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News from New Haven

Header image by Haeok Shin GD MFA ’19
To you, our current faculty and students, esteemed alumni, and greater community, we send word of what's up in New Haven, and ask that you might keep us updated in kind. Email us and come visit.


In this issue:

  • Graduate Teaching Program Announced

  • Aki Sasamoto Appointed Assistant Professor

  • Ayham Ghraowi Appointed Assistant Dean

  • Susannah Wilson Appointed Operations Manager

  • Yale Norfolk Summer School of Art Celebrates 70 Years

The Yale School of Art's Art & Social Justice Initiative Announces a Graduate Teaching Program at the Manson Youth Institution in Partnership with the Yale Prison Education Initiative at Dwight Hall


The Art and Social Justice Initiative was started in 2017 by Marta Kuzma, Stavros Niarchos Foundation Dean of the Yale School of Art, in recognizing that graduate art education needs to explore the intersections of art through economic, social, political, and cultural perspectives. The school-wide initiative will contribute to scholarships, promote research, extend pedagogical offerings, and explore practical approaches and projects that foster critical and collective consciousness around social engagement and civic dialogue.
 
As the first program to be launched within this initiative, the Yale School of Art has partnered with the Yale Prison Education Initiative at Dwight Hall to create a summer art program for incarcerated students at the Manson Youth Institution in Cheshire, CT, with courses and extra-curricular workshops led by recent MFA graduates. Inaugural teaching fellowships for the program have been awarded by the School of Art and YPEI at Dwight Hall to five graduates to support instruction in the following two summer courses, as well as two extracurricular workshops developed by recent MFA graduates, which together constitute this first iteration of the program during the summer of 2018:
 
Ernest Bryant
(Painting & Printmaking MFA '18)
Basic Drawing Course
An introduction to drawing, emphasizing articulation of space and pictorial syntax. Class work is based on observational study. Assigned projects address fundamental technical and conceptual problems suggested by historical and recent artistic practice.
 

Clare Kambhu and Julia Rooney
(Painting & Printmaking MFA '18)
Painting Basics Course
A broad formal introduction to basic painting issues, including the study of composition, value, color, and pictorial space. Emphasis on observational study. Course work introduces students to technical and historical issues central to the language of painting.
 
Daniel Ginsburg
(Painting & Printmaking MFA '18)
Materials Workshop
An introduction to historical materials and methods of painting.
 
Nate Pyper
(Graphic Design MFA '18)
Publications Workshop
A workshop on publishing as a means of documentation and dissemination that also introduces historical and recent examples of socially-conscious publication design.

The Art and Social Justice Initiative was made possible with an anonymous gift in 2017. Additional support for the Materials Workshop is provided by the Yale Center for British Art.

Aki Sasamoto appointed Assistant Professor in Sculpture
 

The Yale School of Art is pleased to announce the appointment of Aki Sasamoto as Assistant Professor in Sculpture. Set to begin her appointment in July 2018, Aki Sasamoto's work is positioned at the intersection of performance and sculpture where she creates object scenarios out of narratives and actions.
 
In an interview published in Studio International, the artist reflects on her practice as akin to composing a score:
 
"I think performance can deal with identity and I do use identity a lot in my work, but not as a necessity – my politics are a lot more low-key. There are a lot of relationships in 20th-century performance between the performer’s body and identity, but if you go back further, it’s more an act of translation: an energetic translation – particularly if you look at dance. For me, that is a way to connect subject matter to its performance body – both as equals – where the body simply activates the subject matter. I cannot really spot, this is what I do: it’s just flowing between art and life, between me and another person, between object and body."

As her performance and installation works often incorporate lectures, demonstrations and audience participation, Aki Sasamoto understands teaching as a natural extension of her art practice, engaging her audiences as well as her students with, in her own words, “personified worldviews, unfolding the message behind the language of objects and triggering reflections that linger long past the theatrical encounters.” 

Marta Kuzma, the Dean of Yale School of Art, notes: “Aki Sasamoto’s appointment to the tenure track faculty of the Yale School of Art reflects our commitment to providing to students a wide range of perspectives, including non-Western influences with respect to the body and identity. Additionally, as a teacher and an artist, Sasamoto further contributes to the rich dialogue between performance, sculpture and installation as developed since 2012 by Martin Kersels, Professor and Director of Graduate Studies in Sculpture at Yale School of Art.” Professor Kersels adds: “Aki will perfectly fit in with Yale Sculpture and the wide-ranging interests of its graduate students. Her vital enthusiasm and eclectic sensibilities will only add to the already dynamic energy and breadth of the program.”
 
