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A Message of Thanks
Professor Keely Heuer
Faculty Organizer
Every year, the presentations delivered at the SUNY New Paltz Undergraduate Art History Symposium never fail to impress me for their quality, their variety in subject matter, and their professionalism. I am enormously grateful to all our speakers for sharing their fascinating research with us and for the great effort they put into creating such polished and engaging talks. I am also most thankful for the many attendees – family members, friends, professors, and mentors. Your heartwarming support, insightful questions, and enthusiastic comments make our goal of offering a nurturing space for students to gain real-world conference experience all possible. Thank you for joining us to celebrate these exceptional budding art historians.
I am most fortunate to have a marvelous team that brought this event to fruition, and they deserve many rounds of applause for their selfless service. Susan Smutny re-built our website from scratch this year and provided flawless technical support before, during, and after all the Symposium’s eleven sessions. Our five excellent student moderators – Mya Bailey, Brooke Cammann, Madelyn Colonna, John Paul Jang, and Shay Steuart – kept every session running smoothly, adeptly introducing our speakers and handling the Q&A portions after each talk. Mya, Brooke, Madelyn, and Shay along with Liana Arkay also served as the selection committee for this year’s papers through a blind review process, which was no easy task thanks to the high caliber of the many abstracts we received. Of course, we all wish to thank Dr. Renée Ater for her profoundly moving keynote address that set the perfect tone for the entire event.
I hope the Symposium was a highly rewarding experience for you as it has been for me, and I encourage you to join us for next year’s event. Thanks to your participation, the Symposium has grown into the largest venue of its kind for undergraduate art historical research in a few short years. We look forward to further exciting growth as we create more opportunities for talented students to share their work and connect with their peers across the world!
With sincere gratitude,
Keely Heuer
Origins
The SUNY New Paltz Undergraduate Art History Symposium began as the brainstorm of two students serving as the co-presidents of the College’s Art History Association in the fall of 2018. Within a few short years, it has grown into a multi-day virtual event this spring featuring the work of a hundred talented students from institutions across the globe. We look forward to developing it further into a premiere outlet for undergraduates interested in art history and its related fields to share their research, broaden their intellectual horizons, and network with one another.
Mission Statement
We seek to provide an inviting, nurturing, and inclusive space for undergraduates to give their first professional talks as well as to increase student self-confidence.
Acknowledgments
We are extremely grateful to our past and present participants for their willingness to be a part of this successful experiment and especially to their faculty mentors, who not only shared this opportunity with their students, but who also supported and encouraged them while crafting their submissions. It is enormously exciting to celebrate the scholarly achievements of these talented undergraduates and see the bright future of the field ahead of us as we do so. Thank you all for being a part of this year’s event!
SUNY New Paltz Art History Department
The Art History department is dedicated to the teaching of undergraduates. Small class sizes, usually comprised of fifteen to thirty-five students, allow for individual attention and close interaction with faculty and other students. All courses count toward the liberal arts requirement.
The breadth of courses offered by the Art History department, ranging from prehistoric times to the present and covering nearly all areas of the world, is rarely found at four-year colleges. Since 1964, the State University of New York at New Paltz has offered a Bachelor of Arts degree in Art History with a wide variety of courses in the history of painting, sculpture, architecture, graphic and decorative arts, design, and photography. A minor concentration in Art History is available, as is an Art History major concentration within the Elementary Education Pre-K-6 curriculum.
