Celebrating Our Outstanding Art History Undergraduates
Since 2003, the Department of Art History has annually awarded a select group of outstanding undergraduates the Helen J. Beard Undergraduate Scholarship for Excellence in the Major. Scholarships are conferred at the annual College of Fine Arts Award Ceremony and typically consist of a one-time $250 stipend. The College Awards Ceremony for the 2015 academic year was held on March 22, 2016 in the Richard Fallon Theatre. The department is proud to feature the recipients of the 2015 Beard Awards: Anna Castellano, Taylor Crosby, Alissa Mittl, and Victoria Sunnergren.
Anna Castellano
Castellano found her passion for art in a high school AP Art History class. She is combining a BA in Studio Art with an Art History degree, and looks forward to a career that allows her to travel and focus on bringing art to public spaces. Her own art – such as her 2015 collage Recycled, right – blends her interests in mixed media, art historical imagery, and the representation of women.
Taylor Crosby
Crosby is a senior Art History major and Philosophy minor. She plans to begin the Art History MA program in the fall of 2016, focussing her studies on the Visual Cultures of the Americas. She serves as a leader for the Undergraduate Research Opportunity Program, works for the FSU Libraries in student outreach, and is completing a thesis on 18th Century Urban Latin American visual culture. She spent spring break in Lima visiting some of the sites she focuses on in her research, such as the Plaza de Armas, right. Crosby plans to continue her education with law school, eventually working in Art & Cultural Heritage Law.
Alissa Mittl
Mittl will graduate this spring with BAs in Studio Art and Art History, and plans to travel to Snowmass, Colorado to complete a workshop in ceramics at Anderson Ranch Arts Center. In the future she hopes to attain a position at the American Museum of Ceramic Arts in Pomona, California. Mittl is particularly interested in the Surrealists and their attempts to explore and dissect human consciousness and the mayhem of the human condition, as in Man Ray’s films Ballet Mecanique and L’Etoile de Mer.
Victoria Sunnergren
Sunnergren is a senior Art History and Religion double major, amd Museum Studies minor. She plans to attend the University of Delaware’s MA in Art History program in the Fall of 2016, focusing on Native American art. She is the President of the Undergraduate Art History Association (UAHA), Chair of the College Leadership Council for the College of Fine Arts, a break-out section leader for the Honors program, and heavily involved with the Center for Undergraduate Research and Academic Engagement (CRE) and the Undergraduate Research Opportunity Program (UROP).