HAAARCH's blog

Isabella Sigado

Isabella Sigado is a double major in Marketing and History of Art and Architecture with minors in French and Museum Studies. She is currently interning at the Morgan Contemporary Glass Gallery and is aiming to immerse herself in as much art and as many opportunities as she can.  Although just a freshman, she is trying to gain as much experience as possible in hopes of studying abroad and interning in a museum or gallery in France.

Katherine Rhame

Katherine Rhame is a junior double majoring in Neuroscience and the History of Art and Architeture.  Her research project for HAA 1010 on Visualizing Heritage in Pittsburgh looks at the connection between the culture of Austrian Empire when Austria held significant power and land, and how that image was chosen to represent ideas of identity among the Austrian immigrants when designing the Austrian Nationality Room (dedicated in 1996).

Jinghan Xu

Jinghan Xu is a junior majoring in the History of Art and Architecture at the University of Pittsburgh.  She is pursuing minors in Museum Studies and Studio Arts.  Her hometown is Qingdao city in Shandong province, China.  For her project in HAA 1010 she has chosen to work on the political ramifications of the Confucian themes so prominent in the Chinese Nationality Room that opened in 1939, during a period of civil disorder in China.

Sara Savage

Sara Savage is a senior pursuing a degree in Studio Arts and Art History with a minor in Museum Studies and a certificate in Gender Studies. She was selected to participate in this summer’s Honors Wyoming Field Study course where four students spent two and a half weeks working on intense independent studio projects. The artwork Sara produced in Wyoming focused on the identity of the land and what it meant for her to exist within it.

Yehan Hu

Yehan Hu is a junior student at the University of Pittsburgh, majoring in History of Art and Architecture. After graduating from the Second High School Attached to Beijing Normal University in Beijing, China, he came to the United States in 2012 for college. He has currently been building an original visual novel video game with friends.  He is enrolled in HAA 1010 and is working on the Indian Nationality Room, its construction technology and historical models.

"Religion Transformed: The Christian Roots of a Secular Russian Craft," by Alli Mosco

A modern staple of Russian identity in craft is the lacquer miniature. These crafts are typically small boxes, such as snuffboxes, powder boxes, and cigarette cases, which are covered in paper-mache and painted with miniature scenes of folk life, fairytales, and traditional songs. These crafts have been in production for nearly one hundred years, starting with the very early rise of communism and flourishing in the Soviet era.

Allison Mosco

Alli is a senior completing a double major in the History of Art and Architecture and Nonfiction English Writing, with a certificate in Gender, Sexuality, and Women’s Studies. She has served as an undergraduate teaching assistant and is currently interning at Morgan Contemporary Glass Gallery.

"Reinforcing Femininity: Exhibiting the Empress Dowager and Marie Antoinette in the 21st Century," by Liyi Chen

Life-size screen projection of a collection of black and white photographs of an empress dowager and a marble bust of a queen are two feature works in two exhibition: Power Play: China’s Empress Dowager in the Arthur M. Sackler Gallery, Washington D.C. (September 24, 2011-January 29, 2012) and Royal Treasures from the Louvre: Louise XIV to Marie-Antoinette in the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco (November 17, 2012 – March 31, 2013).

Liyi Chen

Having studied in China, Canada, Austria and France, Liyi Chen is currently a fourth year HAA major and interning with the department’s online journal “Contemporaneity: Historical Presence in Visual Culture.” She was an undergraduate assistant at the University Art Gallery and Visual Media Workshop. She received a Brackenridge fellowship to conduct her honors thesis on 21st century re-presentations of the Empress Dowager and Marie Antoinette, a cross cultural comparison project overseen by Dr.

Maddi Johnson

Maddi Johnson is a sophomore in the Architectural Studies Program. She is a Pittsburgh native. Art and architecture have always been an area of focus in her life. She chose architecture as a path after involving herself with the functional arts.  Her primary background lies in furniture and textiles.  In architecture she believes in simplicity and likes to study and embrace ideas from Modernism. Her favorite architect is Philip Johnson. She travels frequently to experience architecture first hand.