlington, Va., where he graduated from Washington and Lee High School. He earned his bachelor's degree in 1964 from the Johns Hopkins University and was a Thomas Jefferson Fellow at the University of Virginia, where he earned a master's degree in 1966.

David Winfield Scott, a noted American artist and author and former Eastern Shore resident who was the founding director of the National Museum of American Art, died of multiple organ failure Monday at an Austin, Texas, hospice. He was 92. Dr. Scott was born in Fall River, Mass., and raised in Claremont, Calif., where his father was a professor at Pomona College. After graduating from the Webb School in Claremont, he studied painting with Millard Sheets, a prominent California watercolorist, who became a formative influence on the young artist.

A bright winter sun streams into a room at the Baltimore Museum of Art, far removed from the public galleries. Her eyes dense with concentration, Angie Elliott picks up what looks like a long toothpick and winds a small clump of cotton around its point, an improvised Q-tip, and dips it into a bottle of ethanol. Bending over a table, Elliott uses the damp tool to gently swab the surface of an ornate 16th-century chamfron, a piece of steel armor with inlays of gold and silver, made to protect a horse's forehead and nose in battle.

A hundred years ago, people were still debating whether photography was art. Fifty years later, the debate was over, but photography's victory was meager: It remained for years afterward the orphan stepchild of the museum and gallery world. Ironically, photography, the quintessential art of the modern era, didn't really get its due until Modernism was overthrown in the 1970s by a new generation of Postmodern artists, who upended its time-honored conventions and turned it into a cutting-edge contemporary art medium.

MONTGOMERY, ALA. -- Climb three steps onto the wide front porch filled with broken chairs and an upended mattress, walk through the worn sitting room, step into what should be the living room. For a moment, it is too dim to see anything.Then, there he is -- Mose Tolliver sits as if on a throne, on the edge of a big metal bed. The shades are drawn. Blasts of air whoosh from an antique gas stove. As the eyes adjust, the cautious movements of small brown roaches are apparent. And everywhere are paintings: vivid splashes against bright pink walls.

Dr. Theodore E. Klitzke, former dean of the faculty and vice president for academic affairs at the Maryland Institute College of Art, where he had also been acting president, died Sunday of complications from a stroke at Manor Care Ruxton. He was 92. Dr. Klitzke was born and raised in Chicago. He attended the American Academy of Art in Chicago from 1934 to 1936 and earned a bachelor's degree in fine arts from the Art Institute of Chicago in 1939.