A&A NEWS

Dana Corbo ’25’s Commission

“Mouth Piece” Animates the A&A Suite

A&A is thrilled to unveil Mouth Piece, a striking new commissioned series of paintings created for our new suite by practice of art alumna Dana Corbo ’25. 

“I am so excited about this!” said Colleen Asper, Corbo’s primary adviser in the Visual Arts Program, who is bringing her painting classes to see the work later in the semester. “Working with Dana Corbo has been one of the highlights of my time at Princeton,” she continued. “As a painter she couples a ready understanding of how to create illusionistic form with a strong impulse to unmoor pictorial space. This play of opposites takes on a kind of physical comedy in her work in which the shock of the strange and the awkwardness of the familiar meet.”

Along with Corbo’s clear talent, her background in the department equipped her especially well for the task. “Dana has always been an artist, but she actually started out in the A&A department as an art history major before switching her focus to the practice of art,” her A&A adviser, Professor Bridget Alsdorf, explained. “She’s an immensely talented painter who draws on various subfields of art history in her work. For these reasons, among others, we thought she’d be an ideal artist to feature in our new office suite.”

“This project was a wonderful opportunity for me to reflect on my relationship with these art historians who were so instrumental in my education and artistic formation. I remember all the times I stared at these professors transfixed, trying to absorb their every word. Art historians spend their careers analyzing artworks and the people who make them; what happens when an artist forges them back into artwork?”

— Dana Corbo ’25

Dana Corbo 25's Mouth Piece

Scholars of Ancient Greek Art and Archaeology Convene in Princeton for the PITHOS Seminar

The fourth iteration of the week-long 2026 PITHOS (Princeton-Ioannina-Thessaly On-Site Seminars) program in Princeton, sponsored by the Department of Art and Archaeology and the Seeger Center for Hellenic Studies, was another masterclass in collaborative scholarship! 

Princeton faculty and graduate students joined their counterparts from the Greek Universities of Ioannina and Thessaly to share research methods, ideas, and results on the theme “Transitions and Turning Points,” exploring artistic, political, social, and cultural change in Greece. 

This year’s Greek faculty leaders were Professors Andreas Vlachopoulos and Alexandros Mazarakis Anion, and from Princeton, Professor Nathan Arrington. Student participants were: from the University of Thessaly: Holly Bartlet Balicki, Parthena (Nena) Chatzitheodoridou, and Evangelia Kolofotia; from the University of Ioannina: Fotis Dovolis, Stamatia Gioti, and Pantelis Kyrkos; and from Princeton: Marie-Christine Levesque and Ben Watts-Woolridge.

The group visited the Princeton University Art Museum with Professor Rachael Z. DeLue, Nassau Hall with Princeton University Art Museum curator Karl Kusserow, the campus with Professor Basile Baudez, A&A's Visual Resoucres with director Julia Gearhart and digital project specialist and archaeologist Leigh Anne Lieberman, and the Princeton Battlefield, to learn about campus life, American history, and approaches in the United States to monuments and cultural heritage. 

PITHOS article by Catherine Curan

Top: PITHOS fellows and faculty tour the Princeton Battlefield with Will Krakower, the resource interpretive specialist at Princeton Battlefield State Park (Photo courtesy of Nathan Arrington); above: Director of Visual Resources Julia Gearhart (center) shows the group pieces from the departments collection (Photo/ Kirstin Ohrt)

In the News:

Tina M. Campt on Arthur Jafa and Richard Prince’s Breakout Show

Excerpted from artforum.com and the October 2026 issue of Artforum 

Menace in Venice: Tina M. Campt on Arthur Jafa and Richard Prince’s Breakout Show

Curated by Nancy Spector, “Helter Skelter” has “menace and teeth” and is “impossible to unsee”

By Tina M. Campt

IT IS THE BREAKOUT show in Venice that steals the thunder of its more prominent sibling at the Giardini and Arsenale. Shortly after arriving at the preview of “Helter Skelter: Arthur Jafa and Richard Prince” at the Fondazione Prada, I met a friend who greeted me with two short, potent sentences that captured its essence: “Man, this is a show with teeth! And I really feel the menace.”

