ART HISTORY FACULTY

A former student writes, "I appreciate the individual attention given to each of the students. (The professors are) very enthusiastic about the material and really want students to understand the reasons and contexts for art."

TCU's student-faculty ratio of 15:1 allows you to work closely with professors committed to teaching excellence and active scholarship in their fields of expertise.

BABETTE
BOHN

Babette Bohn (Professor) is a specialist in Italian art, with a Ph.D from Columbia University, an M.A. from Boston University, and a B.A. from Northwestern University.  She has published widely on Bolognese prints, drawings, and paintings of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, including most recently Ludovico Carracci and the Art of Drawing.  Other recent publications have focused on the women artists of Bologna and on the portrayal of Old Testament and Apocryphal heroines in Italian art.  She is currently preparing an exhibition for the Uffizi Gallery on drawings by Guido Reni and his followers.  Dr. Bohn has received both the Dean’s Teaching Award and the College of Fine Arts’ Teaching Award.  She teaches courses on European Renaissance and Baroque art, Women and the Visual Arts, the History of the Print, and Drawing as Artistic Invention. She has received grants from the National Endowment for the Humanities, the American Council of Learned Societies, the American Philosophical Society, and the Samuel H. Kress Foundation.
Contact via email: b.bohn@tcu.edu

FRANCES
COLPITT

Frances Colpitt is the Deedie Potter Rose Chair of Art History. A specialist in contemporary art, theory and criticism, she holds a B.F.A. (Painting) and a M.A. (Humanities) from the University of Tulsa, and a Ph.D. (Art History) from the University of Southern California. Dr. Colpitt has taught at the University of Texas at San Antonio, Cornell University, the University of California, Santa Barbara, and the University of Southern California. Some of her recent graduate seminar topics include Postmodernism, Art Gallery and Museum Practices, Theatricality and the Sublime, Abstraction/Representation, Figuring the Body in Contemporary Art, Critical Issues of the 1990s, and Non-Static Media. Professor Colpitt's books include Minimal Art: The Critical Perspective and Abstract Art in the Late Twentieth Century. She is a corresponding editor for Art in America and a regular contributor to artUS. Dr. Colpitt has curated numerous exhibitions, which have appeared in such venues as the Phoenix Art Museum, the University Art Museum (UCSB), Fisher Gallery (USC), Blue Star Art Space, Artpace, and the UTSA Art Gallery.
Contact via email: f.colpitt@tcu.edu

LORI
BOORNAZIAN DIEL

Lori Boornazian Diel (Assistant Professor) received her Ph.D. from Tulane University and a B.A. in Art History and Anthropology from Emory University. She teaches a variety of courses focused on the art of the ancient Americas, such as Art of Mesoamerica, Art of Ancient South America, Maya Art and Architecture, and Art of Mexico from 1500 to the present.  A specialist in the pre- and post-conquest art of the Aztecs, Dr. Diel has written essays and articles on Aztec representations of Spaniards and their material culture in indigenous painted histories (“Painting Colonial Mexico: The Appropriation of European Iconography in Mexican Manuscript Painting,” in Painted Books and Indigenous Knowledge in Mesoamerica) and on representations of women in Aztec art (“Women and Political Power: The Inclusion and Exclusion of Noblewomen in Aztec Pictorial Histories,” in Res). Her book, The Tira de Tepechpan: Political Persuasion in an Aztec Painted History, is forthcoming from the University of Texas Press. She has received a grant through the Wenner-Gren Foundation and was a Summer Fellow at the Dumbarton Oaks Research Library and a Summer Scholar through the David Rockefeller Center for Latin American Studies of Harvard University.
Contact via email: l.diel@tcu.edu

SCOTT A.
SULLIVAN

Scott A. Sullivan (Professor and Dean) holds a BA from John Carroll University, and an MA and Ph.D. from The Joint Program in Art History at the Cleveland Museum of Art and Case Western Reserve University.  He is a specialist in 17th century Flemish and Dutch art.  His book The Dutch Gamepiece was published in 1984 and articles have appeared in The Art Bulletin, Oud Holland, and elsewhere.  He frequently and consults with museums and private collectors on attributions.  Dr. Sullivan's research has been supported by grants from the American Philosophical Society, and the National Endowment for the Humanities.   He currently serves as Dean of the College of Fine Arts and thus his teaching is limited to special problems and individual studies.
Contact via email: s.sullivan@tcu.edu

MARK THISTLETHWAITE

Mark Thistlethwaite (Professor) holds the Kay and Velma Kimbell Chair of Art History. Having earned degrees in art history from the University of California at Santa Barbara (B.A. and M.A.) and University of Pennsylvania (Ph.D), he specializes in the art of the United States, while also teaching courses in contemporary art, modern and postmodern architecture, and the history of graphic design. As a teacher, he has received TCU's Chancellor's Award for Distinguished Teaching, the Honors Program's "Professor of the Year" Award, and a Mortar Board "Preferred Prof." As a scholar, he has published books and articles on nineteenth century and contemporary art, particularly on the subject of history painting. He is actively involved in the area art museums as a lecturer and serves on the Board of Trustees of the Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth and the Visiting Committee of the Amon Carter Museum. Dr. Thistlethwaite currently serves on, and has chaired, Fort Worth's Art Commission.
Contact via email: m.thistlethwaite@tcu.edu

MARNIN
YOUNG

Marnin Young (Assistant Professor) teaches modern European art, art historical theory and methodology, and the history of photography. He received his B.A. and Ph.D. in History of Art from the University of California, Berkeley, where he wrote his doctoral thesis on the final phase of Realist painting in nineteenth-century France and Belgium. A book manuscript, currently in progress, expands the dissertation’s analysis of the representation of time in the work of Courbet, Monet, Roll, Raffaëlli, and Ensor. The working title is “Against Impressionism: Late Realism and the Politics of Pictorial Temporality, 1878-1882.”Dr. Young has received grants from numerous institutions, including the Fulbright Institute of International Education, the Belgian American Educational Foundation, the Getty Research Institute, and Phi Beta Kappa. He has published in Nineteenth-Century Art Worldwide: A Journal of Nineteenth-Century Visual Culture and Afterimage: The Journal of Media Arts and Cultural Criticism. In 2008, an article entitled “Heroic Indolence: Realism and the Politics of Time in Jean-François Raffaëlli’s Absinthe Drinkers” will appear in The Art Bulletin.
Contact via email: m.e.young@tcu.edu