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Message from the Chair

The 2017/18 academic year promises to be an exciting one, particularly since it will include our search for the inaugural Roy Lichtenstein Foundation Professor of American Art. As a result of an extremely generous gift from the Roy Lichtenstein Foundation, we will be able to hire a scholar with real stature in a field that has not been well represented within our curriculum since the retirement of Barbara Groseclose in 2009. Together with the Art Department's newly endowed Roy Lichtenstein Chair of Studio Art, the position recognizes the long-term and mutually influential relationship between Ohio State and Roy Lichtenstein, who earned his BFA as well as his Master's degree from the University and served on its faculty for several years. We look forward eagerly to welcoming a new, senior colleague to the department, and in the process both honoring and continuing Roy Lichtenstein’s legacy at Ohio State.

We are, of course, also excited to welcome a new cohort of students into our doctoral program. There are five in all: Lauren Caskey, who comes to us with an M.A. from Webster University, by way of the Saint Louis Museum of Art, and intends to study nineteenth-century art; Tianchu (Jane) Gao, who graduated last spring from the College of William & Mary and will be focusing at Ohio State on Chinese modernism; Yifan Li, who earned his M.A. at the University of Alberta and likewise intends to specialize in modern Chinese art; Sarita Patnaik, whose 2015 M.A. from the Courtauld has since been supplemented by a year of curatorial work at the Art Space Pythagorion on the Isle of Samos in Greece; and Alanna Radlo-Dzur, a graduate of the Program in the Humanities at the University of Chicago, who will be specializing in the study of Pre-Columbian art. We are expecting great things from them all!

Finally, we welcome two of our continuing faculty members into the ranks of the tenured. This past summer the Board of Trustees approved promotions to the rank of associate professor with tenure for both Byron Hamann and Kris Paulsen. The Board’s vote was wholly unsurprising—but cause for celebration nonetheless. We couldn’t be more pleased.

Lisa Florman

Professor and Chair