Realized by veteran curator Nancy Spector (former artistic director and chief curator of the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum), the exhibition brings together two artists who, at first glance, seem an unlikely pairing: Arthur Jafa, a gifted cineaste whose films and artworks feature incisive and inspiring explorations of the beauty, brutality, and precarity of Black life; and Richard Prince, a master appropriationist whose infamously sardonic reproductions of mass-media imagery insidiously and intentionally undermine the status of artistic ownership. It is a sprawling and expansive exhibition comprising film and video, prints and paintings, sculpture, collage, and recycled objects and structured around a formal and conceptual framing shared by the artists—one the curator admits in the accompanying catalogue has become an almost clichéd reference in modern and contemporary art: the readymade.....

Full article on artforum.com

Arthur Jafa, Viriconium (2026) twenty-five color UV print figures and wallpaper on honeycomb aluminum. Installation view, Fondazione Prada, Venice. (Photo/ Andrea Rossetti)

A&A Lecture Series: Catherine Quan Damman Presents “Performance and Contradiction: Acting Natural”

Professor Catherine Quan Damman of the Institute of Fine Arts, NYU gave the lecture "Performance and Contradiction: Acting Natural," as part of the A&A Lecture Series on Thursday, October 1 in Princeton University Art Museum's Tuttle Lecture Hall.

During the 1970s, performance emerged as a distinct artistic category and scholarly lens in the United States, yet its formal definition remained deeply contested. Damman asserts that this instability stems from performance's unique ability to reflect the political economy of its time—specifically, the rise of waged affective labor colliding with social demands for authenticity. "With particular attention to the roles into which Black femininity is routinely conscripted, I interrogate the era’s shifting understandings of 'neutral' (that is, 'expressionless') performing styles, mobilizing archival research and reception history to contend with the ways that audiences interpreted and misinterpreted the putative 'reality' of stage presence," Damman explains. "The paradoxical imperative 'act natural' offers a prism to reconsider longstanding cathexes to avant-garde abnegations of authorship."

Top: Professor Irene V. Small welcomes Professor Catherine Quan Damman (right); above: Damman presents "Performance and Contradiction: Acting Natural" (Photos/ Jonah Vimont)

Curator Perrin Lathrop and Conservator Elena Torok Discuss this Year's Focus of the Materials and Art Salon Series: Clay

By Dustin Chen, A&A Graduate Student and UAF at the Center on Science and Technology

On Tuesday, September 29, the Materials and Art Salon Series: Clay presented its inaugural session of the 2026-2027 academic year in Whig Hall. More than 20 faculty members, staff, researchers, and graduate students across campus gathered for two talks spotlighting the artistic expressions and conservation of the malleable, tactile material. Perrin Lathrop, Curator of African Art at Princeton University Art Museum (PUAM), overviewed the exhibition Clay Has Memory: Creative Lineages from Africa, the first of its kind to focus on African Diasporic artistic practices at the Museum. According to the Curator, the panoramic show approaches over two dozen ceramic objects through four concurrent themes: raw material, genealogies of labor, memorial, and monument. These lenses open onto the material thinking and remembering embedded in the historical ceramic works from Nigerian, Malian, and Congolese cultures and in the reinterpretations of clay by contemporary artists such as Adebunmi Gbadebo, Ozioma Onuzulikeon, and Zizipho Poswa.

Elena Torok, Objects Curator at PUAM, brought forth behind-the-scenes documents and images in the conservation endeavors accompanying the show. Titled “Examining Materials in Clay Has Memory Using Science and Conservation,” Torok’s presentation zoomed in on two case studies: a seated figure from the Inland Niger Delta dated to the 12th to 14th century and an Ivorian memorial head (nsodie) plausibly of the 19th century. Employing thermoluminescence analysis and X-ray imaging, the Conservator highlights the complex deliberations in sampling choices and conservation interventions.These two talks together illustrated the distinct visual vocabulary in the ceramic traditions and imaginations of Africa and its diasporas.

