Curatorial Assistant

Since its establishment in 1956 with a gift of prints from Los Angeles collector Fred Grunwald, the UCLA Grunwald Center for the Graphic Arts has evolved into one of the nation’s foremost collections of works on paper. Over the decades, the Grunwald Center’s holdings have expanded through donations and acquisitions, and now comprise more that 45,000 prints, drawings, photographs, and artists’ books dating from the Renaissance to the present. Housed at the Hammer Museum since 1994, the Grunwald Center fosters learning and discovery through its collection, which is regularly presented in exhibitions and made accessible in its dedicated study room. This exhibition marks the 70th anniversary of the Grunwald Center, celebrating its history through a selection of significant works that reflect the collection’s breadth and diversity.

Curatorial Assistant

Ukiyo-e, or “pictures of the floating world,” emerged as a defining artistic genre during Japan’s Edo period (1603–1868), an era of significant cultural transformation. Initially centered on the vibrant urban life of licensed pleasure quarters—depicting kabuki theaters, teahouses, and brothels—ukiyo-e gradually expanded in subject matter in response to shifting social interests, increased domestic travel, government censorship, and contact with Western art. Themes came to include nature, landscapes, poetry, literature, and folklore.

Rising Sun, Falling Rain traces the evolution of ukiyo-e printmaking and the later shin-hanga movement, featuring over eighty prints from the Grunwald Center for the Graphic Arts by renowned artists such as Katsukawa Shunshō, Utagawa Toyokuni, Katsushika Hokusai, Utagawa Hiroshige, Tsukioka Yoshitoshi, and Kawase Hasui. These works exemplify the technical mastery and aesthetic refinement of Japanese woodblock printing, which profoundly shaped global perceptions of Japan’s cultural legacy and fostered enduring engagement with its historical narratives.

Co-curator

This exhibition explores the Book of the Marvels of the World, an illuminated manuscript made in the 1460s that weaves together tales of places both near and far. Told from the perspective of a medieval armchair traveler in northern France, the global locations are portrayed as bizarre, captivating, and sometimes dangerously different. Additional objects in the exhibition highlight how the overlapping sensations of wonder and fear helped create Western stereotypes of the “other” that still endure today.

Project Manager and Curatorial Assistant

Curators: Dr. Kristen Collins and Nancy Turner

Medieval artists created dazzling light-filled environments with gold, crystal, and glass evoking the layered realms of the divine. Long associated with divinity, light also occupied a central place in scientific inquiry. Today we tend to separate science from religion, but for medieval people these disciplines were firmly intertwined. Focusing on the arts of western Europe, this exhibition explores the ways that the science of light was studied by Christian, Jewish, and Muslim philosophers, theologians, and artists during the “Long Middle Ages” (800–1600). To convey the sense of wonder created by moving light on precious materials, several contemporary artworks are placed in dialogue with historic objects. Special installations by Helen Pashgian and Charles Ross extend Lumen throughout the Museum.

Co-curator

Devotion is a fully embodied activity that engages the senses as well as the heart and mind. The Materiality of Devotion: From Manuscript to Print provided visitors with the opportunity to explore a variety of objects, texts, and images that supported devotional practices in the medieval and early modern world. The exhibition drew on Pitts Theology Library’s medieval manuscripts as well as its world-renowned early print collection, and also benefited from generous loans made by the Stuart A. Rose Manuscript, Archives, and Rare Book Library and the Michael C. Carlos Museum.

Curator

Ornament in Flux examines how the evolution of Visigothic personal ornament was affected by the overlapping of cultures during the Migration Period. The Visigoths used personal ornament to outwardly portray both individual and collective identity. Objects of adornment might have demonstrated personal status and wealth in terms of the materials used, but the design of these pieces also reflected the Visigoths’ relationship to both the collapsing Western Roman Empire and the enduring Eastern Roman (Byzantine) Empire. Ornament in Flux aims to introduce Migration Period objects from the Michael C. Carlos Museum’s collection, using them as starting points from which to begin an examination of the techniques of production, materials, styles, and function of such pieces.

NOTE: I have since graduated from Emory University and am no longer able to supervise the upkeep of the Omeka website. Apologies for bugs!

Curator

I am creating this digital exhibition for the Vanderbilt University Fine Arts Gallery. It will feature their collection of twelve Kress Collection paintings​. My goal for the exhibition is to convey the continued relevance of medieval and Renaissance art by addressing how systems of visual language​ and symbolism allow for the eventual subversion​ of common motifs and tropes. I will illustrate—with additional objects from Vanderbilt's collection and outside collections—that each culture can alter previously shared aspects of visual language to convey nuanced ideas​ and commentary about their current contexts. I hope this exhibition continues the mission of using the Kress objects as a teaching collection, but updates their use for contemporary students.