News
alumni fellows
Dennis Freedman (’74 B.A. Art) and Dennis Paoletti (’67 B.S. Architecture) were recently honored as the College of Arts and Architecture’s Alumni Fellows for 2006.
Dennis Freedman, creative director at W magazine, is a central figure in the world of fashion, art, photography and design. He is credited with transforming W into a major consumer fashion magazine that serves as a creative showcase for top art and fashion photographers. Their work is featured in compelling photo essays that have become a hallmark of the publication. Freedman was the mastermind behind the January 2006 issue’s 47-page spread highlighting Penn State, which was shot on the University Park campus.
Freedman joined Fairchild Publications, publisher of W, in the 1980s as an art director for the men’s magazine M, and then served as features editor of W before being appointed creative director. He quickly realized he could make a difference at W by improving the quality of the photography. Thanks to his efforts, the publication received the National Magazine Award for Photography in 2006 and 1997 and the National Magazine Award for Photo Essay in 2003.
Freedman has served as curator for photography shows from New York to Milan. In 2004 he was the subject of an eight-page interview published in the catalogue for Fashioning Fiction in Photography, an exhibition at New York’s Museum of Modern Art. In 2005, American Photo magazine named Freedman one of the 100 most important people in photography.
A native of Harrisburg, Pa., Freedman also studied at City of London Polytechnic and earned a bachelor of fine arts degree at Parsons School of Design in New York. In addition to his professional accomplishments, he is well known for his collections of modern furniture, design, and photography.
Dennis Paoletti is a principal of Shen Milsom & Wilke, a consulting firm that is
internationally recognized in the areas of acoustics,audiovisual/multimedia systems, telecommunications/IT technology and security. An expert in the field of acoustical design, Paoletti founded his own firm, Paoletti Associates Inc., in 1976 and merged it with Shen Milsom & Wilke in 2000. He works primarily on high-profile architectural projects such as performing arts centers, museums and cathedrals, and is committed to the integration and coordination of technical disciplines with architecture to achieve imaginative and technically successful projects.
Paoletti began his career as manager of architectural acoustics at the San Francisco office of Bolt Beranek and Newman (now BBN Technologies). He has worked on projects including the San Francisco Opera House renovation; the Jewish Museum and the Moscone Convention Center in San Francisco; Segerstrom Hall (a precedent-setting architectural and acoustical asymmetrical building design) in Orange County; Charles Schulz Museum in Santa Rosa, Calif.; and the Getty Center and Our Lady of the Angels Cathedral in Los Angeles.
While enrolled at Penn State, Paoletti completed advanced studies at the School of Architecture at the University of Florence, Italy. He is a Fellow of the American Institute of Architects and British Institute of Acoustics, as well as the Society for Marketing Professional Services. He is a certified peer reviewer for the AIA/ACEC. Paoletti was on the Penn State gymnastics team (’65 National Champions) and is a member of the Penn State Alumni Association. He and his wife, Carol, have been married for 41 years. They have two children and four grandchildren. –AMM
Astorino Named Distinguished Alumnus
Renowned Pittsburgh-based architect Louis D. Astorino (’69 B.S. Architecture) says he wanted to design houses and buildings for as long as he can remember. “I was always fascinated by construction,” he recalls. “I remember when they were building houses in my neighborhood, I’d get my mom to make coffee so I could take it over to the guys and they’d let me watch them build the houses.”
After graduating from Penn State in 1969, Astorino returned to his native Pittsburgh and a job at the firm where he’d worked during school breaks and summers. A year later he took a construction superintendent job on commercial buildings. “I thought it would give me a better perspective on being an architect,” he says.
The “better perspective” has served him well. In recognition of his professional accomplishments and civic work, Astorino was named a 2006 Distinguished Alumnus, Penn State’s highest honor for alumni.
