By Colleen Good

Both full-time Art History professors will be on sabbatical next year. Interim professors will replace the professors on sabbatical. Assistant professor Winston Kyan will be abroad for the year, while associate professor Joanna Inglot is currently set to be abroad for only the fall semester, though that may change. If given the opportunity, she would like to extend her sabbatical for the full year because there are rare opportunities to do substantial research in the field, Inglot said.

“It’s an important time for our scholarly development, which then informs what we do as teachers,” Inglot said.

For the department, it will mean “new temporary professors who will be offering a range of new courses we usually don’t teach,” Kyan said.

The two temporary professors will be replacing areas approximately relating to each professor’s area of study. Each professor will teach three courses, which will be more than usual, as there will be six courses for the year instead of five, Kyan said.

The applications for Kyan’s temporary replacement are “coming in just now, and will be confirmed in a month or so,” he said. They are now in the process of making the final decision regarding Inglot’s replacement, she said, but she doesn’t want to make a formal announcement because they haven’t signed yet. The professor will be covering 19th and 20th century art.

“The other hire will come in the spring,” Inglot said. “There will be actually a very rich range of courses next year. We actually feel that it is good to give students exposure to other professors, other material. It’s a good opportunity for students to get exposure to a different professor’s method of teaching.”

Current Art History majors seemed to share Inglot’s sentiments.

“I think there’s a benefit with professors from different fields,” Julia Reardon ’08 said. “It gives you a broader experience,” she said.

“We are [also] working to expand the department. There has been a moratorium placed on all new [hire] allocations by the administration, but we are otherwise hoping to get a full-time ancient and medieval professor,” Inglot said. “Definitely we are hoping to expand,” she said.

Art History is a relatively new major, Kyan said, with only about a third of Art majors choosing the Art History emphasis.

“We have Western art and Asian art, but art from other areas of the world are underrepresented,” Chloe Nelson ’10 said.

Alberto de la Rosa ’10 seconded this notion: “I think it’s unfortunate that the department is not very developed,” he said.

“It’s a very small department, but I think it’s encouraged to take courses at the other ACTC schools if they don’t have [the courses] here,” Nelson said. Nelson will be taking one Art History course at Macalester and one at St. Thomas next semester, while de la Rosa will be taking a history of photography course at the Minnesota College of Art and Design.

Kyan and Inglot’s sabbaticals will have different goals to represent their different interests and situations. Kyan has an emphasis in Asian Art History, while Inglot has an emphasis in contemporary and modern Art History, with a focus on gender and feminist visual culture.

“As an assistant professor, I need to write a book so I can work towards tenure,” Kyan said.

This summer, Kyan will be going to China to research. Starting in August, however, he will “just be writing.” His book will be about representations of Buddhist art in China and how that affects interpretations of the native and the foreign within the Chinese cultural identity. He has been researching for this book for about five years.

Inglot will be traveling to Turkey to examine the contemporary feminist art scene. While Inglot has written numerous books and publications regarding feminist art scenes, her sabbatical will not culminate with a final written work.

“[Instead], my intention is to organize an exhibition featuring some cutting edge feminist artists working in Turkey,” she said.

She will also be traveling to Poland to finish some articles on women artists there.