Meridith De Avila Khan took this photo of Spencer Beall ’14 working on her Honors Summer Research for the fall issue of the Sweet Briar Magazine.

Beall and her mentor, Sweet Briar Professor Marie-Thérèse Killiam, have compiled the translations, paired with images of the referenced artwork, into a 353-page Apple iBook, “Painting With Words: Writers’ Transpositions of Masterpieces into Art,” released in March. The commentaries reveal how modern culture has evolved and how social norms, perspectives and tastes have been shaped by famous artworks and by reactions to them. The compilation shows how art has inspired writers to “paint with words.”

Killiam conceived the idea long ago as a catalogue raisonné of commentaries by famous authors. The research was stalled when Beall, then a first-year at the College, took Killiam’s honors course in literary art criticism. Killiam found in her an able finisher for the work she had begun, particularly translating writings in the public domain.

“Spencer’s choice of texts brought a new, fresher perspective to my project,” Killiam said. “We decided to make those insightful texts available to anyone who might be interested, through online publishing; it was to be a nice journey into the art world seen through the eyes of some of the most eloquent critics and writers.”

Indeed. Beall embarked on it in the summer of 2011 and estimates she has spent more than 500 hours on the project. That includes her time last year as an Honors Summer Research scholar, a paid 40-hour position.

“It was monumental,” she wrote in an email from Paris, where she is studying at the Sorbonne.

The pull was strong, though. After two classes with Killiam, she says, French, art history and history became her passions, along with love for the written word. She is majoring in all three subjects, with a minor in medieval and Renaissance studies. The art commentaries Killiam brought to class, both translated and in French, had fascinated her.

“I remember thumbing through the seemingly endless pages of Eugène Fromentin’s scathing comments on Rembrandt’s most controversial masterpiece, “The Night Watch,” wondering how the simplest elements of a painting — light, color, composition, etc. — could have created such a heated debate among so many viewers, garnering a reputation for the painting as one of the most controversial works in all of art history,” Beall said.

Her interest peaked with James McNeill Whistler’s “Nocturne in Black and Gold: The Falling Rocket,” which precipitated a libel suit when the critic John Ruskin accused the artist of “throwing a pot of paint” in the public’s face.

“Clearly, art has been able to exert an immensely powerful influence on society over the years, and I was eager to learn more,” she said.

That episode also is behind her wish to study and practice art law after she graduates.

How paintings both capture and drive society’s cultural mood was one takeaway from her work. The critics’ commentaries, Beall says, help us understand the “thousand words” each one conveys.

“Every artwork is one of the most important historic artifacts that we have from its time period,” Beall said. “Not only does the work itself provide a visual representation of what life was once like, the comments and criticisms that the artwork has generated present an even richer description of our past.”

She also discovered there’s nothing simple or “mechanical” about translation.

“Writing is never exactly the same once translated into another language,” she said. “It is your obligation to find the very best way to preserve as much of writing’s unique character as possible.”

She says poetry was the most difficult work to translate but, “by far,” they were her favorites. Beall never wavered, according to her professor.

“The translation of those texts was often tricky since it necessitated a thorough knowledge of art and of the writer’s style in order to render it as faithfully as possible,” Killiam says.

“Spencer never lost heart and did not hesitate translating anything beautiful and pertinent, even in the form of poems or philosophical essays. It was a long process, and a difficult one at times, but it was well worth it in the end.”

— Jennifer McManamay

Craig Pleasants, “Taino,” sculpture installation, ca. 2012. Photo courtesy of the artist.

This spring, Virginia-based artist Craig Pleasants will display drawings and a site-specific sculpture installation in Babcock Gallery at Sweet Briar College. “New Work” opens with a reception and gallery talk by the artist at 5 p.m. Thursday, Feb. 14. The exhibition is on view until May 5.

The focus of the show will be a large-scale piece constructed of various materials, such as wood, cardboard, used clothing, BFK Rives drawing paper, aluminum foil and the existing, movable walls in the gallery. Pleasants is well known for his functional in- and outdoor installations, but this time, he’s adding a twist: Instead of completing the entire sculpture beforehand, he will be adding to it as the exhibition progresses.

