Category: Faculty Story

Professor Karen Zimmermann has been named interim director of the School of Art for the 2025-26 academic year, University of Arizona College of Fine Arts Dean Andrew Schulz announced.

Zimmermann, currently the school’s associate director, will take over in July for Colin Blakely, who is stepping down as director after 10 years. Blakely has accepted the position of associate provost at the Rhode Island School of Design.

A professor in the school’s Illustration, Design and Animation (IDA) program, Zimmermann also leads the Book Arts & Letterpress Lab. She served as the school’s acting director during the fall 2023 semester while Blakely was on sabbatical.

“I’d like to express my gratitude to Director Blakely, an outstanding leader and mentor with whom I have collaborated for nearly a decade,” Zimmermann said. “I appreciate the support of Dean Schulz, Arizona Arts and the faculty and staff of the School of Art, as I step into the interim director position.

“I feel fortunate to work with such a fantastic group of colleagues and students, and I look forward to collaborating with them in this role throughout the upcoming academic year. I’m also eager to assist the school during this transitional year and in the search for a permanent director.”

The College of Fine Arts will conduct a national search during the coming academic year, Schulz said in a note to faculty and staff.

“Karen brings to this new assignment a wealth of experience from her years as the school’s associate director, as well as from the semester during which she served as acting director,” Schulz said. “I am confident Karen will do an outstanding job, and with your support and collaboration the school will move forward in important ways under her leadership.”

Zimmermann has taught Typography, Information Graphics, Motion Graphics, Design History, Design, Culture and Language, Design Studios, Visual Narratives, and Letterpress and the Multiple. Her art practice examines print and book production and visual communication.

She has received numerous grants and awards for her design and artwork, including a School of Art Professional Development Grant, an Arizona Project Grant by the Arizona Commission of the Arts, and the UA Deans Fund for Excellence.  She was a 2020 UA Academic Leadership Institute recipient. Most recently she has  been selected  to be in the 2025 cohort of the Digital Borderlands in the Classroom Faculty Fellowship program.

Her writing has been published in “The Education of a Graphic Designer,” “The Education of an E Designer,” “The Education of a Motion Designer,” JAB (Journal of Artists’ Books), “Design Education in Progress: Methodology and Process,” American Institute of Graphic Arts, Adobe Magazine, FATE, SIGGRAPH, and Zed.

Zimmermann has been on the boards and planning committees to organize several conferences, panels and events for the Amalgamated Printers Association (APA), College Book Arts (CBAA) Annual Meeting and AIGA Geopgraphics. She has presented work in: “Action/Interaction” Panel, Columbia College; Design Studies Forum (DSF) College Arts Association “Collaboration in Design” Panel; the UA Digital Arts Education Symposium; “Women, Identity and Borders” video screenings and presentations; “Alternate Routes” Video Art Series; and “Departure/Arrival A Reflection on Diaspora” Lecture and Visiting Artist.

Acclaimed photographer and artist Kenneth Shorr, a retired associate professor at the University of Arizona School of Art, died March 5 in Tucson. He was 73.

Shorr, who received three NEA Photography Fellowships in his career, taught as a tenured faculty member at the School of Art from 1985 to 2012 after earning a BA from Arizona State University and an MFA from UCLA. His work is held in the permanent collections of the Center for Creative Photography and the Art Institute of Chicago, among others.

“Ken’s own artistic production was prolific and eclectic — photographs, books, performances, videos, screenplays, altered album covers — all provocative and challenging and moderated with wit and humor,” said Professor Emeritus Joseph Labate, who chaired the photography program in the School of Art from 1996 to 2014.

Shorr “was hugely influential on students, and they loved being in his classes,” Labate said.

Some of those students left heartfelt remembrances on Shorr’s Facebook page. “What a wonderful person, and a talented man,” wrote Rebecca Horton, a 1998 BFA graduate in Studio Art. “He had such a huge impact on my life as a photographer and student.”

In 2013, Shorr presented a retrospective exhibition, “Action through Redaction,” at the Museum of Contemporary Art Tucson. The show was “a view into the artist’s mind, in his own words, ‘An obsessive, pathological dialog with myself,’ ” MOCA wrote.

“Shorr employs a biting wit to examine diverse subject matter,” MOCA continued. “Nothing is immune to the scrutiny of his arched brow: the influences and abuses of the mass media; familiar cultural images not excluding arcane yet disconcerting racist cartoons; clichés of government bureaucratic culture; the dark psyche of corporate idealism; or what he refers to as ‘the idiotic tautology of the politician’s stump speech.’ ”

Also a playwright, a manipulator of found objects and a large-scaled muralist, Shorr exhibited his work at the New Museum in New York, the Walker Art Center in Minneapolis, Whitney Museum of American Art in New York. His video performance work was shown in La MaMa in San Francisco and the California Institute for the Arts, and three of his plays were presented at theaters in Chicago.

He arrived as a visiting artist at the School of Art in 1984, when Labate was a graduate student. Shorr was on Labate’s thesis committee.

“Although Ken was making very different work than mine, he showed insight and offered highly valued thoughts on my work and he was exceptionally supportive,” said Labate, a 1986 MFA alum. “I witnessed him doing the same during critiques for other students, both grads and undergrads and including all the studio arts.”

