Elon was fortunate to have a student group receive an ASIANetwork Freeman Faculty/Student Fellowship for study in Japan in the summer of 2006. The group, made up of art majors and art history minors Leslie Mumme, Thomas Spradling, and Alexa Little, studied the internationalization of Japanese art. The students visited a wide variety of arts institutions in Tokyo, Osaka, and Kyoto, interviewing museum curators, gallery directors, art-school educators and students, artists, and the general public.
These students have begun a Web site documenting their study and will be presenting their research findings at the ASIANetwork conference in April 2007, as well as on campus at Elon.
Thomas Spradling has decided to return to Japan as soon as possible after graduation in May 2007 to continue his work in digital art and video gaming.
Faculty mentor Kirstin Ringelberg, assistant professor of art history, continued her development of the Asia-specific components of Elon’s new art history program by bringing scholar Norman Bryson to campus on Oct. 23 to speak on art in Shanghai in the 1990s.
Ringelberg will also be one of the faculty mentors working with junior Alana Morro in spring 2007 as Morro travels to Vietnam to study how artists of the last 50 years responded to the civil war.