News
porter retires after 32 years
Jeanne Cheanult Porter, associate professor of art history, will retire in June 2006 after 32 years at Penn State.
Dr. Porter teaches courses in Italian, Spanish and French Baroque and Rococo art, as well as connoisseurship and prints and drawings. She has written or edited a number of publications, including a catalogue monograph on the American abstract expressionist Bradley Walker Tomlin, which accompanied a cross-country retrospective exhibition for which she was curator. In 2004, she curated and wrote the catalogue for an exhibition of paintings by Henry Varnum Poor held at the Graham Gallery in New York City. Dr. Porter has published articles on Baroque art, with a special interest in Neapolitan painting of the 17th century, particularly the Neapolitan-Spanish painter Jusepe de Ribera. She is author and editor of Documentary History of Naples, Baroque Naples, 1600–1800, volume IV of a five-volume anthology published by Italica Press, New York, and co-editor and co-author of Parthenope’s Splendor, Art of the Golden Age in Naples (Vol. VII, Papers in Art History from The Pennsylvania State University). Dr. Porter received a sabbatical for fall semester 2002 to work on her current book, The Triumph of Painting in Seventeenth-Century Naples.
A recipient of the College of Arts and Architecture Faculty Award for Outstanding Teaching, Porter received her B.A. from Barnard College (Columbia University) and her M.A. and Ph.D. in art history from the University of Michigan at Ann Arbor. In addition, she has taken graduate courses at the universities of Florence, Rome and Ghent and at New York’s Juilliard School of Music. At the University of Michigan, she was awarded membership in the national graduate honor society of Phi Kappa Phi. Her doctoral education was supported by a Fulbright Grant to Rome, a Belgian Government Grant and a Ford Foundation Fellowship. Dr. Porter taught at the University of Tennessee (Knoxville), Finch College (New York City) and Hunter College (City University of New York) before joining the Penn State faculty. –FWM
book shelf
The faculty in the College of Arts and Architecture are a prolific bunch. Here’s a listing of some recent publications from professors in the college.
Michael Broyles, distinguished professor of music
Mavericks and Other Traditions in American Music, Yale University Press, 2004
Broyles’ latest book explores the “outsider” status that many American composers have embraced since colonial times. This exploration leads to an analysis of how these maverick composers’ personalities reflect prevailing attitudes not only toward the arts, but also about American society itself. The book was recently named one of Choice Magazine’s Outstanding Academic Titles for 2005.
Gary L. Catchen, professor of nuclear engineering and architectural photography
“Gedächtnis und Zukunft, Remembrance and the Future: A Photo-Essay.” In Berlin. The Symphony Continues: Orchestrating Architectural, Social and Artistic Change in Germany's New Capital, published by Walter de Gruyter Verlag (Berlin), 2004.
Maureen Carr, professor of music
Stravinsky’s Histoire du soldat: A Facsimile of the Sketches
Edited by Maureen Carr and published by A-R Editions (Middleton, Wisconsin), 2005
This edition contains all of the existing musical sketches for Stravinsky’s Histoire du soldat (1918), representing over 250 facsimile pages from the combined holdings of the Paul Sacher Stiftung (Basel) and the Rychenberg Stiftung in Winterthur. In her commentary, Carr discusses the criteria for establishing the ordering of the musical sketches; the grouping of these sources; and an outline of the conductor’s score used at the first performance.
Sight Singing Complete, 7th edition
By Maureen Carr and Bruce Benward, published by McGraw-Hill College (New York), 2006
Students of music are faced with the challenge of developing their aural skills to the point at which they can see music on the page with thoughtful, trained eyes and hear it with their mind’s ear. Sight Singing Complete leads students to this point by beginning with the familiar and moving gently toward the unfamiliar until they are transforming symbol into sound and improving in all idioms.
Marica S. Tacconi, associate professor of musicology and executive director of the Institute for the Arts and Humanities
Cathedral and Civic Ritual in Late Medieval and Renaissance Florence: The Service Books of Santa Maria del Fiore, Cambridge University Press, 2005
The service books of the Florentine Duomo of Santa Maria del Fiore were, like the church itself, a cultural reflection of the city’s position of power and prestige. Largely unexplored by modern scholars, these manuscripts provided the texts and, sometimes, the music necessary for the celebration of the liturgical services. Tacconi offers the first comprehensive investigation of the 65 extant liturgical manuscripts produced between 1150 and 1526 for both Santa Maria del Fiore and its predecessor, the early cathedral of Santa Reparata. This important and fascinating study provides new insights into late medieval and Renaissance Florentine ritual and culture.
James Wines, professor of architecture
SITE—Identity in Density, part of Masters of World Architecture series, Images Publishers, 2005
This book is a monograph exploring 35 years of work by Wines and his New York architectural practice, SITE, of which he is founder and president. The text and illustrations include SITE’s early history in the SoHo section of New York City, the controversial public art and commercial buildings of the 1970s, the environmental architecture and public spaces of the 1980s, and concludes with the last decade of civic and private projects in the United States, Italy and India. Author Tom Wolfe wrote the foreword, with additional texts by Michael
McDonough and Michael Crosbie.