When the photography program moved “into the stark institutional basement of the newly built art annex — long empty halls with doors along the way — Ken showed up one day with two radio-controlled race cars he bought at Radio Shack,” Labate said. “We would race them up and down that hall until they eventually stopped working. He made teaching fun.”

In retirement, Labate and Shorr would often meet and share thoughts on each other’s artwork — and life in general.

“Ken had a most brilliant mind and an unmatched sense of humor,” Labate said. “He will always be a presence in my head and heart.”

As a nod to Shorr’s sense of humor, the family listed his cause of death as “osteoflambosis.” The family also took out a short, whimsical obit in the New York Times on March 14. It read: “Shorr, Kenneth. March 2, 1952 – March 5, 2025. Photographer and redactor. Famed supernumerary. Lover of gewgaws and penumbras. Beloved and not to be fauxgotten.”

Shorr is survived by his wife, Alisa Eve Ziprin Shorr; son Reuven Eliot Shorr; grandsons, Elijah Nogales and Benjamin Shorr; sister, Linette Moore (Terry); and nephews, Charles Joaquin Moore and Cassius Mojave Moore. His other son, Ezra Storm Shorr, died in 2014. Alisa Shorr is a 1977 School of Art graduate in Art History.

Services were held March 9 at Evergreen Mortuary.

More about the artist

• “Action through Redaction” MOCA Tucson essay
• ArtForum review (1983) of Shorr’s exhibition at Chicago’s Nancy Lurie Gallery
• Shorr donates colection of sepia prints to Texas Tech University

Colin Blakely will step down as director of the University of Arizona School of Art in June, ending a 10-year tenure that saw him raise the school’s visibility and overall excellence while becoming a recognized campus leader.

Blakely, a professor in the school’s Photography, Video and Imaging program, has accepted the position of associate provost at the Rhode Island School of Design, effective July 1.

After taking over as School of Art director in July 2015, Blakely ramped up fundraising and oversaw major capital construction and renovation projects; increased undergraduate enrollment and degree programs; helped diversify the faculty and student body; and shifted the school to become more outwardly facing to the campus and community.

“I couldn’t be more proud of the school and all that it has accomplished. During my time here I’ve seen leadership among the faculty and staff blossom,” Blakely said. “This gives me confidence that the exciting evolution we have achieved will well outlive my tenure as director.”

With major capital gifts stewarded by Blakely, the school renovated the Art Building, the plaza in front of it and the Graduate Studios from 2022 to 2024. The results included renovated galleries to showcase student work and the First-Year Experience program; an atrium common space which is well-used by students and faculty for informal events; an open plaza that is a gateway to Arts District, including the University of Arizona Museum of Art and the Art Building; a newly conceived Visual Resource Center; and a new office space for the School’s administration. The School of Art is now more visible from Olive Road and amid the Arts Campus while projecting a more welcoming facade.

“As director, Colin has strived to forge a cohesive community of faculty and administrative staff, putting the long-term success of the School of Art and the well-being of its faculty and staff at the center,” Art History Professor Irene Bald Romano said. “Colin has consistently kept his eye on a broad vision for the school.”

Under Blakely, the number of majors increased from 500 to over 800 this year, including 65 graduate students, thanks to new online and in-person course offerings and degrees and retention efforts. He encouraged the creation of the innovative, multi-disciplinary Design: Arts and Practices B.A. program in collaboration with the School of Architecture and the School of Information — attracting some 200 students annually and growing, both on campus and online — and a new B.A. in Live and Immersive Arts with the School of Theatre, Film & Television. He helped the school create a Student Resilience Fund and awarded over $10,000 to those in financial need to help retain majors. He also oversaw significant curricular revisions to the MFA program as well as an expansion of the Graduate Certificate in Museum Studies, with a joint program between the school’s Art History and Art and Visual Culture Education programs.

“Colin has brought to the School of Art an unusual combination of an artist’s perspective — that of a photographer — with a special understanding of the work and needs of Studio Art faculty and students, a sensitivity to the academic units of Art History and Art and Visual Culture Education, deft administrative skills, and a keen analytical mind,” Romano said.

The school markedly diversified its student body and faculty of color under Blakely’s leadership, and he led the faculty in developing criteria for more equitable tenure and promotions processes, while actively encouraging DEI efforts in the school and College of Fine Arts. Upon his arrival, just over 10% of faculty came from diverse ethnic backgrounds, primarily concentrated in one program. That rate has grown to over 30%. The diversity of the student body increased from 38% to just under 50%.

To support these populations, Blakely worked with faculty to start mentoring and advocacy groups within the school for both student and faculty of color. He helped make sure the faculty group became an important voice at the college and division level. School of Art faculty are now leading important DEI efforts across the division and university, including Professor Amelia (Amy) Kraehe, who is now serving as Associate Vice President for Equity in the Arts, and Regents Professor Sama Alshaibi, who is co-Director of the Racial Justice Studio.

“Colin has been supportive of faculty recruiting efforts, setting up a mentoring system to ensure junior faculty are nurtured in their early years and supported through the tenure process,” Romano said. “He has also instituted twice-annual undergraduate mentoring sessions in which School of Art majors meet with faculty in their program area to discuss near and long-term progress and goals, alongside meetings with the advising staff.”