“I have challenged myself to try to do something that can be visited many times over the course of a semester and remain new and fresh,” he said.

“In effect, I will come into the gallery at intervals during the semester and add things or take things away or change things or create large-scale drawings onto the form.”

Sweet Briar galleries director Karol Lawson believes Pleasants’ emphasis on site-specific, unfolding art will fit right in with the College’s dynamic academic (and architectural) landscape.

“Craig’s work will resonate with classes such as Professor Tracy Hamilton’s popular art history course ‘The Land as Art,’ as well as with a new initiative … from the Friends of Art to commission an original sculpture for the Cochran Library renovation and addition.”

Craig Pleasants, untitled drawing, ca. 2012. Photo courtesy of the artist.

Pleasants is the artistic director at the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts (VCCA), an artists’ retreat in Amherst. He has exhibited in numerous venues across the country and in Europe for more than 30 years. His shows have included site-specific installations, life-size sculptures, drawings and multimedia performances. He is the recipient of several grants, including three fellowships from the Virginia Commission for the Arts. Pleasants studied at the University of North Carolina, receiving his Bachelor of Fine Arts in sculpture in 1976. He went on to study at L’Institut d’Arts Visuels in Orleans, France, before moving on to Converse College in Spartanburg, S.C., where he completed his M.Ed. in humanities in 1983. To learn more, visit craigpleasants.com.

Babcock Gallery is open from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. Monday through Friday, and closed when the College is not in session. It is recommended that visitors call ahead to confirm hours. For more information, contact Karol Lawson at klawson@sbc.edu or (434) 381-6248.

Dean of the Faculty Amy Jessen-Marshall announced his appointment moments after President Jo Ellen Parker revealed the creation of the Eleanor Barton and Aileen “Ninie” Laing ’57 Endowed Professorship in Art History during the College’s academic year opening convocation. The chair is funded by an anonymous donor in the names of two former art history professors.

Barton-Laing Professor in Art History
Christopher L.C.E. Witcombe

“Such gifts provide Sweet Briar with a way to recognize and celebrate the contributions of professors who have dedicated their careers to Sweet Briar and whose teaching has been meaningful to many generations of students,” Parker said. “Such senior colleagues truly follow in the footsteps of Professors Barton and Laing who are honored by this gift.”

Witcombe has taught at Sweet Briar for nearly three decades and is a prolific scholar, having published more than 30 articles and essays and three books, including the award-winning “Print Publishing in Sixteenth-Century Rome: Growth and Expansion, Rivalry and Murder” in 2008. A fourth book is due out next year and three others, including a novel, are in progress. His third book is an interactive digital iBook Author textbook for the Apple iPad, “The Visual Experience of Art.”

Witcombe has long embraced digital technology in the classroom and began teaching web-based courses in 1996. He created and maintains an award-winning, Google-top-ranked Art History Resources website, which will celebrate its 17th anniversary in October. The site receives over a million visitors a year. He has also produced a popular series of podcasts called “Art History in Just A Minute,” available on iTunes.

A native of England, Witcombe studied painting at the Academy of Fine Arts in Florence, Italy, before moving to the U.S. to study art history at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, where he received his bachelor’s and master’s degrees. He earned his Ph.D. at Bryn Mawr in 1981.

Being named to the chair is immensely gratifying, Witcombe said, because it reflects the College’s strong support for faculty scholarship as well as teaching. And, he says, one is informing the other.

He and his colleagues are making changes to the art history program at Sweet Briar, some of which are coming out of his research and writings on vision and perception over the past decade. The new approach is intended to ensure students acquire the ability to analyze and understand how images work and how they affect us. One goal is to better articulate the value of image studies and bring them to the fore more than they have been in the past, as an essential skill students need to have today.

Coming at this time, the professorship is important to him because it doesn’t just acknowledge his past work, it is recognition of present and future efforts, too, Witcombe says. “Personally, it’s a big boost and I feel newly motivated and excited to move my work and ideas forward.”

