President Wente visits Wake Forest classes
Wente visits Wake Downtown engineering class.
On Sept. 3, Wake Forest President Susan R. Wente took a seat in the EGR 211 Materials and Mechanics class at Wake Downtown to learn about the electronic conductivity of metals and semiconductors and get a student’s view of the academic experience at Wake Forest.
It is one of several classes Wente has visited so far this semester. She plans to join a divinity school class in the next few weeks and looks forward to additional classroom and lab visits later this year.
“One of the foremost attractions of Wake Forest for me was the commitment to academic excellence that the faculty embrace and students seek,” Wente said. “Discovery and exploration of knowledge is at the heart of the University, and I am so pleased to see how Wake Forest delivers on those elements of the academic mission.” Read more
Categories: Faculty News, Inside WFU, Presidential News, Staff News
Webinar to highlight student-curated exhibition on Black portraiture
In January 2020, 16 students in art history professor Jay Curley’s seminar class started researching and studying Black contemporary art for the spring semester. The research included viewing and discussing works in a collection belonging to Wes and Missy Cochran, a LaGrange, Georgia, couple who has amassed more than 700 works. 
Eager to see these works shine a light on Black life and culture, the Cochrans invited students to select works from their collection for an exhibition in Wake Forest’s Hanes Gallery.
The 41 works selected are on exhibit in Wake Forest University’s Hanes Gallery through March 28. Due to pandemic-related restricted access to campus, viewing “Explorations of Self: Black Portraiture from the Cochran Collection” in-person is limited to Wake Forest University students, faculty and staff.
“Representation Matters: Art, Space and Racial Restitution,” a webinar co-sponsored by Hanes Gallery, Wake Forest University’s Slavery, Race and Memory Project and Wake the Arts, will be held Wednesday, Sept. 30 from 6 to 7:30 p.m. The panel will be moderated by humanities professor Corey D. B. Walker and feature conversations around the works.
The event is free and open to the public. Registration is required.
Read more at Wake Forest News.
Categories: Events, Faculty News, Inside WFU, Staff News
WFU Student Union Art Collection on exhibit at SECCA
The Southeastern Center for Contemporary Art is hosting “With Open Eyes,” an exhibition featuring nearly 60 works selected from Wake Forest University’s Student Union Collection of Contemporary Art. The exhibition will run through Oct. 2. Admission is free.
Works on display are from among the more than 160 pieces purchased by students during University sponsored student art-buying trips that have taken place every four years since 1963.
The buying program, where students are given the opportunity to make the final decisions about which works of art will be added to the University’s collection, is believed to be the only one of its kind in the country. The goal is for the students to use the available funds to purchase works that reflect the current times. From Picasso’s L’Ecuyere (1960) to Jasper Johns’ Flags (1967-68) to Alex Katz’s Vincent with Open Mouth (1970), to Keith Haring’s Untitled (1982), to Christian Marclay’s Memento (Hearing is Believing) (2008) the collection include paintings, prints, drawings, sculpture, and photography.
During the 2013 trip, students purchased three photographic works: “Grazing Incidence Spectrometer” by Thomas Struth; “Lightning Fields 143” by Hiroshi Sugimoto; and Andrew Moore’s “Courtyard, Cass Tech High.”
Students participating in the trip are selected through a competitive application process. After much study, research and debate, the group hones in on artists whose work they like. They write to galleries asking to see what works are currently on the market by these artists. During the trip, they view the top choices, negotiate with gallery owners and decide as a group which works will become the newest additions to the collection.
“Over the course of their experience, students learn not only about choosing and purchasing contemporary art, they learn about themselves,” says art professor Jay Curley. “When they start the process of preparing for the trip, they are overwhelmed and slightly intimidated by the New York gallery world. By the end, they are on their mobile phones walking through Chelsea bargaining with these same galleries.”
Curley and associate teaching professor Leigh Ann Hallberg will be leading the 2017 trip next spring.
Mark Reece (’49), who was dean of men and College Union adviser, developed the idea for the trip before the University even had an art department. In 1963, Reece, and then faculty members Ed Wilson (’43) and J. Allen Easley and two students drove to New York City, explored the contemporary art galleries there, and came back with a dozen works of art for the University.
Learn more about the Wake Forest University art-buying trip by watching this three-minute excerpt from the exhibition video.
SECCA is located at 750 Marguerite Drive off Reynolda Rd., just five minutes from Wake Forest.
Categories: University Announcement
Endowed Professors, Faculty Fellowships and promotions
Congratulations to the College’s newest endowed professors, this year’s Wake Forest Faculty Fellows and those faculty receiving promotions.
The Wake Forest Professorship award is an endowed chair position and is among the University’s highest honors. The selection criteria include exceptional skill and sustained dedication in the classroom; outstanding commitment to student learning and growth beyond the classroom; a wide-reaching and significant record in scholarly and creative work; a sustained exemplary service to the department, the discipline, the College, the University and the broader scholarly community.
Recipients of the Wake Forest Professorships are:
Categories: University Announcement
Meet Elizabeth Chew, new director of Reynolda House Interpretive Program
There’s a new face at Reynolda House. Elizabeth Chew has been named the Betsy Main Babcock Director of the Curatorial and Education Division.
Chew comes to Reynolda House from Monticello, the historic Virginia estate of Thomas Jefferson, where she served as curator. She holds a Ph.D. in the history of art from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.
“The story of Reynolda is much more than a local or regional story; Reynolda is an American story,” Chew says. “I don’t see Reynolda as an art museum in a historic house – or as a historic house with an art museum. It is one seamless and unique experience, and I want to help push those identities closer together.”
Chew will provide direction and leadership for the development of interpretation, programming, education and research of the museum’s collections and exhibitions. The collections of Reynolda House are comprised of the nationally acclaimed American art collection; the historic house collection, which includes decorative arts and costumes; and the archives.
“Elizabeth brings to Reynolda House and Wake Forest a wealth of experience. She is an established scholar widely respected by American historians and art historians alike, with the rare ability to translate deep academic analysis into significant knowledge and new understandings for all,” says history professor Michele Gillespie. Read more
Categories: Staff News
