Month: May 2018

Congratulations go to Meadows art history student, Lauren King, who is the 2018 recipient of the Larrie and Bobbi Weil Undergraduate Research Award for her paper, An Alternative View on the Roll-Brimmed Hat. The Weil Award is given annually for excellence in undergraduate research, and the recipient is an SMU student nominated by their faculty for outstanding research and writing of a term paper. This year, Dr. Stephanie Langin-Hooper, Assistant Professor and Karl Kilinski II Endowed Chair of Hellenic Visual Culture, nominated Lauren for her paper.

Lauren, could you please briefly tell blog readers about the topic of your paper?

The goal of my paper is to re-examine how we think about the roll-brimmed hat worn by Gudea in his diorite statues. If you’ve taken any ancient Near East art history class, or even an introductory survey of western Art History, you’ve probably heard of the diorite statues of Gudea. The hat he wears, called a roll-brimmed hat, is usually taught as a symbol of humility. My paper questions this interpretation, and proposes that the hat is actually a symbol of power and masculinity.

Continue reading “Interview with Lauren King, 2018 recipient of Larrie and Bobbi Weil Undergraduate Research Award”

When I read the sad news of Mrs. McDermott’s death I was reminded yet again of the profound debt of gratitude both I and SMU owe her.  Mrs. McDermott’s influence in my professional career began in the spring of 1978 when I saw a flyer for the McDermott Internship at the Dallas Museum of [Fine] Arts in the hallway at the Meadows School of the Arts.  I was just completing my Master of Fine Arts Degree and taking Jerry Bywaters’s popular art history class, “The Arts of North America.”  Bywaters wrote a letter of recommendation, and I was honored to receive the first-ever long-term McDermott Internship for the 1978-1979 year.  It was at the Museum, then located at Fair Park, that I learned how a museum worked from the ground up.  This was to prove a critical formative experience.

Continue reading “In Honor of Margaret McDermott”

Featured in the exhibition Texas Women Artists: Selections from Bywaters Special Collections, on the 2nd floor of Hamon Arts Library.

Evaline Clarke Sellors was born in Fort Worth, Texas on August 30, 1903.  She began taking art classes at age eight with Christina MacLean, artist and former instructor at Fort Worth University, and later enrolled in the prep school for girls at Texas Women’s College Academy (now Texas Wesleyan College) where she studied with Samuel Ziegler, a graduate of the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts.  When she was only 17, her work, Still Life, was accepted into the exhibition The Eleventh Annual Exhibition of Selected Paintings by Texas Artists at the Fort Work Museum of Art (now the Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth).  Sellors continued her studies at the St. Louis School of Fine Arts at Washington University from 1921 to 1923. There she first enrolled in an illustration class but changed to a modeling class taught by Victor Holm. Her work was exhibited at the St. Louis Museum of Fine Arts in 1921 (most likely the exhibition Work by Students of the St. Louis School of Fine Arts, March, 1921).  She later enrolled at the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts where she twice won the William Emlen Cresson scholarship (1929 and 1930) to study sculpture in Europe.  Her professors at the academy included the sculptors Charles Allan Grafly, Jr. and Albert Laessle.  For several years Sellors exhibited her sculpture at the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts – 1928 (Bobby), 1929 (Head), 1931 (Mountain Goat), and 1932 (William).

Continue reading “Bywaters Special Collections Artist Profile: Evaline Clarke Sellors”