2025 Art & Art History Newsletter

Dear Alumni and Friends,

Greetings from the Department of Art & Art History at William & Mary!

I'm Alan Braddock, Department Chair, and I'm pleased to share our 2025 Newsletter. It's October and we're already midway through the Fall 2025 semester. The department is ramping up for a busy autumn with classes in full swing and a full schedule of events, programs, and exhibitions.

The department hosts its annual Homecoming Reception on Saturday, October 18, from 10:00am to 12:00pm, in the Andrews Hall foyer. This is a wonderful opportunity to meet alumni, students, and faculty. The Andrews Gallery will be open and student art will be on view. All are welcome, so please drop by for conversation and light refreshments!

Recent works of William & Mary’s studio art faculty, including visiting instructors and emeriti professors, will be featured in the exhibition Faculty Show 16 on view at the Muscarelle Museum of Art from October 17, 2025 through January 11, 2026. This exhibition will highlight the diverse talents of the William & Mary studio instructors in a variety of media including ceramics, drawing, painting, printmaking, photography and sculpture.

As we do every year, the department sponsored a Fall bus trip to Washington, D.C., attended by more than one hundred students and faculty members. Attendees visited the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C., to see the museum's permanent collection and its current exhibitions, including Back and Forth: Rozeal., Titian, Cezanne and Little Beasts: Art, Wonder, and the Natural World.

In the Andrews Gallery, director Patrick Harkin organized the exhibition Where Late the Sweet Birds: Morgan Bulkeley, Selected Works, 1984 - 2025 in conjunction with the Muscarelle Museum of Art. The first major retrospective on this remarkable painter, the exhibition coincides with William & Mary's Year of the Environment and presents four decades of work informed by the artist's ecological concerns, political awareness, and fascination with human-animal relationships. 

On September 25-26, the department hosted a two-day symposium on Art Conservation Now: Current Issues and Careers. The keynote lecture on September 25th was given by Dr. Joyce Hill Stoner, W&M Class of '68 and Edward F. and Elizabeth Goodman Rosenberg Professor of Material Culture and Paintings Conservation at the University of Delaware. The following day, at the Muscarelle Museum of Art, additional lectures were given by Kirsten Travers Moffitt, Senior Conservator and Materials Analyst at the Colonial Williamsburg Foundation, and Lindsay Oakley, W&M Class of '12 and Director of Heritage Science Research and Testing at the National Archives, followed by a panel discussion that also included Scott Nolley, former head of conservation at the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden in Washington, D.C., and Carey Howlett of the Virginia Conservation Association. The panel discussion was moderated by Michael Gaynes and Kristin Wustholz. After the panel discussion, a group of William & Mary students toured the Colonial Williamsburg conservation laboratories with Kirsten Travers Moffitt. The event was co-hosted with the Chemistry Department and the Muscarelle Museum of Art.

On October 2, the Philadelphia-based painter Scott Noel gave a visiting lecture in Andrews 101 about his work, followed by a reception with some of his pictures on view in the Andrews Hall Foyer. He also offered a workshop the next day for Studio Art majors. Noel makes ambitious multi-figure paintings, portraits, still life paintings, and cityscapes in oils and pastels. (www.scottnoelart.com) These events were made possible by a generous donation from Jean and Rob Estes as part of the Estes Visiting Artist Series.

Thanks to a generous gift from alumna Joan Ranzini (Studio Art, '83), a new scholarship has been established for Studio Art majors in painting. This year's recipient of the Joan Ranzini Scholarship is Hannah Nieman, Class of 2026. Congratulations, Hannah! 

Looking ahead to November, Art History majors in The Curatorial Project (ARTH 331) will present an exhibition titled Liquid Commonwealth: The Art and Life of Water in Virginia at the Muscarelle Museum of Art. With an opening reception on November 14, 2025, the exhibition runs until February 15, 2026, this blind-juried invitational exhibition will feature work entirely by Virginia artists exploring the beauty, vitality, and importance of water to all who live in the Commonwealth.

Faculty News

Three faculty members in Art & Art History - Catherine Levesque, Mike Jabbur, and Xin Conan-Wu - were promoted to the rank of Full Professor this year. Congratulations to Cathy, Mike, and Xin for your well-deserved promotion! And thanks to members of the Personnel Committee - Brian Kreydatus, Charles Palermo, and Nikki Santiago - for doing the work of administering the process.

The department also welcomed a new faculty member, Alyssa Quintanilla, Assistant Professor of Art History and American Studies, who came to William & Mary from the U.S. Naval Academy in Annapolis. Professor Quintanilla's work focuses on the U.S.-Mexico borderlands, Latine/x Art and Culture, and Memory studies. Welcome Alyssa!

The Library of Congress recently purchased twenty photographs by Eliot Dudik, including ten from a series titled “Broken Land” and ten from his series “Paradise Road.” As noted in a William & Mary News article, Eliot has described the acquisition as "an achievement of a lifetime, one that has been in the works for years, and one I am immensely proud of." Congratulations, Eliot! 

Sibel Zandi-Sayek completed a new book, Ottoman Mobilities in the Global Nineteenth Century, co-edited with Belgin Turan Özkaya and forthcoming from De Gruyter Brill in 2026. She also was the recipient of an Iradj Bagherzade Publication Grant from the Barakat Trust, London. 

Nikki Santiago was awarded the prestigious Elaine Melotti Schmidt Prize by the Muskegon Museum of Art in Michigan, and she was named as a runner-up for the Bennett Prize. Some of her recent paintings were also published in Intimate Views, catalog of an exhibition at the First Street Gallery in New York City. 