The salon was followed by a guided tour of the PUAM exhibition, which is on view until July 3, 2027.

Lathrop is co-teaching a course centered on Clay Has Memory, ART 516 / HUM 516 / AAS 516 "Crafting the Nation: Art, Materiality and Independence in the Post-Colony" with Professor Anna Arabindan-Kesson this semester.

Perrin Lathrop presents the current Princeton University Art Museum exhibition Clay Has Memory: Creative Lineages from Africa (Photo/ Kirstin Ohrt)

Princeton University #TellUsTigers:

Jess Mabey '27 Values ART 100's Lessons on her Pre-Med Path

In her #TellUsTigers Instagram feature this week, pre-med neuroscience major Jess Mabey '27 singles out ART 100 among her most meaningful academic experiences at Princeton. "This fall, ‘An Introduction to the History of Art: Meanings in the Visual Arts’ has encouraged me to look more closely at and search for deeper meaning in the things I see every day and in different forms of art," she said.

Thanks to Jess, Princeton's more than 500K followers globally are getting the message that A&A courses cultivate a unique and crucial skillset: through close looking and critical analysis, the world comes into clearer focus.

#TellUsTigers:

“Going home from Princeton to our small farm on Great Barrier Island off the coast of New Zealand takes 24 hours and highlights how different my two worlds are, yet both places hold deep meaning for me. My primary school had 25 kids, and along with New Zealand’s core requirements the curriculum included learning about the Māori Indigenous culture and language (my mum is Māori), which was very special. At home, we were taught to be resourceful. If our water came out of the tap brown, we walked into the bush to find the leak. My first physics lesson was helping my dad test and repair an electric fence. When one of our dogs broke its leg, we called a vet on the mainland who taught us how to bandage and care for it over a video call. At 13, I carried this sense of independence when I went off island to boarding school as there are no high schools where I live. When I researched colleges, I realized Princeton wasn’t just somewhere I wanted to be, it was where I felt I had to be. I’m a pre-med neuroscience major — I became interested in neuroscience when my grandad had a stroke — and last summer, I had the amazing opportunity to do research at Children’s National Hospital. Something I love about Princeton is having to take a wide range of classes. Some of my most meaningful academic experiences have been in the humanities. This fall, ‘An Introduction to the History of Art: Meanings in the Visual Arts’ has encouraged me to look more closely at and search for deeper meaning in the things I see every day and in different forms of art. Engaging in class discussions with peers from a wide range of backgrounds in the religion course ‘Biomedical Ethics’ challenged me to consider ideas and experiences beyond my own. My Spanish courses, including ‘Medical Spanish,’ led to an internship shadowing in hospitals in Ecuador. Through rowing on the women’s varsity team I’ve learned perhaps my biggest life lesson: how to be truly present in every moment — on the water, in the classroom, with friends. While at Princeton, my appreciation of my home has only grown and at the same time, it has opened my eyes to a world of possibilities.” — Jess Mabey ’27 

Celebrating the Career and Retirement of John Blazejewski

After 37 years showcasing the people, objects, and stories at the heart of A&A’s research and teaching, John Blazejewski is pointing his lens in new directions. His retirement punctuates a monumental legacy that spans from the early days of clunky view cameras to our digital moment. And all the while, he has served as the essential “eyeballs” for scholars across the globe. John viewed this mandate as both a responsibility and a privilege. “In the back of my head, there was this researcher in Greenland,” John said, summing up his task. “So, my job was ‘how do I make this look good so that person can do whatever it is they’re doing because they’re never gonna actually be able to touch the stuff.’…Meantime, I’m flipping pages on these things that are just amazing.” 

“In the back of my head, there was this researcher in Greenland. So, my job was ‘how do I make this look good so that person can do whatever it is they’re doing because they’re never gonna actually be able to touch the stuff.’ — Meantime, I’m flipping pages on these things that are just amazing.” 

