News: January 28, 2025
Upcoming Events

Art & Art History Lectures
Julie Poitras Santos, Ceramics Visiting Artist
Monday, February 10, 2025 at 4:00 pm
Visual Arts Complex Auditorium (located on the lower-level), RM 1B20
Artist, writer and curator Julie Poitras Santos’s transdisciplinary work connects ecological thinking and earth science disciplines with immersive experience and community engagement. Her site-specific work includes video, installation, and public projects. The relationship between site, story, and mobility fuels a range of research and production, investigating the relationship between natural histories and individual story; walking as a form of listening to site; and material agency in an age of climate change.
Link to more information about Julie Poitras Santos
Jonathan VanDyke
Monday, February 17, 2025 at 4:00 pm
Visual Arts Complex Auditorium (located on the lower-level), RM 1B20
Jonathan VanDyke's work reflects on the unfolding of art objects in dynamic relationship to the passing of time. He seeks a reclamation of the sensorial realm, with an emphasis on modes of attention and embodiment. Manifested through installations, paintings, videos, sculpture, writings, collaborative projects, and live and durational works featuring performers from the queer community of which he is a part, VanDyke's work prioritizes slowness, pauses, subtexts, and doubt.
The artist's object-based work is often the result of "piecing": the base for his complex paintings, for example, are textiles that have been worn by friends and companions, then painted and stained through slow processes of accumulation, cut into shapes and patterns, and sewn together. The resulting double-sided works, which are often shown in sculptural and architectural installations, are conceived of as tools for long looking. His durational performances have stretched for as long as 48-hours, such as The Patient Eye, in which he asked The Columbus Museum to center itself around a collection of historic quilts, made primarily by anonymous women and most of which had never been on public view: he observed these works silently for 7 days, joined throughout by community members.

Student Opportunities
The King Awards
Deadline for Submission: Monday, February 3, 2025 at 11:59 PM
In 2013, Gretchen King (BA in English ’59) worked with the Department of Art & Art History to establish the King Competition and Exhibition, the department’s first juried student exhibition. The King family generously supports the annual competition and exhibition, allowing the department to award undergraduate and graduate students monetary prizes, and to showcase their work in the Visual Arts Complex.
Ten total awards are given to degree-seeking students in the Department of Art & Art History.
First Place: $3000 for one Grad and one Undergrad
Second Place: $2000 for one Grad and one Undergrad
Third Place: $1000 for one Grad and one Undergrad
Honorable mention: $500 for two Grads and two Undergrads
Web page with application link
Art & Art History Scholarships
Deadline: March 15th, 2025
The Department of Art and Art History offers merit-based awards for undergraduate and graduate students that are made possible through the generosity of our donors. Typically, the funds associated with these awards defray tuition expenses and are posted to the student's bill. A faculty committee reviews the applications each spring semester and determines the number and amount of awards. Scholarships vary from $100 – $2,000.
Questions? Please contact Katie Larson: katie.larson@colorado.edu
Eligibility & Rules
- Undergraduate students: Majors and BAM students in Art History or Arts Practices, may apply
- Graduate students: MFA Arts Practices students only
- Students must be currently enrolled in Art and Art History courses
- Post acceptance thank you required for distribution of scholarship funds
Faculty News

Molly Valentine Dierks
The Moon is a Harsh Mistress’ | DesignTO Festival, Toronto, Canada (currently exhibited)
Funded by a Research and Innovation Grant, ‘The Moon is a Harsh Mistress’ is a series of large-scale LED light forms that explore longing, time, and the tension between technology, and nature. Pulled from a database of over 2000 images from travels across China, Japan, and South Korea, coupled with images of Disney princess and Ukiyo-e scenes, these large-scale light ‘drawings’ (3 to 5 feet in length and height) were meticulously traced and altered to create a new visceral but disembodied experience. The work explores the idea of ‘retro-reflection’, or how our ideas and experiences are reflected back at us… the integration of different identities and connections (including with nature). An artist talk is schedule for Sunday, Feb. 2nd as part of the DesignTO festival.
About DesignTO: DesignTO is a non-profit arts and culture organization that believes design can create a sustainable, just, and joyful world. DesignTO organizes the annual DesignTO Festival, celebrating its 15th birthday in January 2025. It is Canada’s largest celebration of design, forming Toronto’s design week.