To increase the school’s visibility, Blakely forged partnerships on campus by participating on the Senior Vice President for Research and Innovation Search Committee, Strategic Advisory Council, Arizona FORGE (now Startup Wildcats) and Advisory Board of Center for University Education Scholarship (CUES). In addition, he supported the Visions Program in Scottsdale, helping underrepresented youth practice and engage with art.

Blakely partnered with the Center for Creative Photography on symposia, searches and committees to improve the connection between the CCP and students in the school’s Photography, Video and Imaging program and Art History program. As such, the school’s MFA program saw its ranking in U.S. News and World Report increase from No. 55 to No. 32 — and from No. 8 to No. 3 in Photography. In addition, he implemented a new brand identity, a redesigned website and new communications strategy for the school, hiring a specialist in communications and outreach. And to raise visibility for the school’s programs, he launched a “Free Graduate School” campaign.

What made Blakely doubly proud during his tenure was watching the School of Art’s graduates move on to successful careers as artists, museum curators, art educators and professionals in other fields.

“Who better understands creativity than art majors?” Blakely asked. “Thus, it’s no surprise to learn that our graduates have seen great success in careers outside the arts as well as inside. When I get asked what you can do with an art major, the true answer is simple: Anything you want.”

In addition to his director duties, Blakely has represented the School of Art at the highest levels of the university. He recently took on the role of co-executive director of HeadsNetwork, representing over 250 heads, chairs and directors across campus — working to foster a sense of community and camaraderie while organizing curriculum and training for new heads.

For three years, he served as Associate Vice President for Strategic Initiatives of Arizona Arts, working closely with the Dean and VP of Arizona Arts to guide some strategic planning for the umbrella unit of the School of Art. He also served on the strategic planning team for the university as co-author of the “Making Arts and Culture Central to the UA Experience” strategic initiative, and he’s been involved with budget planning as a member of the RCM 3-Year Budget Review Committee and AIB Steering Committee. Nationally, he serves on the National Council of Arts Administrators and is a Site Visitor for the National Association of Schools of Art (NASAD). Previously, he served on the Board of Directors for the College Art Association.

“Colin has built a community of trust, with a high degree of mutual respect among the faculty and staff,” Romano said. “He’s represented the School of Art at the highest levels of the university in a positive and constructive way.”

Before coming to the U of A, Blakely was department head and a professor of photography at Eastern Michigan University, where he was on the faculty for 14 years and served as chair of the university’s budget council. His work has been shown at Fotofest Houston, the Society for Contemporary Photography, the Pingyao International Photography Festival, the Griffin Museum of Photography, the Photographic Center Northwest and the Jen Bekman Gallery He was a runner-up for the 2009 Aperture Portfolio Prize and a Winter 2007 Hot Shot. Publications include Pause to Begin, Photography Quarterly, and The Humble Collectors’ Guide to Emerging Art Photography.

Blakely received his B.A. from Williams College in Williamstown, Massachusetts, with a double major in Math and Studio Art, and his M.F.A. in Photography from the University of New Mexico.

Invited to the prestigious Rockefeller Foundation Bellagio Center residency program, University of Arizona School of Art Regents Professor Sama Alshaibi joined other top global artists, scholars and scientists tackling issues such as water and climate in addition to working on her art project that explores the impact of Iraq’s laws on women.

Since 1959, the monthlong residency program in Bellagio, Italy, has welcomed more than 4,000 luminaries from 130 countries, including 100 Nobel Laureates. This year’s cohort included Nobel Prize winner Joseph Stiglitz (United States), scientist Solomon Assefa (Ethiopia), global health expert Alaa Murabit (Libya), renowned dancer and choreographer Bijayini Satpathy (India) and novelist Gioconda Belli (Nicaragua).

Alshaibi, an Iraqi-naturalized U.S. citizen who received a 2021 Guggenheim Fellowship, was among 100 participants selected from 2,000 applications for the Bellagio program.

She was part of an interdisciplinary cohort that engaged with four Rockefeller groups that focused on climate solutions; reinventing capitalism; promoting well-being; and health, equity, innovative finance and Artificial Intelligence.

“The Bellagio Center has been privileged to host the world’s most innovative scholars, practitioners and artists who are committed to the betterment of humanity for more than 60 years,” said Natalye Paquin, Rockefeller’s chief operating officer, on the foundation’s website.

Meanwhile, Alshaibi worked on “Paratext [59/41]” — her emerging technology and text-based art project that examines Baghdad’s post-war metropolis and Iraq’s legal instruments “subjecting women and girls to devastating effect,” she said. Reflecting the influence of Iraq’s 1959 Personal Status Law and Article 41 of the Iraq Constitution on women’s rights and security, the project interrogates the country’s social norms and public life in the aftermath of the 2003 US invasion, sectarian wars, and the rise and fall of ISIL, according to her project’s abstract.

“I’ve made three trips to Iraq in the past 18 months—scanning public sites, researching archives, interviewing activists and ordinary women, and visiting fraught spaces where women and girls are trafficked or provided refuge,” Alshaibi said. “Together, we overcome barriers to tell a complex historical and evolving story of women in Iraq.”

Her multimedia installation will simulate an archive.

“I will be producing looping video and sound recordings, manuscripts, images, and constructed testimonies made from LIDAR data point clouds,” said Alshaibi, part of the school’s renowned Photography, Video & Imaging program. “Texts are extracted from data and non-literary documents concerned with the legal production of gendered inequality, including Iraq’s police logs, statistical reports, and legal writing, including the national constitution.”