Contact: Jennifer McManamay

Architectural historian Calder Loth will present “Palladio’s Architectural Influence in America” at 6:45 p.m. Wednesday, March 28 in the 1948 Theater at Sweet Briar College.

Loth is senior architectural historian of the Virginia Department of Historic Resources and a curator of the exhibition, “Palladio and His Legacy, a Transatlantic Journey.”

The 16th-century Italian architect Andrea Palladio had an immeasurable impact on this county’s architectural image, Loth says. Palladio’s descriptions of the classical orders have served as a textbook for generations of American architects. His designs for villas have influenced the appearance of American houses from the Colonial period to the present.

Thomas Jefferson, Palladio’s premier American champion, declared Palladio’s treatise “I Quattro Libri” to be the “bible” for architecture. In Jefferson’s own works, such as Monticello, the University of Virginia and the Virginia State Capitol, he provided the nation with precedent-setting models based on Palladian principles.

Palladio’s restoration drawings of ancient Roman monuments also became a primary source of inspiration for some of the most ambitious works of the “American Renaissance” of the late 19th and 20th centuries.

“Even five hundred years following his birth, Palladio continues to offer us lessons for a civil and timeless architecture,” Loth says.

Loth will speak on the American architectural image, tracing the hand of Palladio on two and a half centuries of American building.

For more information, contact Lynn Rainville, director of the Tusculum Institute, at lrainville@sbc.edu or (434) 381-6432.

Contact: Jennifer McManamay

Lawrence Nees, a professor in the art history department at the University of Delaware, will lecture on his paper, “The Eagle Capitals in the Dome of the Rock, Jerusalem,” at 5 p.m. Thursday, Nov. 17 in Pannell Gallery at Sweet Briar College.

The paper attempts to explain and contextualize the eagle capitals atop columns in the inner arcade of the Dome of the Rock, an Islamic shrine built on the site of the Temple Mount in Jerusalem.

The lecture is the first of two sponsored this year by the Medieval and Renaissance Studies program, a newly offered interdisciplinary minor.

Nees has taught at the University of Delaware since 1978. He is a specialist in medieval art, especially in the earlier medieval period, circa 500 to 1000, including Insular, Frankish, Byzantine and Islamic materials.

He has published several books, including a general volume, “Early Medieval Art” (2002) in the Oxford History of Art series, and is completing books on the beginnings of manuscript illumination, and on early Islamic art in Jerusalem.

He has held fellowships from many sources, most recently as Allen W. Clowes fellow and National Endowment for the Humanities fellow at the National Humanities Center. He currently serves as president of the International Center of Medieval Art.

A reception will follow. For more information, email thamilton@sbc.edu or call (434) 381-6125.

The American Association of Museums announced that Bonnie Pitman ’68, the Eugene McDermott Director of the Dallas Museum of Art, is the recipient of its Award for Distinguished Service to Museums for 2011. Pitman received the award May 25.

According to an AAM news release, the award recognizes “sustained excellence and unusual service by an individual with at least 20 years experience in the field. Criteria include the individual’s cumulative contribution to his/her institution, the museum profession and the larger museum community. This award is not necessarily given annually.”

“Few individuals in the last half century have made such an imprint on museums in America as has Bonnie Pitman,” AAM board chairman Douglas Myers said in the release. “Through her selfless service, her scholarship, her innovative thinking, her mentoring and overall leadership, Bonnie has set a standard the rest of us in the museum world can only strive to achieve.”

Pitman graduated from Sweet Briar with a Bachelor of Arts in art history and earned her master’s at Tulane University. She announced last month that she is stepping down from her position at the Dallas Museum for health reasons.

Read the full release here.

Witcombe is an art history professor at the College. His talk is part of the spring meeting of the Friends of the Library. The public is invited, admission is free and refreshments will be served.

The 469-page book, which contains more than 300 illustrations, gives readers an overview of the business, personalities, artwork and scandals surrounding the 16th-century Roman printmaking industry.