In 1972, just three years after earning his architecture degree, he started his own firm, then known as L.D. Astorino. Three decades later, the firm—now simply Astorino—employs more than 200 people and has a portfolio of projects stretching from the United States to the Vatican. Among their many notable projects, Astorino served as architect-of-record (working with HOK Sports) on the award-winning PNC Park baseball stadium for the Pittsburgh Pirates, the much honored PNC Firstside Center and the Trimont condominium high-rise overlooking downtown Pittsburgh. The firm has also been one of the restoration architects at Frank Lloyd Wright’s Fallingwater in Mill Run, Pa., since 1986.
Astorino and his firm are the only American architects to do a building in the Vatican. That building, the Chapel of the Holy Spirit, is where the sequestered Cardinals attended mass before voting on the new pope. The chapel adjoins another project Astorino consulted on: the Domus Sanctae Marthae, which houses visiting cardinals and bishops. Astorino recently completed a new Transplant Center for the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center (UPMC) in Palermo, Italy, and is currently working on the new Children’s Hospital of Pittsburgh.
Penn State is home to several of Astorino’s projects. His firm designed the Rec Hall renovations, Penn State Behrend’s library and academic building, and the state-of-the- art Louis E. Lasch Football Building at University Park (with HOK Sports).
Astorino has received countless awards and honors from architecture, business and civic organizations. The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette named him one of the city’s top business leaders in 2001, and he was recognized as 2005 Ernst & Young Entrepreneur of the Year in Real Estate and Construction. He was elected to the College of Fellows of the American Institute of Architects in 1987, one of that organization’s highest honors. Astorino has served as president of both the Pittsburgh chapter of the AIA and the Pennsylvania Society of Architects. He serves as chairman of the Pittsburgh Civic Light Opera and also volunteers his time for organizations such as the Pittsburgh Cultural Trust, Little Sisters of the Poor and Extra Mile Foundation.
Astorino was named an Alumni Fellow in 1991 and won a College of Arts and Architecture Alumni Award in 1989. Both of his children graduated from Penn State and are involved with the firm—Christine Astorino Del Sole (’95 B.S. L.Arch.) and Louis P. Astorino (’97 B.S. Civil Engineering). Astorino is a life member of the Penn State Alumni Association and lives in Pittsburgh with his wife, Jean.
curran honored with excellence in teaching award
Brian A. Curran, associate professor of art history, received the 2006 George W. Atherton Award for Excellence in Teaching.
The award, named after Penn State’s seventh president, was established in 1989 as a continuation of the AMOCO Foundation Award. It honors excellence in teaching at the undergraduate level.
Curran was nominated for his outstanding instruction of courses in Italian Renaissance art and art history, ancient to medieval art, the art history department’s undergraduate writing seminar, and upper-level and graduate courses in historiography, antiquarianism and the history and theory of sculpture. Letters of support also came from participants in Penn State’s summer study abroad program in Todi, Italy, where Curran taught during summer 2005 and briefly in 2006.
Curran’s impassioned approach to his subject area has allowed him to connect meaningfully with his students and garner their respect. In fact, one participant in the study abroad program switched her major to art history because she was “so touched by his lectures and enthusiasm for the subject.”
According to Curran, an effective teacher must be engaged and excited by the material. “From my own experience as a student, I learned that there is nothing more deadly than a teacher who is bored or no longer cares about the subject he or she is teaching. What I try to do every semester is to find a way to make the material exciting for myself before bringing it to the classroom, and one way that I do this is to select a new set of defining themes every year,” he notes.
Curran is a previous recipient of the College of Arts and Architecture Faculty Award for Outstanding Teaching and Roy C. Buck Award, plus the University-wide President’s Award for Engagement with Students. He has two books, The Egyptian Renaissance: The Afterlife of Ancient Egypt in Early Modern Italy and Obelisk: A History (co-author with Anthony Grafton, Pamela Long and Benjamin Weiss), scheduled to be published in 2007. –FWM