For Alshaibi, the project is an intervention and a framework to comprehend Iraq’s laws and their impact on society. “Sectarianism is gendered, and controlling women’s bodies translates to control of the Iraqi people. Iraq’s women and girls have long been subjected to a gendered shadow war waged by outsiders and their fellow citizens alike,” she said. “Though today many Iraqi women are challenging political attitudes and social norms around the repression of women, the lack of official accountability for most assassinations, kidnappings, exploitation, and domestic violence places these women in extreme danger.”

“Paratext [57/41]” amphlifies how Iraqi women resist their challenges, Alshaibi said, explaining that since October 2019, Iraqis have led civil protests calling for greater rights and ending corruption by sectarian forces whose armed militias dominate the government and streets.

“Women who dare to oppose the status quo by organizing, demonstrating, and seeking legal reform are violently targeted by the authorities,” Alshaibi said. “As an Iraqi naturalized US citizen, I believe their struggles require our attention.”

• Arab News profile: “Sama Alshaibi — ‘I’m trying to change this idea of what an Arab woman is’ ”
• Alashaibi earnes praise from Regents
• Alshaibi bio

Alexander the Great has been popular for over 2,300 years, but University of Arizona Art History Professor Irene Bald Romano explains how the image and myths surrounding one of history’s greatest military generals have been manipulated and appropriated in her new book.

In “Beth Shean Studies: Aspects of Religion, History, Art, and Archaeology in Hellenistic and Roman Nysa-Scythopolis,” Romano and co-author Kyle W. Mahoney probe two artifacts excavated in 1925 in Beth Shean, Israel — a Roman marble portrait of Alexander the Great and a Hellenistic-inscribed stele fragment — by the Palestine Expedition of the University of Pennsylvania Museum.

The book includes an appendix by two scientists in Athens who conducted the analysis of the marble of Alexander’s head and identified the quarry. The American Philosophical Society in Philadelphia supported Romano’s research with grants and agreed to publish the book in a series which has been continuously published since 1771 — the oldest publication in America — and now distributed by Penn Press.

The University of Arizona School of Art recently interviewed Romano, who uses an object-biography approach in the book to trace the modern history of the portrait of Alexander, showing how its movements mirror the history of the creation of museums in Jerusalem.

Q. What drew you to do research on the marble head of Alexander the Great?

A. I began my interest in the sculpture from the site of Beth Shean in Israel in the early 2000s when I was writing a book on all of the Classical sculpture in the University of Pennsylvania Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology in Philadelphia. Included among the Penn Museum’s collection are colossal marble finger fragments that were found in the same place and at the same time as a marble portrait of Alexander the Great — in a cistern on top of the tel of Beth Shean, or ancient Nysa-Scythopolis. The fingers don’t belong to the Alexander statue, but they got me interested in what other sculpture fragments were found in the same context. I was able to go to Israel in the summer of 2016 to study the marble portrait of Alexander the Great, with the help of a grant from the Albright Institute for Archaeological Research in Jerusalem and the welcome support of the Israel Museum, Jerusalem where the Alexander head is located. More recently, I invited my colleague Kyle to write a chapter in the book on a Greek inscription that was found in the same cistern and that tells part of the earlier history of the site, in the 2^nd century B.C.

Q. A Netflix docuseries, “Alexander: The Making of a God,” came out this year. Why are we so obsessed with Alexander the Great?

A. I have not seen the series. But as I write in the book: “Alexander the Great — the man, the myth, the hero, the conqueror, the ruler-turned-god, his accomplishments, and his images in various media — has held an enduring fascination since his death in 323 BCE. Alexander has been the subject of a myriad of ancient biographies; literary and artistic depictions of his legendary exploits in various languages and formats, including in stories of ‘The Alexander Romance,’ his transformation as Iskander in Persian miniature paintings, and as a Byzantine emperor in 14^th century miniatures; in popular modern literature; and in a challenging mountain of modern scholarship. He has inspired a series of prints by Andy Warhol and a recent comparison with 21^st century male hairstyles, and he has been used as a political pawn in the high-stakes politics of national identity in the Balkans.”

Q. How does your research help better understand the image and myths associated with Alexander?

A. In the vast scholarship devoted to Alexander the Great, it would seem there is little more to be said about him, yet this Roman marble portrait from Scythopolis has barely been considered as a part of the tapestry of Alexander’s historical legacy. The details about this portrait are fully published in this book for the first time and provide key information about an important ancient site — its monument landscape and cultic associations in the Roman period — and about Alexander as a mythical founder of Near Eastern cities and a role model for emperors in a vital period of Roman history. A reconstruction of the life, deeds, and physical appearance of Alexander of Great is hampered by the fact that his historical biographies were all written long after his death, with the oldest surviving account that of Diodorus (Bibliotheke 17), written 300 years after his death, and the most reliable account by Arrian (Anabasis) written during the second century CE, 500 years after Alexander’s lifetime. A kind of “romantic tapestry” about him was created, and mythologies of his life and deeds were embellished over the centuries.