For more information about Witcombe, visit his Web site. For more information on the Friends of the Library, contact Joe Malloy at ljmalloy@sbc.edu or (434) 381-6307.

Published in 2008 by Harvey Miller Publishers, the 469-page book contains more than 300 illustrations. It is the result of nearly two decades of research that took Witcombe to archives, libraries and museums across the United States and Europe, including six months spent in the Vatican’s secret archives.

“Print publishing,” in this case, refers to engravings and etchings — an emerging commercial art form of the period — and not books or periodicals. Scholars suspect the prints, which often depicted architectural sights or religious subjects, were like postcards.

“There’s a new type of tourist arriving in Rome at this time,” Witcombe said. “Rome has already long been a host to pilgrims. Throughout the middle ages, there are people who would come to Rome for that, so they would obviously be customers for religious prints.

“But there’s also a new type of tourist that would come to see the antiquities and in part these print publishers are catering to this new kind of tourist.”

The publishing companies that produced the prints, and there were perhaps dozens by the end of the 16th-century, were highly competitive. Underhanded practices, up to and including murder, occasionally ensued.

Witcombe originally titled the book, “Print Publishing and Murder in Sixteenth-Century Rome,” but said the marketing folks thought it a bit too “Dan Brown-ish.” He modified the title, but “murder” remained.

“I wanted to keep the idea of murder in it, because the book kind of hinges on this murder that takes place in Rome, very clearly due to rivalry between print publishing houses,” he said. “Things had just gotten so nasty.”

The murder to which Witcombe is referring is that of the engraver Gerolamo da Modena, whose drowned body was found in the Tiber River. He writes about the homicide in the book’s fourth chapter, “Rivalry and Murder.”

During his research, Witcombe read an article that mentioned depositions taken after the homicide, which was largely thought to have been carried out by a rival publishing house or a consortium of shops. He found the transcript of the testimonials in Rome, studied it, and learned a lot about the personalities involved in the printmaking industry, many of whom were rounded up and questioned by local authorities.

“On the assumption that this was a murder that occurred, they arrested all these people and then — today we might call it giving these depositions — they were kind of interrogated. Someone would ask them questions and they would answer. What this document is is a record of the questions and answers.”

From his research, Witcombe already knew the names of many of those who were questioned, but reading the depositions gave him what he calls a “street-level view” of the people and places involved. “What people are doing, who they are related to, where they are living, what restaurants they were going to — all this, I was able to tease out of this document,” he said.

That painstaking process is a part of writing Witcombe says he enjoys and it explains his love of archives. “This is the real stuff,” he said. “It’s not someone else telling me something. This is the real material. It’s sort of like reading someone else’s mail, in effect, in terms of you’re getting the real information here.”

For more information about Witcombe and his book, visit his Web site.

— Suzanne Ramsey

According to Witcombe, the site receives more than 10,000 visitors a day and was recently selected by the National Endowment for the Humanities for inclusion on EDSITEment, a Web site billed as “one of the best online resources for education in the humanities.”

“As a measure of its popularity, type ‘art history’ into Google’s search box and my site comes up number one, a position it’s held for several years,” Witcombe wrote in an e-mail.

In addition, the Web site is referenced in numerous books, including “Evolving Internet Reference Resources,” “Must-See Websites for Busy Teachers,” “The History Highway: A 21st Century Guide to Internet Resources” and others.

The Venus of Willendorf is an ancient limestone statue of a full-figured prehistoric woman. Using a 3D modeling and animation system called modo, Mahler originally made the model for a podcast on the Venus that is being produced by SBC art history professor Christopher Witcombe.

“[The History Channel] contacted Chris Witcombe since he’s a known authority on the Venus when they were seeking better photos of it,” Mahler wrote in an e-mail. “He mentioned the model I was building and they asked if they could see it.

“They liked it, asked for a still frame they could use that looked as photographic as possible and I provided them with one.”

The episode will re-air at 4 p.m. Saturday, May 17; 9 p.m. Monday, May 26; and 1 a.m. Tuesday, May 27. For more information, visit the History Channel’s Web site.

— Suzanne Ramsey