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Former Graduate Students

Graduate Alumni

  • Carmen (Jones) Niekrasz (MA 2001) received her PhD from Northwestern in December 2007; her dissertation is entitled “Woven Theaters of Nature: Flemish Tapestry and Natural History, 1550-1600.” She recently moved with her family to Moscow, Russia, where she plans to continue research¬ing early modern zoological tapestry as a form of natural history illustration.

  • Michael J. Golec (MA 1997; Northwestern Ph.D. 2003) joined the faculty of the School of the Art Institute of Chicago as Associate Professor of Design History in the Department of Art History, Theory & Criticism. Previously, he was Assistant Professor of Art and Design History at Iowa State University. His book Brillo Box Archive: Aesthetics, Design, and Art was published by Dartmouth College Press in July 2008

  • Sarah Jesse (MA 2004) was recently named as the Bernsen Director of Education and Public Programs. at the The Philbrook Museum of Art in Tulsa, OK. She was previously assistant director of public programs at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Chicago.

  • Amy Galpin (PhD candidate) has recently taken a new position as curatorial fellow at the San Diego Museum of Art, where she is organizing a 2012 exhibition from the collections of the San Diego Museum of Mexican Art, the Timken Museum of Art, and the Museum of Contemporary Art, San Diego, on 3 centuries of US and Mexican art. She has just completed curating an upcoming exhibit at the National Museum of Mexican Art (Chicago) called “Translating Revolution: US Artists Interpret Mexican Muralism,” opening February 12, 2010 and running until August 1, 2010

  • Andreas Fischer (MA 2003) is an Associate Professor at Illinois State University, College of Fine Arts, School of Art (painting). From February through April, 2009, his work was featured in a one-person show at Hudson-Franklin, one of Manhattan’s best-known midtown galleries.

  • Thomas Skwerski (MA 1996) was recently named Project Manager for Exhibitions at Chicago’s Field Museum.

  • Carissa Kowalski Dougherty (MA 2007) is Museum Technology Support Coordinator at the Art Institute of Chicago. She has been an editor and designer for a number of years, including those she spent here at UIC, during which time she authored or edited three books: Chicago: architecture & design (2005, by Michelle Galindo, Carissa Kowalski, and Tonia Kim); Jewelry Design, 2008, editor); and Young Designers America. (2006, editor).

  • Melissa Rosengard (MA 1997) formerly Executive Director of the Western Art Museum Association of the American Art Museums, has founded Vision Dot Org which serves the nonprofit field. She is based in San Francisco.

  • Rob Sherer (MA 2007) recently left the Museum of Contemporary Art in Chicago to become Assistant Director of Individual Giving at the Hammer Museum in Los Angeles.

  • Elizabeth (Beth) Kessler (MA 1997) received her PhD in 2006 in Cultural Studies from the University of Chicago (Committee on the History of Culture). After a year as a postdoctoral fellow at Stanford, she has joined the faculty at Ursinus College in Pennsylvania. The new book Hubble: Imaging Space and Time by David H. DeVorkin and Robert W. Smith, with contributions by Elizabeth Kessler, updates the authors’ 2004 book, The Hubble Space Telescope.

  • Gimo Yi (MA 2004) returned to Korea to teach art history and theory at the Duksung Women's University. In 2007, she became the Curator of the Nam June Paik Art Center, where she was in charge of international academic symposia, publication, research and exhibitions. More recently, she has taken on a number of curatorial and teaching engagements in Korea.

  • Charissa Terranova (MA 1996) went on to receive her doctorate from Harvard (2004), and in the Fall of 2007 joined the faculty of Southern Methodist University, where she taught in the areas of contemporary art and theory. In 2008, she was recruited away from SMU to join the faculty at the University of Texas, Dallas, where she teaches in the Aesthetic Studies area and directs the University's highly regarded Artists Residency Program. You can follow her work at Centraltrak.

  • Robert Blythe (MA 1992) one of the very first graduates of the MA program, went on to rise in the ranks of the National Parks Service, serving as a historic preservationist and a site supervisor at various important American parks. He has retired from the NPS and, as of 2009, has begun a second career as a teacher and administrator in the fields of museum studies and preservation.

  • Tiffany Stover [now Tiffany Stover Tummula] (MA 2006) for some years Associate Director of the Donald Young Gallery in Chicago, recently migrated to New York City, where she is a freelance curator and arts consultant, most recently with A/D Gallery.