Alexander became so popular in the Roman period in the East, especially in the second and third centuries CE, that cities of the Decapolis — in modern Israel, Jordan and Syria, including Scythopolis, or ancient Beth Shean, who prided themselves on their Greek heritage — could not resist claiming him as their founder. Various cities in other parts of the Roman Empire established ruler cults to the youthful hero-turned-god. At Beth Shean, it seems Alexander may have been worshipped alongside the main deity, Zeus, in the Roman temple on its acropolis, or the tel where this statue of which we only have the head) was set up.

The mythical life and deeds of Alexander were projected on the life of Jesus in early Christian theology, yet in the Late Roman/Early Byzantine period Alexander was regarded an anti-Christ who threatened Christian monotheistic beliefs. Thus, in the early Christian period in Scythopolis, his statue was mutilated and decapitated, and the demons that lived within the image of Alexander were exorcized. Though his memory lived on elsewhere in the Late Antique period, at Scythopolis Alexander was laid to rest in a watery cistern, to be brought back to “life” again with the discovery of this head in 1925 during the British Mandate. It was put on display in 20^th century Palestine and eventually displayed in the IMJ as an ancient model in the modern state of Israel.

Q. Could you elaborate on your object-biography ap­proach in the study of the portrait of Alexander the Great?

A. It’s a methodology that arose from the field of anthropology and entails an examination of a work of art or cultural object in all aspects of its life cycle — its manufacturing technique, time and place, and its uses and interpretations throughout its history in changing sociocultural-political contexts, as well as in modern museum settings. Other art historians have used this approach to study “the lives and afterlives” of ancient sculpture but their interests have focused primarily on the use and history of specific works in their ancient past, for the most part neglecting their modern history, contemporary questions, and contexts. Presenting the full biography of ancient objects when it is possible to reconstruct the complete information, as is the case with this Alexander head, opens up interesting questions about uses, appropriation, and reception of works of art across the span of their “lives,” both in their ancient and post-ancient contexts.

So, in this book I discuss the entire “life” of this marble portrait of Alexander, from its manufacture and use, its discovery in 1925, and its modern history, including its transfers from the site of Beth Shean to the Palestine Museum of Antiquities in East Jerusalem, to the Palestine Archaeological Museum which became the Rockefeller Archaeological Museum, then to the Israel Museum, Jerusalem, inaugurated in 1965, where the portrait head is today.

By Mikayla Mace Kelley, University Communications

On Tumamoc Hill, hikers climb and descend daily. Animals skitter across the desert floor for years. Saguaros will grow and die over decades, sometimes centuries. But for a millennium, a photographic camera will stand sentinel over Tucson, prompting passersby to stop and think about what the future may hold.

Dubbed the Millennium Camera, the device was dreamed up by the experimental philosopher Jonathon Keats, a research associate at the University of Arizona College of Fine Arts (CFA).

(The Arizona Institute for Resilience helped fund the camera through the CFA Arts | Humanities | Resilience grants program, with support and guidance from School of Art Professor Ellen McMahon and Associate Professor Carissa DiCindio.)

For a camera to last so long, it must be simple. Through a pin-sized hole in a thin sheet of 24-karat gold, light will slip into a small copper cylinder mounted atop a steel pole. Over 10 centuries, sunlight reflected from Tucson’s landscape will slowly fade a light-sensitive surface coated in many thin layers of rose madder, an oil paint pigment. When future humans open the camera in 1,000 years, they will see an extremely long exposure image of Tucson through all its future iterations.

Keats and a team of researchers from the Desert Laboratory on Tumamoc Hill installed the camera next to a bench facing west over the Star Pass neighborhood. The bench invites a pause in the hike and the camera encourages hikers to imagine what the future will hold, Keats said.

“Most people have a pretty bleak outlook on what lies ahead,” he said. “It’s easy to imagine that people in 1,000 years could see a version of Tucson that is far worse than what we see today, but the fact that we can imagine it is not a bad thing. It’s actually a good thing, because if we can imagine that, then we can also imagine what else might happen, and therefore it might motivate us to take action to shape our future.”

Making a camera – and a city – that will last

Conventional cameras typically rely on quick chemical reactions (or more recently, digital technology) to capture an image. The problem is that future humans might not have the technical knowledge to process images in specific ways nor have the technology to do so.

What’s more, there is no conventional photographic process that is insensitive enough to be able to take a photograph over a millennium, Keats said, which is what led him to the idea of sun-faded pigment. That rose madder will fade at the correct rate is an educated guess on Keats’ part.

“One thousand years is a long time and there are so many reasons why this might not work,” Keats said. “The camera might not even be around in a millennium. There are forces of nature and decisions people make, whether administrative or criminal, that could result in the camera not lasting.”

If the camera does last, however, Keats outlines what we can assume the final image will look like: The landscape’s most steadfast features will appear sharpest (although the land is not completely stable, so there will be some inevitable blur to the image). Conversely, the most dynamic parts will be softest. Sudden changes will result in what will look like multiple images overlapped.

“Let’s take a really dramatic case where all the housing is removed 500 years in the future,” Keats said. “What will happen then is the mountains will be clear and sharp and opaque, and the housing will be ghostly. All change will be superimposed on one image that can be reconstructed layer by layer in terms of interpretation of the final image.”

But as much as Keats hopes to provide the future with a record of the past, he also wants to encourage people of today to plan for the future. Specifically, he thinks we should think through where populations might continue to sprawl on the landscape and reflect on that growth in relationship to the natural environment, something he said we need to be doing urgently.

