Arts scholar named to professorship

Crimp

ouglas Crimp, a professor and writer who studies and interprets contemporary art and the cultural representations of AIDS, has been appointed the Fanny Knapp Allen Professor of Art History at the University.

Well known as a theoretician of postmodernism in the visual arts and for his writings on art practices and institutions, Crimp was awarded the Frank Jewett Mather Award for distinction in art criticism by the College Art Association in 1988.

Crimp's work since the late 1980s also has concentrated on the the devastation brought to the gay community by HIV/AIDS and on the politics and cultural analysis of the disease.

His most recent book, Melancholia and Moralism: Essays on AIDS and Queer Politics (2002), developed during a yearlong Rockefeller Foundation fellowship in 2000 at Columbia University's Mailman School of Public Health, takes aim at political inaction and conservatism.

Crimp began teaching at Rochester in 1992 on the faculty of the visual and cultural studies program and the Department of Art and Art History. Now professor of visual and cultural studies, Crimp has held several administrative posts and is currently acting codirector of the program.

"His leadership and vision have helped to make our Graduate Program in Visual and Cultural Studies one of the leading programs of its kind in the United States," says Thomas LeBlanc, vice provost and Robert L. and Mary L. Sproull Dean of the College Faculty. "He is an acknowledged expert and has published widely on the representation of AIDS in art and the media. His groundbreaking work has raised the visibility of that issue in the context of visual and cultural studies."

The professorship he assumes was created in 1980 to recognize Fanny Knapp Allen, an amateur painter and art supporter whose donations fund University scholarships.

Maintained by University Public Relations
Please send your comments and suggestions to:
Public Relations.