In April, near the end of a research leave year, Mike Jabbur displayed work in the exhibition titled Salty at Schaller Gallery in Baroda. One of the works on display was the Teapot shown here (Soda-fired Porcelain, Wheel-thrown and Assembled), created in 2025. 

Xin Conan-Wu gave several lectures in China, including "The Spatial Model ofAncient Places of Learning," Department of Archaeology, Shandong University (Qingdao); "Confucian Academies and Confucian Landscapes," Department of Art History, Peking University (Beijing); and “Confucian Shanshui: A Philosophical Landscape of the 1167 Meeting of Zhu-Zhang.” School of Philosophy, Fudan University (Shanghai).

Elizabeth Mead was an artist in residence at the Cité Internationale des Arts, Paris, France, and will be a visiting artist at the American Academy in Rome in January 2026.

John Lee had a solo exhibition at Arts on Main in Van Buren, Arkansas, from October 11 to December 18, 2024, featuring several of his signature pictures of interior spaces, including the work shown here, titled A World Without Coffee (2023). He also had solo shows in 2025 at Steven Francis Fine Art Gallery in Lynchburg (February to March) and the Bowery Gallery in New York City (June to July), and participated in a group show at the Zeuxis Still Life Association (January), where he is a member.

Brian Kreydatus was featured on Season 8, Episode 6, of the WHRO television program Curate, which you can watch HERE. Since then, he has been very active producing new works, such as First House (oil on linen, 24 x 36 inches), seen at left.

In January, Liz Morán visited the Jardín Etnobotánico de Oaxaca in Mexico to do research (see photo). She has also been invited to participate in the 2026 Dumbarton Oaks Symposium “Culinary Arts in the Pre-Columbian World: Disciplined Tastes and Gastronomic Expressions,” organized by Shanti Morell-Hart and Christine Hastorf.

In November 2024, Alan Braddock was invited to give a keynote lecture at The Tempest in The Tempest: Art and Ecology Across the Disciplines, a conference hosted by the Galleria dell'Accademia and Ca' Foscari University in Venice, Italy. The title of his lecture was "'Places infected by heresy’: Political Ecologies of Disease and Difference in Paolo Veronese’s The Feast in the House of Levi," a version of which will be published in a guidebook to the collection of the Gallerie dell'Accademia. Also, his essay “Migrant Images: The American Romantic Landscape as Imperial Style,” will appear in the book Nature as Resource, Aesthetic Experience, and Ecological Challenge, ed. Herta Nagl-Docekal and Maria Löschnigg (Berlin: De Gruyter Brill, 2026), 51-72. In February 2026, Braddock will co-chair (with Morgan Brittain) a session on Matters of Visibility: Ecocritical Art History Beyond Representation, at the annual conference of the College Art Association in Chicago.

 Cristina Stancioiu has a scheduled research leave for academic year 2025-26, so she is currently not on  campus.

 More Highlights of the Past Year

The departmental Graduation Ceremony was held on Saturday, May 17, celebrating the commencement of our majors in the Class of 2025. Families, faculty, and friends joined in the festivities by listening to the many noteworthy accomplishments of our graduating seniors, including departmental and Latin honors, numerous scholarships and awards, and Phi Beta Kappa Society inductions.  Best wishes to our alumni as embark on their future!

Leading up to Commencement, the department sponsored a number of important exhibitions and other events, including the Art History Senior Research Colloquium, the Non-Majors Show, the Catron Scholars Exhibition, the Honors Exhibition, and the Senior Show.

From May 24th to 29th, David Campbell led a free Painting Workshop at Andrews Hall, supported by a generous donation from Jean ('75) and Rob Estes ('74).

Staff News

On June 30th, the department bid farewell to Cathy Jacobs, our beloved senior fiscal administrator, who had worked at William & Mary for more than two decades, mostly in Art & Art History. Faculty and staff celebrated her retirement in a department gathering at the Amber Ox in Williamsburg on May 15. Cathy, we will miss you!

In July, the department welcomed Christian Bunner as the new Art History Fiscal Coordinator. Christian previously worked in the Government Department at William & Mary after earning her Bachelor’s degree in organizational leadership with a concentration in Human Resource Management at
ECPI University in Virginia Beach. Welcome Christian!

Christopher B. Wagner, the Studio Art Instructional Technician. Has had solo exhibits with Gloucester Arts on Main, Linda Matney Gallery, and group exhibits at Bruce Gallery Georgetown College and Zenith Gallery in Washington D.C. He has also taught numerous community workshops with Gloucester Arts on Main, Bon Air Artist Association, and Muscarelle Art Museum.

Looking Ahead to Spring 2026

Please watch for more announcements as we prepare for spring semester.  We eagerly anticipate annual events including the Studio Art Senior Capstone Exhibition, the Art History Senior Research Colloquium, and more.

Please stay in touch by sending your updates and contact information to Christian Bunner at cabunner@wm.edu. Alumni, if you haven’t already, please connect with us on LinkedIn (Art History alumni & Studio Art alumni have their own LinkedIn group accounts). Also, see some of the incredible achievements of our alumni. We are always delighted to hear from our community of alumni and friends. Our current and prospective students are especially eager to learn about your stories and the variety of careers many of you have embarked on, continued with, or retired from. Your enthusiasm and support are part of what makes this an exciting department for our faculty and students.

With all best wishes,

Alan C. Braddock
Chair, Department of Art & Art History