“By no means is the camera making a statement about development – about how we should build the city or not going forward,” Keats said. “It is set there to invite us to ask questions and to enter into conversation and invite the perspective of future generations in the sense that they’re in our minds.”

Keats is adamant that the camera is not opened before 1,000 years.

“If we open in the interim, then it diminishes the imagining that we need to be doing,” he said.

A global perspective

To determine the best location for the camera – somewhere accessible to the community that looks out over a dynamic part of the city – Keats had many conversations with people with deep ties to the hill, including the Desert Laboratory’s director of operations, Clark Reddin, and community outreach assistant Robert Villa.

“Tumamoc Hill has a very deep relationship with the people of Tucson and the hill has a history to it that has this great vantage metaphorically and literally for looking across generations,” Keats said. “The petroglyphs on Tumamoc Hill, for example, are a record of people looking very carefully at their environment and leaving a trace of what they’ve seen. That is really a form of communication across generations. In the same spirit, the Millennium Camera provides a way to observe and interact.”   

Keats wants to install at least one more camera on Tumamoc Hill looking out in a different direction, perhaps eastward overlooking downtown Tucson. The two views will mirror each other, and reveal the dynamics of human interaction with the environment.

Contingent on funding, he has also identified the Santa Rita Experimental Range as another Millennium Camera site.

Experimental Range director Brett Blum and Keats identified a location “where the future is fascinatingly and deeply uncertain – an interface between the natural and human environments,” Keats said. As on Tumamoc Hill, it is also a place where the public can engage with the camera and think about the future.

He is also looking to install the cameras around the globe. In China, he is planning to put one in Chongqing, as well as in Griffith Park in Los Angeles. In May, he will install one in the Austrian Alps.

“This project depends on doing this in many places all over the world,” Keats said. “I hope this leads to a planetary process of reimagining planet Earth for future generations.”

Background on funding for camera

In 2022, when McMahon heard that Keats was working on Tumamaoc Hill as a research associate, she contacted him and learned that his Millennium camera project was not sufficiently funded to take it to completion.

Knowing that his project would benefit from stronger connections with campus as a whole, and the School of Art in particular, McMahon introduced Keats to DiCindio. Her research centers on art museum education, with a specific focus on museum-community partnerships and creating opportunities for dialogue and connection in art museum programming.

Meanwhile the Arizona Institute for Resilience (AIR) transferred funds to the College of Fine Arts to support five projects that demonstrate how the arts build resilience. McMahon created a call for proposals, which was shared with all faculty in the CFA, College of Architecture, Planning and Landscape Architecture (CAPLA), College of Social & Behavioral Sciences (SBS) and the College of Humanities in late 2022.

AIR’s goal was to support scholarly and creative activities in the Arts and Humanities that advance the institute’s mission of supporting interdisciplinary groups, including with off-campus partners, to address resilience in our natural and human communities. Five projects were selected, and all were featured in the “Ways of Knowing, Ways of Being” exhibition at the Center for Creative Photography in October 2023. 

Keats and DiCindio proposed a project which funded the Millennium Camera, three public environmental art workshops and assessment of the impact of the workshops on people’s ecological awareness titled, The Nature of Change: Experiments in Societal Transformation Through Environmental Art on Tumamoc Hill. In addition, McMahon and Jennifer Fields, director of the Office of Societal Impact, received a planning grant from RII to create a proposal for an arts research and integration initiative. This funding supported the “Ways of Knowing, Ways of Being: Arts Research and Integration” exhibition, a related series of workshops guided by Keats at CCP, and assessment of all of the activities.

Jenna Green, a doctoral student in AVCE, and DiCindio conducted a study to better understand how participants continued to think about and engage with ideas from the workshops and Keats’ art — and the effect it had on their own experiences creating art. That involved McMahon, Green and DiCindio conducting focus groups with workshop participants from Keats’ CCP workshops and with the scientist/ artist collaborators who were part of the grant project. 

“It was especially rewarding to see how people engaged with the ideas from Jonathon’s work,” DiCindio said. “Their responses, through the art they created, their conversations in the focus groups, and in the reflective statements they wrote, demonstrated how deeply they considered concepts of local ecology and climate futures and the personal connections they made between these concepts and their own lives.”

Added DiCindio: “Jonathan’s project is a great example of how impactful art can be as part of research in ecological issues. I was especially struck by the ways that the participants engaged with the concepts of Jonathon’s work in the workshops and by continuing on in the study.

“I think the potential in this area is limitless,” DiCindio said. “We focused on workshop participants for this study, but it is also really wonderful that many people will engage with his art as public installations.”

The School of Art contributed reporting to this story.

For University of Arizona Art History Professor Irene Bald Romano, a five-year journey with 15 other international scholars culminated last month when the authors saw their research published as a special online monograph, “The Fate of Antiquities in the Nazi Era.”

The publication — edited and co-authored by Romano — presents for the first time a comprehensive view of the fate of Mediterranean and Middle Eastern antiquities that changed hands during the Nazi period from 1933 to 1945 in Europe, the Middle East, the United States and elsewhere.

Romano wrote the preface, an extensive introduction and the lead article for the special 2023 issue of RIHA, the journal of the International Association of Research Institutes in the History of Art.

