Columbia University (Graduate Profile) 11/8/10

Interest

My primary interest in Columbia University, like any graduate school in New York City, is the location. Secondly, the MODA (MA in Modern Art, Critical and Curatorial Studies) program combined with the school's reputation for academic greatness are the practical reasons for my interest. I was always interested in Columbia because I have alumni in the family, so when I came across the MODA program, I was even more interested. The attractions of this program in relation to competing critical art survey programs is definitely the access the school provides for their students into the art world, starting in NYC. Also, from reviews I have read, the program offers the students intensive professor resources, if needed, which is very valuable in my opinion.


Interesting Professor (David Freedberg)

"David Freedberg spent the fall term as Fellow of the Wissenschafskolleg in Berlin, working on his book on art and neuroscience. His Power of Images appeared in a new Italian edition (containing four prefaces translated from other foreign editions). He was elected a corresponding member of the Istituto Veneto di Scienze, Lettere e Arti."

Fall 2010. "826 Schermerhorn: Columbia University Dept. of Art History and Archaeology" Fall 2010. Accessed 8 Nov 2010. <>

David Freedberg is the Pierre Matisse Professor of the History of Art and Director of The Italian Academy for Advanced Studies in America at Columbia University. He as previously researched in the areas of 17th Century Dutch and Flemish printmaking, but has recently taken a different conceptual direction in his scholarly research. Freedberg is working on a book in which he intensely examines the relationship between art and neuroscience, especially with regards to historical allusions. (Galileo, for example, and the relationship between science and art.) He spends most of his researching time teamed up with neuroscientists to discover the connections between the conscious or unconscious mind and art. What I find interesting about his question is the focus on censorship and what role it plays in the discussion.




Interesting Student (Catherine Roach)

Catherine Roach graduated from Columbia's Art History Department in 2006.
"Catherine Roach ’06 PhD is a Postdoctoral Associate in the Department of the History of Art, Cornell University. She curated Seeing Double: Portraits, Copies, and Exhibitions in 1820s London at the Yale Center for British Art, New Haven."

Fall 2010. "826 Schermerhorn: Columbia University Dept. of Art History and Archaeology" Fall 2010. Accessed 8 Nov 2010. <>

As her first curatorial exhibition, Roach directed the exhibition based on John Scarlett Davis' Interior of the British Institution, in which he carefully painted himself and others into alluded images of English "high art", hoping for an access point to this elite group. The exhibition is based on the historical British art practice, and its intricacies, especially with respect to forgery, replications and fraud. Walker is now a Postdoctoral Associate in the Art History Dept of Cornell University.