— John Blazejewski

John Blazejewski Tribute

Top: John Blazejewski (Photo/ Kirstin Ohrt); above: the Blazejewski family at Jökulsárlón Glacier Lago, from left: Sons John, Stephen, Daniel, daughter-in-law Dara, son Matthew ’17, and wife Elizabeth. (Photo/ Captain Tam) 

ANNOUNCEMENTS

Join Us at the Program in Archaeology Fieldwork Colloquium 

Program in Archaeology Fieldwork Colloquium

Wed., Oct. 14, 4:30-6 pm

Princeton University Art Museum,

Tuttle Lecture Hall, Room 134

Fieldwork Colloquium

Get to Know Princeton University Library's Collections

Marquand Library of Art & Archaeology tour

Wed., Oct. 7, 11 am

Join us for a tour of the five-floor non-circulating library where you’ll learn more about the building, its features and collections.

Special Collections Showcase

Thu., Oct. 15, 2–4 pm

See a selection of items from across the collection and learn more about how to access Special Collections yourself.

Firestone Library tour

Fri., Oct. 16, 9:30 am

Be our guest for this 55-minute tour where you'll learn more about the building, its features and collections, and library-wide services for the Princeton University community.

Special Collections Fall Open House

Thu. Nov. 5, 6 pm

Unique, after-hours opportunity to visit the Special Collections Reading Room and learn about items recently added to Princeton’s collection.

Barr Ferree Publishing Fund

Fall 2026 Call for Submissions

The Barr Ferree Committee invites applications for press subvention and image reproduction fee reimbursement for the following: “meeting the publication expense of books of merit on architecture and related topics in the fine arts,” including but not limited to, sculpture, painting, engraving, music, drawing, landscape design, city planning, and industrial arts. The fund is to “be used toward manufacturing and publication expenses only.” The deed prohibits funding for “books on poetry, the drama, athletics, sports, dancing”; it does not cover the cost of administrative, editorial, or other “overhead” expenses.

Projects must be the product of primary research by current Princeton faculty members, librarians, curators or other academic professionals, or based on doctoral research by former Princeton PhDs (ordinarily only up to fifteen years after the PhD defense date). There must be an existing contract with a press at the time of application.

How To Apply: Separate applications should be submitted for each type of funding: 

Press subventions for enhancements to publications: Requests should be submitted using the press subvention application form (usually submitted by the press).

Music production subventions: Requests should be submitted using the music subvention application form (can be submitted by a music label or composer if self-released). 

Reproduction fees charged by image collections: Requests should be submitted using the reproduction fee application form(usually submitted by the author).

Any questions about the eligibility of specific projects or the application and award process should be directed to Jennifer Loessy, bferree@princeton.edu, 609-258-3772.

Additional guidance and FAQs can be found on the Barr Ferree website: https://barrferree.princeton.edu/

APPLICATION DEADLINES:

Fall 2026: Sun., Nov. 15, 2026

Spring 2027: Thu., Apr. 15, 2027

ALUMNI NEWS

Alexander Heilner ’93, Photographer and Digital Arts + Media Chair

Alexander Heilner ’93 moved from Baltimore to Denver in summer 2025 and now serves as chair of Digital Arts + Media at the Rocky Mountain College of Art and Design (RMCAD). He oversees photography, animation, game art, and music production, and is hard at work tearing out requirements in favor of electives in order to build a more interdisciplinary curriculum.

Heilner continues to photograph throughout the Colorado River Basin, and his aerial images of the impending water crisis there have been featured in numerous exhibitions and journals across the region. In summer 2026, his work was shown in Tilting West: Defining a New Legacy, a survey of contemporary western landscape artists at Arvada Center Galleries in Arvada, Colorado, presented in partnership with Tilt West.

Heilner recently completed his first term as a board member of the Society for Photographic Education, and he cochaired its 2025 national conference in Reno, Nevada. 

Alexander Heilner ’93, Intrepid Potash Mine, Near Moab, Utah, photograph, 2022