The scholars’ project, previewed by The New York Times and other news outlets in 2022, was a collaboration with the Getty Research Institute and the Zentralinstitut für Kunstgeschichte, an independent art-historical research institute in Munich.

“I hope this publication will become a standard reference on the subject of the fate of Mediterranean and Middle Eastern antiquities during the Nazi era,” Romano said, “with its extensive bibliographic and archival resources, as well as its methodologies, useful to other researchers, including individuals who are hoping to recover collections that belonged to family members who perished in the Holocaust.

“It also would be gratifying if this publication inspires students of art history, history, Classics, archival studies and other disciplines to become interested in provenance research, a growing field that has become indispensable to museums today and will remain so in the future.”

The idea for a publication was born at a meeting in Munich in October 2018. That’s when Romano and a group of German and American museum professionals, archivists and scholars — part of the Provenance Research Exchange Program (PREP) — realized the subject of the fate of Middle Eastern, Egyptian, Greek, Etruscan and Roman antiquities during the Nazi period had not been sufficiently addressed in the large body of scholarly literature on fine arts.

“Although in the past decades research into Nazi-era looted art has been widespread and provenance research in this field has blossomed, the fate of antiquities has rarely been in the spotlight and is far less systematically studied,” Hermann Parzinger, president of the Prussian Cultural Heritage Foundation in Berlin, wrote in the publication’s foreword.

“This volume makes a large contribution to filling this void. … It is valuable not just for readers with an interest in antiquities but also for scholars studying the art market and its mechanisms; for researchers exploring the networks and systems by which artworks were dispersed during the Nazi era and studying the history of restitution; and for art historians interested in the history of collecting and taste,” he wrote.

Parzinger went on to thank all the authors, especially Romano, “who not only put the topic up for discussion in 2018 but also persevered in the lengthy task of making this publication happen.”

“Last but not least, at a time when war is once more having a chilling effect on scholarly and scientific cooperation, this publication proves again the value of bringing experts together across disciplines and borders in the interest of scholarship and insight,” he said.

Romano talked more about the RIHA Journal special issue in an interview with the University of Arizona School of Art:

Q: How rewarding – and challenging – was the project?

Romano: I’m very pleased to see this research and publication project finally come to fruition, with the results accessible to scholars and the general public in this open-source, online format. … It was a challenging five-year-long journey for me with 15 other authors from various countries, each with their own work schedules and life issues, not to mention a pandemic that intervened, making visits to indispensable archives, libraries and museum collections difficult for many.

A challenge for anyone working on the Nazi period is that there are mountains of archival materials in many repositories in the U.S. and Europe, some of it duplicative, and only some it available online. In addition, in Nazi-period inventories and in various recent databases that have been created of works of art transferred during the Nazi period, archaeological objects are often not included or are cited in such a general way that they are not identifiable. I outline some of these challenges in the Introduction to the volume.

There was, however, a great deal of enthusiasm for getting this work published, and we had the unwavering support and expert advice of the Getty Research Institute in Los Angeles and the Zentralinstitut für Kunstgeschichte in Munich to bring it all about. A rewarding aspect of this was the collegiality of the authors, as well as the interest and assistance of a wider group of scholars who offered their expertise on specific issues. We have built a large research team and piqued the interest of some younger scholars who will move this research forward in the future.

Q. Could you sum up the conclusions gleaned from the broader study?

Romano: The first conclusion that can be drawn from this study is that broad conclusions are difficult. There are many individual histories of people, especially of collectors, dealers and Nazi officials, who played some role in the trade in antiquities in this period, as victims or active participants, and these are the most compelling aspects of these studies. We focus first, however, on the “lives” of objects. It is also hard to define broad conclusions because the Nazi period in various parts of Europe was not uniform vis-à-vis the collecting, interest in, confiscations and transfers of ancient objects.

The situation in Greece, for example, was quite different than that in Nazi-occupied France. In Greece there was no official Nazi policy of confiscating antiquities from museums, but we have documented cases of random looting, orchestrated thefts, and illicit excavations. The Jewish population in Greece was mostly in communities in northern Greece and they were not particularly collectors of ancient objects, as we can see from the forced inventories and confiscation of their household goods. In France, however, especially in Paris, there were major collections of wealthy Jews that were targeted for confiscation, and these included at least some antiquities.

For example, Alphonse Kann’s collection of 1,614 works of art, confiscated in October 1940 from his mansion in Saint-Germain-en-Laye outside Paris, comprised at least 150 ancient objects, including Egyptian, Greek, Roman, Middle Eastern, Etruscan and Byzantine objects (in order of numbers), for around 9 percent of Kann’s eclectic collection. In general, however, Egyptian artifacts rank a close second to Greek and Roman antiquities in the collecting practices and transfers during the Nazi period in Europe.

In this publication we have tried to be as comprehensive as possible, but our impression is that we have scratched into the surface of the broad subject and there is still much more to be done — details to be uncovered about individual objects, collections, dealers and collectors, as well as perpetrators of crimes, and more data to be mined from the increasing numbers of digitized databases, auction catalogs and dealer files. In addition, scholarly examination of archival documents in many repositories and provenance research in many museum collections remain to be conducted. These will certainly add to our picture of antiquities collecting and trade in the first half of the 20th century in Europe, the Middle East and the U.S., as well as the methods and nature of antiquities’ transfers during the Nazi period.