Born 1980 in Kanagawa, Japan, Sasamoto comes to the Yale School of Art from the Mason Gross School of Art at Rutgers University where she had been Assistant Professor in Sculpture since 2014, in addition to a having served as a member of Columbia University MFA’s Mentor program from 2012 to 2015. Having earned an MFA from Columbia University School of Art and a BA from Wesleyan University, Sasamoto’s exhibition history includes Delicate Cycle, a recent solo exhibition at SculptureCenter in Long Island City, along with numerous group exhibitions such as Out Of Doubt: Roppongi Crossing 2013, Mori Art Museum in Tokyo, Japan (2013); A Spoken Word Exhibition, Jeu de Paume in Paris, France (2013); A LIKENESS HAS BLISTERS, Hessel Museum of Art at Bard College in Annandale-on-Hudson, NY (2012); and the 2010 Whitney Biennial, Whitney Museum of American Art in New York. Recent performances include Sunny in the Furnace, The Kitchen in New York (2014) and WE LIVE WITH ANIMALS for Performa 13 in New York (2013).

Photo courtesy the artist.

Ayham Ghraowi appointed Assistant Dean for Research and Public Projects
 

The Yale School of Art announces the appointment of Ayham Ghraowi to Assistant Dean for Research and Special Projects effective July 1, 2018. Dean Marta Kuzma has promoted Ghraowi to this position taking into account the growing role research will have within the Yale School of Art, recognizing the School’s role as a graduate school of art within a wider research university. The promotion also recognizes Ghraowi’s immense contribution to the School since July 2017 in his role as Director of Programming and Publishing.
 
As Assistant Dean for Research and Special Projects, Ghraowi will continue to work closely with the Dean to develop and support new initiatives and programs as they relate to all school, university wide, and broader cooperations nationally and internationally. This will include continuing to direct publications for the School of Art, as well as the production of graphic materials in support of the public programming. The Assistant Dean for Research and Special Projects will also be integral in the development of the Art and Social Justice Initiative as reflected in Ghraowi’s given contribution to the start-up cooperation with the Yale Prison Education Initiative. 

Photo courtesy Yale Norfolk Summer School of Art, 2018.

Susannah Wilson Appointed Operations Manager 

 

The Yale School of Art is pleased to announce the appointment of Susannah Wilson as Operations Manager effective September, 2018. Wilson will be joining the School from Greene Naftali in New York City, where as Chief Operating Officer she has been responsible for managing various financial, strategic, and operational priorities across the gallery. Previously, Wilson was the Director of Strategy at Artnet Worldwide, an international art data and market platform, where she led strategic initiatives across the firm’s various departments, partnerships, and special projects.
 
Wilson comes to the Yale School of Art with a remarkable background in finance and art. She earned an MBA from Harvard Business School in 2011, where she was elected president of HBS’s Art Society and selected for a fellowship with Lincoln Center’s Strategy Group. She also is a graduate of Harvard College, where she earned an Honors Bachelor’s degree in the History of Art and Architecture in 2008. Throughout her studies at Harvard, she worked in various sectors of the art market, including galleries, auction houses, and museums. Upon graduating, she spent three years at a boutique consulting firm in New York City advising bulge-bracket banks in the aftermath of the financial crisis.
 
Susannah Wilson’s appointment provides the Yale School of Art with strategic financial leadership based in the solid knowledge of the field of contemporary visual art. She holds experience in front-line management needed to ensure the faculty, students and staff receive high quality administrative support. Wilson will work closely with Dean Marta Kuzma in the development of annual and long-range budgets while overseeing the School’s operating budget and all day-to-day business operations. She will also work closely with the School’s Senior Director of Finance & Business Operations, and together with the Directors of Graduate and Undergraduate Studies, to help implement the strategic initiatives of the School.

Yale Norfolk Summer School of Art
70th Anniversary Celebration
 

Saturday, June 23, 2018
17 Stoeckel Rd, Norfolk, CT
 
Open Studios:
1-6PM, Art Barn

Community Picnic:
6-7PM, by the stream

Martin Kersels Artist Lecture:
7PM, Battell House
 

Join us on Saturday, June 23rd for the Annual Open Studios and Community Picnic in celebration of the 70th Anniversary at the Ellen Battell Stoeckel Estate, in Norfolk, CT. The events will conclude with a lecture by Martin Kersels, Director of Graduate Studies in Sculpture at Yale School of Art.

This summer, Yale School of Art celebrates the 70th anniversary of the art division of the Yale Norfolk Summer School of Music and Art. Yale Norfolk Summer School of Art was founded in 1948 as part of the bequest of the Ellen Battell Stoeckel estate, and followed the same pedagogy, beliefs, and enthusiasm of Black Mountain College, an experimental art school based in North Carolina. During the inaugural summer of the art program, the visiting artists included Buckminster Fuller, John Cage, Ben Shahn, and Josef Albers.

The Yale Norfolk School of Art was established in 1948 through the generosity of the Ellen Battell Stoeckel Estate Trust, as the only credit-granting undergraduate summer residency art program in the country. Bringing together 26 rising seniors of promise (up to three of whom are Yale College undergraduate art majors), juried from nominations by deans and directors from over 200 institutions across the United States and abroad, this intensive six-week studio program takes place at the bucolic Ellen Battell Stoeckel Estate in Norfolk, Connecticut.
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