Lauren Weingarden – Fulbright Distinguished Chair
Lauren S. Weingarden, Professor of Art History, is one of three FSU professors doing their part to promote leadership, learning and understanding between cultures, thanks to grants from the Fulbright U.S. Scholar Program that will allow them to study abroad this year.
Weingarden will spend four months in early 2012 conducting research and teaching at the Federal University of Minas Gerais (UFMG) in Belo Horizonte, Brazil.
She will research the outdoor museum of contemporary art, Inhotim, located in Brumadinho, Belo Horizonte. The museum collection is composed of installation art works, which she will place within a modernist historical perspective dating back to the 19th century. She also will teach a graduate course on contemporary art installation theory, practice and exhibition display that will include field trips to Inhotim.
I am delighted to have the opportunity to research and teach at UFMG, where in May 2010, I held the Cathedra (chair) sponsored by the Institute for Advanced Transdisciplinary Studies (IEAT), she said. In that capacity, I taught a graduate-level course on word and image studies, which explores the relationships between verbal and visual means of representation and communication. While not widely practiced in the United States, Brazilian scholars have been actively engaged in this international field of research for several decades. The Fulbright provides me the opportunity to continue developing interdisciplinary methodologies with colleagues at UFMG, especially in comparative literature and the visual and performing arts.
Weingarden is among approximately 800 U.S. faculty and professionals who will travel abroad during the 2011-2012 academic year through the Fulbright Scholar Program. Fulbright Scholars are selected on the basis of academic or professional achievement and because they have demonstrated extraordinary leadership potential in their fields.