Reflecting back on 2023-2024, we have much to be grateful for and celebrate even while we also were faced with difficult moments. Above all, we said goodbye to our long-time colleague, Prof. Hans Van Miegroet, who died suddenly in February. Hans was the core to our initial digital initiatives in the program and was the leader of the Duke Art and Law Markets Initiative. The latter complemented a course that Hans gave almost every semester on art markets that routinely filled with students from all across the university. His dynamic presence, impact on our curriculum, leadership in collaboration in art history, and mischievous presence in the department will be missed by faculty, staff, and students alike. You can find some wonderful tributes to Hans on our website at https://aahvs.duke.edu/tributes-hans-van-miegroet.
And yet, of course, the department doesn’t stand still for any of us. We also welcomed four new faculty to Duke last year: Andrew Griebeler, Angelina Lucento, Jenny Lion, and Ed Triplett. We are thrilled to have this exciting new shot in the arm of energy and intellectual heft in our department. They bring with them outstanding scholarship that includes different moments in art history, creative practice, and digital exploration. These new faculty offer a real snapshot of the dynamic interaction between our department’s various “wings” that keeps us together as an intellectual community thoroughly focused on the exploration of visual culture in all of its dimensions. They have jumped in feet first to offer an enticing new range of courses that are doing much to extend our curriculum and our student interests in new ways. For more on the new faculty, see their section in the following review.
While the new faculty offered us some great new analog, digital, and visual work, the rest of us didn’t just sit back and watch! We had an astonishingly productive year, with international solo shows, accolades from international film festivals, awards and grants, major publications on contemporary artists, as well as quite an array of books, articles, and group shows. I am constantly amazed at the productivity of our faculty, staff, and students even while we are all working together to keep the day-to-day department ship afloat. It is a pleasure to learn from them and their creative and historical work.
We also believe in passing that knowledge forward, as a fantastic Centennial Symposium for AAHVS Alumni made clear. We welcomed back graduates from all corners of our program, including representative undergraduate alums as well as our advanced PhD and MFA students. It was a thrilling and exciting event to see the synergy between them and to ponder 100 years of art, art history, and visual culture as well as Duke’s role in that history.
Our current students continue to prepare to be those great alums by impressing us in multiple ways. I am proud to say that, for the past three years, we have continued to have 20 percent of the entire Duke undergraduate population come through our classes. Last year was the same. This shows our draw and our attraction to large swaths of the Duke population. We will continue to engage them in the most critical artistic, art historical, and media work through the next 100 years. I am looking forward to being around for the next alumni event!
Paul B. Jaskot
Professor and Chair
October 2024