Q. How have you incorporated the project into your teaching here at School of Art?

Romano: My interest in art and antiquities during the Nazi period began as a result of my teaching here at the University of Arizona. In 2013 I created an upper division undergraduate and graduate Art History class called “Art as Plunder: The Spoils of War, the Formation of Collections, and Trade in Stolen Art” in which the Nazi period figures prominently.

Students are uniformly interested in this topic, some of whom are encountering it for the first time. Several Jewish students have come forward to share their own poignant family stories. This class and a seminar I have occasionally offered on provenance research have inspired some outstanding research papers and M.A. theses. One of these contributed critical information about a painting in the University of Arizona Museum of Art that changed hands during the Nazi period.

Q. What are you working on now?

Romano: Among the research projects I’m involved with is one stimulated by this publication on “The Fate of Antiquities in the Nazi Era.” It’s focused on the provenance of 11 Greek and Roman marble sculptures in the Musée d’art et d’histoire in Geneva that were collected by Ludwig Pollak (1868-1943) — one of the most important connoisseurs of ancient classical art from the end of the 19th and first half of the 20th centuries. Pollak was from a Jewish family in Prague and trained in Vienna, but he spent most of his career in Rome. He was an archaeologist and dealer, as well curator and director of the Museo Barracco di Scultura Antica, and highly respected and well-connected in the art world in Rome and internationally.

As a Jew in Rome feeling the increasing pressure of anti-Semitic policies in the 1930s and 1940s, Ludwig Pollak began to disperse some of his personal collection, including by depositing for safekeeping eleven of his ancient sculptures in the Musée d’art et d’histoire in 1940. Pollak remained in Rome, and he, his wife and two children were rounded up with other Roman Jews on 16 October 1943, and shortly thereafter they were murdered at Auschwitz-Birkenau. The museum was later given or purchased these objects from Pollak’s heir. Although some of these sculptures in Geneva have been previously published, no one has examined them with reference to the collector and their provenance — their ancient context; how, when and where Pollak acquired them; and their modern transfers.

More about Prof. Romano

• University of Arizona School of Art bio
• New York Times story, “New Research Tracks Ancient Artifacts Looted by the Nazis”
• University of Arizona Communications story, “Telling the stories behind ancient objects: Inside the career of a university archaeologist”

“The Fate of Antiquities in the Nazi Era”: Table of Contents

Forematter

• Foreword: Gail Feigenbaum and Sandra van Ginhoven (Getty Research Institute, Los Angeles)
• Foreword: Christian Fuhrmeister (Zentralinstitut für Kunstgeschichte, Munich)
• Foreword: Hermann Parzinger (Stiftung Preußischer Kulturbesitz, Berlin)
• Preface: Irene Bald Romano (University of Arizona, Tucson; Guest Editor)

Introduction

• “Antiquities in the Nazi Era: Contexts and Broader View,” Irene Bald Romano (University of Arizona, Tucson)

Articles

• “Collecting Classical Antiquities among the Nazi Elite,” Irene Bald Romano (University of Arizona, Tucson)
• “The Role of Antiquities between Fascist Italy and Nazi Germany: Diplomatic Gifting, Legal and Illegal Trades,” Daria Brasca (Università degli Studi di Udine, Udine)
• “Göring’s Collection of Antiquities at Carinhall,” Laura Puritani (Zentralarchiv, Staatliche Museen zu Berlin)
• “Stolen and Returned: The Marble Statue of Philippe from Samos,” Alexandra Kankeleit (Freie Universität, Berlin)
• “Export Regulations and the Role of Ancient Objects in the German List of Nationally Important Artworks,” Maria Obenaus (Deutsches Zentrum Kulturgutverluste, Magdeburg)
• “The Annihilation of the German Numismatic Market during the Nazi Era, with Some Observations on the Countermeasures Adopted by Jewish Ancient Coin Dealers,” Emanuele Sbardella (Technische Universität, Berlin)
• “The Patronage of Berlin’s Egyptian Museum by German-Jewish Press Tycoon Rudolf Mosse (1843–1920) and the Sequestration of His Art Collection during the Third Reich,” Thomas L. Gertzen (Freie Universität, Berlin) and Jana Helmbold-Doyé (Ägyptisches Museum – Georg Steindorff – Universität Leipzig)
• “The Antiquities Trade during the German Occupation of France, 1940–1944,” Mattes Lammert (Technische Universität, Berlin)
• “ ‘Unclaimed’ Artworks Entrusted to French Museums after World War II: The Case of Near Eastern Art and Antiquities,” Anne Dunn-Vaturi (Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York), François Bridey (Musée du Louvre, Paris; French Consulate, New York), and Gwenaëlle Fellinger (Musée du Louvre, Paris)
• “The Fate of the Antiquities Collection of Izabela Działyńska (neé Czartoryska),” Inga Głuszek (Nicolaus Copernicus University, Toruń) and Michał Krueger (Adam Mickiewicz University, Poznań)

Object Case Studies

• “A Case Study in Plunder and Restitution: Three Ancient Sculptures from the Lanckoroński Collection,” Victoria S. Reed (Museum of Fine Arts, Boston)
• “A Goddess of the Night, a Roman Gem, and the Bachstitz Gallery,” Claire L. Lyons (J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles)