“...I was impressed, if not overstimulated, to draw and paint the city of water, but more importantly my understanding of art history was completely revolutionized.” –Ryan Jones, 2011

Jill Brandwein

On-site Assistant

Jill Brandwein is a visual artist based in Brooklyn, New York. She began her study of Italian language, culture, and history during her undergraduate work in painting and printmaking at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, where she received a BFA in 2012. Brandwein was based in Rome from 2013—2016. She was an artist-in-residence at the Scuola Internazionale di Grafica in Venice and at the BAU Institute in Otranto during her time in Italy. Brandwein returned home to New York in 2016 to study for her MFA at Pratt Institute, where she is currently working as a Visiting Instructor in Foundation Drawing. Brandwein makes paintings and sculptural objects that explore concepts including memory, the passage of time, and emotional and symbolic ties to physical objects and places.

Michael Brennan

Painting in Venice

Brennan is a Brooklyn-based abstract painter. BA, University of Florida (Classics), 1987; MFA/MS, Pratt Institute (dual master’s degrees Painting and Art History), 1992. He has been teaching at Pratt Institute since 1998, and is currently Adjunct Associate Professor and Graduate Painting Coordinator. He has also taught at Hunter College, Cooper Union, and SVA. Brennan is represented by Minus Space, and has worked with Lucas Schoormans, Anthony Meier Fine Art, Yoshii Gallery, and Thatcher Projects. He has exhibited internationally in such cities as Brussels, Cologne, Mexico City, Paris, Shanghai, and Syndey. Brennan's group exhibitions include MoMA PS1, CCNOA, and Industry City. His work in in the collections of the National Gallery, Baltimore Museum of Art, and San Jose Museum of Art, as well as General Dynamics, American Express, and other private collections and has ben reviewed in the New York Times, Art in America, and Philadelphia Inquirer. Brennan has written numerous reviews for Artnet (Painters Journal), The Brooklyn Rail, as well as catalog essays.

Diana Gisolfi, PhD

Director
Materials & Techniques of Venetian Art

Professor, History of Art & Design, Pratt Institute. Educated at Harvard, Yale, and the University of Chicago, she developed and chaired the Art History Department at Pratt 1981 to 1999, and has directed Pratt in Venice since its beginning in 1984. She currently serves on the Program Committee and recently served as Chair of the the Arthur Kingsley Porter Prize Committee of the College Art Association. Early international conference papers include “Paolo Veronese ed i suoi primi collaboratori” (published 1990), and “Tintoretto e le facciate affrescate” (published 1996). Invited seminars include “Veronese Reconsidered,” CASVA, Washington D.C. (1988), and “Material Training for College Students,” College Art Association (2014). Gisolfi consulted and contributed catalog essays to three recent exhibitions on the art of Veronese: Venice, 2011; Sarasota, 2012-13; and Verona, 2014. She delivered papers at College Art Association in 1990, 1993, 1995, 2002, 2007, 2010, and 2012, and at the Renaissance Society of America in 2007, 2010, and 2012, and has chaired many sessions at both CAA and RSA. She gave the Arthur M. Berger Lecture at Manhattanville College in 2001 on “Titian and his Rivals.” In 2007 she lectured on Veronese’s methods at the New York Studio School and on Palladio’s projects with Veronese at the Institute of Classical Architecture. She has published 14 articles in the Dictionary of Art and its spin-offs (updated in 2013 in Oxford Art Online) and her work appears in distinguished periodicals: Arte Veneta, Art Bulletin, Burlington Magazine, Artibus et Historiae, Renaissance Quarterly, and caareviews.org. She organized and contributed to the Marciana Library session at RSA in Venice, 2010, published in Ateneo Veneto. Books include: the design and illustration of two books authored by Anthony Gisolfi; The Rule, the Bible, and the Council: The Library of the Benedictine Abbey at Praglia, co-authored with Staale Sinding-Larsen (CAA monograph, 1998). In early 2017, her book, Paolo Veronese and the Practice of Painting in Late Renaissance Venice, was published by Yale University Press. Honors/grants include: Delmas Foundation, American Philosophical Society, Kress Foundation, Who’s Who in America, and Who’s Who in the World. Her recent international lecture at the Giornate di Studio Jacopo Tintoretto, Venice, Nov 2018 will be published in 2020.

JOSEPH KOPTA, PHD

         Art History of Venice

Joseph R. Kopta, a Pratt in Venice alumnus (2007), specializes in the art and architecture of the medieval Mediterranean, with intellectual interests informed by materiality, cross-cultural interaction, and networks between Venice, Byzantium, and caliphal courts. He was educated at Pratt Institute, Harvard Divinity School, Columbia University, and Temple University; his dissertation was titled “Materiality and Materialism of Middle Byzantine Gospel Lectionaries (Eleventh–Twelfth Centuries CE).” In 2018, he co-chaired the Italian Art Society-sponsored double session, “Venice, Materiality, and the Byzantine World” at the International Congress on Medieval Studies in Kalamazoo. Recent papers include “Purple Aesthetics in Middle Byzantine Manuscripts” at the University of Zurich; “Chromatic Networks: Middle Byzantine Gospel Lectionaries and Visual Experience” at the 52nd Sessions of the Middle Atlantic Symposium in the History of Art at the National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.; “Hair, Touch, and the Ivory Comb of Leo VI as an Agent of Imperial Order” at the Byzantine Studies Conference; and “Καὶ τὸ φῶς ἐν τῇ σκοτίᾳ φαίνει: Color in Byzantine Gospel Lectionaries” at the Mary Jaharis Center for Byzantine Art & Culture. He contributed the entries “Canosa di Puglia” and “Kenneth Conant” to the Grove Encyclopedia of Medieval Art & Architecture (Oxford University Press, 2012), and was an author of the Beth Shean After Antiquity project at the University of Pennsylvania. He has held professional roles at The Aldrich Contemporary Art Museum, The Museum of Biblical Art, and The Metropolitan Museum of Art. From 2019—2021, he was the Samuel H. Kress Institutional Fellow at the Zentralinstitut für Kunstgeschichte in Munich; his research was supported by a Center for the Humanities at Temple (CHAT) Fellowship at Temple University. Since July 2022, he is Assistant Professor of Instruction in Art History at the Tyler School of Art & Architecture, Temple University.

fay ku

Drawing and Printmaking in Venice

Fay Ku is a Taiwan-born, Brooklyn-based artist who creates works on paper that are figurative, narrative and connect to cultural histories. She is the recipient of a 2007 Louis Comfort Tiffany Grant and 2009 New York Foundation for the Arts (NYFA) Artist Fellowship in Printmaking/Drawing/Book Arts.  She has exhibited nationally and internationally including solo exhibitions at the Honolulu Museum of Art (Honolulu, HI), New Britain Museum of American Art (New Britain, CT) and Snite Museum of Art (South Bend, IN). Her printmaking residencies include: Lower East Side Printshop (NYC), Tamarind Institute (Albuquerque, NM), and Women’s Studio Workshop (Rosendale, NY).  She holds a B.A. in Literature and Visual Arts from Bennington College, Bennington, Vermont and both an M.F.A. Studio Art and M.S. Art History from Pratt Institute, where she is currently a Visiting Assistant Professor.  She has taught at New Jersey City University and University of Nevada-Las Vegas, and served on NYFA’s Artist Advisory Committee representing Printmaking/Drawing/Book Arts.  Her work is in the collection of Honolulu Museum of Art, Marjorie Barrick Museum of Art (Las Vegas, NV), New Britain Museum of American Art, and the Wadsworth Atheneum (Hartford, CT).  She is represented by H Gallery, Paris, France.

Visiting Lecturers

Tracy Cooper, phd

Professor, Italian and Southern Renaissance and Baroque Art and Architecture, Tyler School of Art, Temple University. Tracy E. Cooper (PhD, Princeton University) specializes in Venetian and early modern cultural history and theory, with particular interests in architecture/urbanism, space/circulation, and patronage/collecting studies. She is best known for her award-winning book Palladio’s Venice: Architecture and Society in a Renaissance Republic (Yale University Press, 2006), which has had major interdisciplinary impact and been widely reviewed.

Sarah Blake McHam, PHD

Distinguished Professor, Italian Renaissance Art, Department of Art History, School of Arts and Sciences, Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey. McHam received her PhD from the Institute of Fine Arts and specializes in Italian painting and sculpture between 1200 and 1600, as well as the influence of Pliny the Elder on Italian art and art theory.

Stefania Sartori

Certified conservator of fine arts, specializing in Venetian polychrome wood conservation, with lectures on work at UIA. Published articles include “Il Fornimento Venier” (2009) and “Il mobile laccato veneziano del ‘700, tecnica e restauro” (2014).

Paolo Spezzani

Certified conservator and specialist in non-destructive technical analyses of materials and techniques, particularly Venetian painting and drawing. Author of Riflettoscopia e Indagini non Distruttive: Pittura e grafica (Milan: Olivetti, 1992), and Riflettoscopia all'infrarosso computerizzata (Venice, 1984) with Renzo Zorzi.

Antonio G. Stevan

Architect, educated at the Istituto Universitario di Architettura in Venice (IUAV), has been a visiting lecturer for Pratt in Venice since 1994. He has taught at the Università Internazionale dell’Arte (UIA) in Venice and the Scuola di Alta Formazione of the Opificio delle Pietre Dure in Florence. He is the author of several scientific publications in national and international journals, and has been an invited speaker at many academic conferences. He has been a key contributor in many renowned conservation projects, including Piero della Francesca’s Leggenda della Vera Croce in Arezzo; the conservation of Giotto’s mural paintings at the Arena Chapel in Padua; and Andrea Mantegna’s Camera degli Sposi in Mantua, having designed the technical systems. His recent lighting system designs in Padua include the Palazzo della Ragione, Arena Chapel, Basilica di Sant’Antonio, and the Baptistery of the Cathedral with Giusto de’ Menabuoi’s frescoes, as well as the Cappella Bacci in the Church of S. Francesco in Arezzo, and the Museo del Opificio delle Pietre Dure in Florence. He is a member of the scientific committee for the conservation and maintenance of the Scrovegni Chapel and of the committee for the cultural properties of the Diocesi di Padova.

Emeritus Faculty, Staff, and Lecturers

GIROLAMO “MEMI” BOTTER

(1930—2010)

Veneto fresco conservator, working together with his father Mario and grandfather Girolamo to restore Treviso’s cultural heritage.

grayson cox

Adjunct Associate Professor, Fine Arts, Pratt Institute. New York City-based artist and educator working with printmaking, philosophy and furniture-like sculpture. He was born in 1979 in Indianapolis, Indiana, received his BFA from Indiana University, and lived in Tokyo for two years before moving to New York City in 2005. Cox earned his MFA at Columbia University in 2010 and was awarded the Daisy Soros Prize to study in Salzburg that summer. He has taught graduate and undergraduate printmaking at Pratt since 2010. Cox recently received the Robert Rauschenberg Foundation Artistic innovation and collaboration grant and has exhibited in New York and internationally, including: Center for Contemporary Art, Warsaw, Poland; Bezalel Academy of Art and Design in Tel Aviv, Israel; The School of the Art Institute of Chicago; The New Museum, New York; Elizabeth Foundation, New York; The Fisher Landau Center for Art, Queens, New York and the Sculpture Center in New York. Cox’s work has been reviewed in multiple publications including the New York Times, ARTFORUM and Art in America. graysoncox.com

GREG DRASLER

Adjunct Associate Professor, Fine Arts, Pratt Institute. Drasler has taught painting at Pratt for nine years. His MFA was earned at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign; his first exhibition was On View, at the New Museum of Contemporary Art in 1983. He has participated in over 30 group shows and he has had sixteen one-person exhibitions. Honors include a New York Foundation for the Arts Fellowship in 1991 and a National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship in 1993. Drasler joined the Betty Cuningham Gallery in New York in 2007. His essay "Painting into a Corner: Representation as Shelter" was published in The Vitality of Objects: Exploring the Work of Christopher Bollas, edited by Joseph Scalia (Continuum Press, London; Wesleyan Press, 2002) and was followed by a collaboration with poet Timothy Liu titled Polytheogamy (Philadelphia: Saturnalia Press, 2009). Drasler has taught and lectured at various schools, including Princeton University, Williams College, Hofstra University, and Montclair State University. Reviews of Drasler's work can be found in Art in America, New Art Examiner, Chicago Tribune, and A.C.T. Gallery. Drasler is a recipient of a 2014 Guggenheim Fellowship. drasler.com

Dimitri Hazzikostas, PhD

(1937—2023)

Assistant Professor Emeritus, History of Art & Design, Pratt Institute. BA, Athens University, Greece; MA, PhD, Columbia University. Hazzikostas is an art historian and archaeologist and taught for Pratt in Venice from 1988 through 2011. A member of the Hellenic Archaeological Society, he participated in excavations at Ancient Corinth, Troezen and Lechaion. His areas of special interest include Greek, Roman, and early Medieval art, iconography and interpretation. He was a Whiting Fellow and received the Sears Distinguished Professor Award. He is a contributor to the Encyclopedia of Comparative Iconography. As a member of the Pratt Academic Senate since its beginning, he chaired the Senate’s Programs and Policies Committee. 

Andrew Kurczak

Program Assistant 2016–2017

Andrew Kurczak is a Pratt Institute alumnus (BA History of Art & Design, 2013) and a two-time Pratt in Venice alumnus (2011, 2012). He is an expert in all things Venice and was the on-site Program Coordinator in 2016 and 2017. Currently based in London, Andrew holds certifications in the restoration of art historical objects and paintings from Studio Arts College International in Florence and has held professional positions at the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum in New York, Peggy Guggenheim Collection in Venice, and most recently as fine-art registrar for Sotheby's in New York.

JENNIFER MELBY

Adjunct Associate Professor Emerita, Fine Arts, Pratt Institute. Melby received her BFA from Arcadia University and her MFA from Pratt Institute. She has taught at Yale University, LaGuardia Community College, Farleigh Dickinson University, the Lower East Side Printshop, and the Robert Blackburn Printmaking Workshop, and has been a guest lecturer at Brandeis University, Rhode Island School of Design, Lehman College, and Cooper Union. She currently teaches Printmaking at Pratt Institute. For more than 25 years she has operated her own studio, which specializes in intaglio editions, and has worked with several artists including: Donald Baechler, Brice Marden, Suzanne McClelland, Sean Scully, Joanne Greenbaum, Joan Snyder, Julia Jacquette, Red Grooms, and Amy Kao. Prints from Jennifer Melby’s studio have found a home in several contemporary collections including the Museum of Modern Art, New York Public Library, Whitney Museum, Houston Museum of Fine Art, and Tate gallery. In 2007 Jennifer was in residence at the American Academy in Rome on a visiting artist fellowship. www.jennifermelby.com

Mario naves

Adjunct Assistant Professor, Fine Arts, Pratt Institute, is an artist, critic and teacher. Mario has taught and lectured at Cooper Union, The New York Studio School, The National Academy of Design, The Henry Street Settlement, Montclair State University, The New York Public Library, The Art Directors Club, The Ringling College of Art and Design, Rutgers University and the University of Utah, where he was named a distinguished alumni in 2010. He taught the Painting course in Venice in 2017. He currently teaches at Pratt Institute, Brooklyn College, and Hofstra University. His work is represented by Elizabeth Harris Gallery in Chelsea and has been exhibited at The National Academy, Pavel Zoubok Gallery, The Katonah Museum of Art, Sideshow Gallery and Lesley Heller Gallery. Naves’s work has been written about in The New York Times, Art in America, The New York Sun, The Village Voice, Time Out New York, ArtCritical.com, Abstract Art Online, The 22 Magazine and Two Coats of Paint. Naves has been the recipient of awards from The National Endowment for the Arts, The E.D. Foundation, the George Sugarman Foundation, The National Academy of Design, The Pollock-Krasner Foundation and The City University of New York. His writing has been published in Slate, The Wall Street Journal, The New York Sun, Smithsonian, ARTS Magazine, New Art Examiner, Tema Celeste, The New Criterion, and The New York Observer, where his column, “Currently Hanging,” appeared on a weekly basis from 1999-2009. mnaves.wordpress.com

CATHERINE REDMOND

A New York artist living and working in the Shenandoah Valley with her Pyr Shep, Billy. After an undergraduate education at Cornell University and Harpur College, SUNY Binghamton, she spent five years at The Art Students League of New York. Since then Redmond has devoted herself to formal queries into the tensions and unexpected adhesions between the internal and the external psychic stage. “This is where it all plays out, all the dramas,” she acknowledges.  catherineredmond.com

RICHARDS RUBEN

(1925—1998)

Dick Ruben taught for ten years in the Pratt in Venice program, and influenced its spirit of conversation between the practice and the history of art. Ruben’s heavily worked surfaces tended to be dominated by one color and one shape, a burly, wedgelike form that seemed to emerge from a field of brushwork. Neither geometric nor gestural, his style aligned him with the second generation of Abstract Expressionism. In the 1950s and early 60s, he was part of the growing Los Angeles art world, exhibiting his work at two of its most prominent galleries, Paul Kantor and Ferus. He moved to New York in the early 1960s, exhibiting at the Poindexter Gallery. Ruben’s teaching career began in the late 1940s and included appointments at Chouinard, the Pasadena Art Museum, Pomona College, Claremont Graduate School, Cooper Union, New York University, Columbia University, and Pratt.

richardsruben.com

Clare Romano

(1922—2017)

Clare Romano was an internationally-renowned painter, graphic artist, and Professor Emerita at Pratt Institute, and taught printmaking to generations of Pratt students over several decades. She joined Pratt as a part-time faculty member in the fall of 1964, became full-time in 1973, and was named Visiting Distinguished Professor Emerita after retiring in 1991. Romano was a Pratt in Venice faculty member from 1988–2007. It was she, together with John Ross, who developed the printmaking aspect in the Venice program. Romano-Ross also held other teaching positions at the Art Center of Northern New Jersey and the New School in New York City. She co-authored books including The Complete Printmaker (written with her husband, John Ross, and Tim Ross). Her work has been shown in many solo exhibitions, and is represented in the Metropolitan Museum of Art and many other collections.

John Ross

(1921—2017)

John Ross was a graphic artist and maker of artists’ books. He taught printmaking at The New School and for Pratt in Venice for many years. Together, Ross and Romano are coauthors of numerous books on printmaking, including The Complete Printmaker. johnrossprintmaker.com

ANDREA LYNN SANTOS

Visiting Assistant Professor of Printmaking at Pratt Institute since 2016. Santos previously taught at RISD and enjoyed a residency at the Vermont Studio Center. Andrea holds an MFA from Rhode Island School of Design and a BFA from Massachusetts College of Art and Design in Printmaking. She was an intaglio edition printer at Pace Prints prior to teaching, working on edition projects from artists such as Jenny Holzer, Shahzia Sikander, and Robert Mangold. In her Brooklyn studio, Andrea focuses on expanding the field of printmaking into her sculpture-based practice. She has recently shown at Miranda Kuo Gallery in New York City and Able Baker Contemporary in Portland, Maine. andrealynnsantos.com

Dorothy M. Shepard, PhD

Adjunct Professor Emerita, History of Art & Design, Pratt Institute. PhD, Bryn Mawr College; MA, Southern Methodist University; BA, Sweet Briar College. Specialist in Medieval Art, especially Romanesque manuscripts. Author of Introducing the Lambeth Bible: A Study of Text and Imagery (2007); AAUW American Fellowship; Haakon traveling Fellowship. Invited lectures include College Art Association (1998), Medieval Academy (2000), Symposia on the History of the Bible (1995-2000), International Congress of Medieval Studies, and Frick Symposium (1987).

STAALE SINDING-LARSEN, PhD

Professor Emeritus, Department of Architecture and Fine Art, Norwegian University of Science and Technology. Expert on religious iconography of the Venetian Republic, with particular focus on the Doge's Palace and San Marco. Author of Christ in the Council Hall: Studies in the Religious Iconography of the Venetian Republic (1974) and co-author with Diana Gisolfi of The Rule, the Bible, and the Council: The Library of the Benedictine Abbey at Praglia (CAA monograph, 1998).

Joseph Stauber

Adjunct Assistant Professor, Fine Arts, Pratt Institute. Stauber holds an MFA from SUNY Purchase and a BFA from Pratt Institute in printmaking. He was a professional fine art printer and chromiste for nine years at Brand-X Editions. Artists he has worked with include Chuck Close, Howard Hodgkin, Robert Motherwell, and Helen Frankenthaler. In his Coney Island studio, Stauber’s work is rooted in drawing, sculpture, and the processes of the print. An active mail artist, his objects and collaborations have been sent around the world.  josephstauber.com

SARAH S. WILKINS, PHD

Sarah Wilkins received her BA from Vanderbilt University, MS from Pratt Institute, and PhD in late medieval and Renaissance art from Rutgers University. Currently a Visiting Assistant Professor at Pratt Institute, she previously taught art history at Rutgers, both in New Jersey and in Italy (Study Abroad in Urbino, 2009). Her dissertation, “She Loved More Ardently than the Rest: The Magdalen Cycles of Late Duecento and Trecento Italy,” was completed in 2012. She has recently published two articles on the visual cult of the Magdalen, “Imaging the Angevin Patron Saint: Mary Magdalen in the Pipino Chapel in Naples” (2012) and “Adopting and Adapting Formulas: The Raising of Lazarus and Noli me tangere in the Scrovegni Chapel in Padua and the Magdalen Chapel in Assisi” (2013). Wilkins has delivered papers at the Renaissance Society of America (2010), the Formulas in Medieval Culture conference in Nancy, France (2010), and the Kunsthistorishes Institut in Florence (2011), gave a paper at the International Congress on Medieval Studies, Kalamazoo (2014), and chaired two sessions at the Renaissance Society of America meeting (2014). Grants and fellowships include a Fulbright fellowship (2010-11) and a Mellon Finishing Grant (2011-12). She is a proud alumna of the Pratt in Venice program (2003).

DOUGLAS WIRLS

Professor Emeritus, Foundation Art, Pratt Institute. Awards include: Laufman Award for Drawing and the Isador Medal for Painting, both from the National Academy of Design; Distinguished Professor, Pratt Institute, 2007. Work is represented in the collections of the Pennsylvania State Museum, the Butler Institute of American Art and the New Jersey State Museum. 

CHRIS WRIGHT

Chris Wright received his BFA from the Pacific Northwest College of Art and his MFA from Pratt Institute. He has taught painting at Pratt Institute since 1999. Wright has taught with the Pratt in Venice Summer Program, Montserrat College of Art, the New York Academy of Art and the 92nd Street Y among others. He has been awarded a Pollock-Krasner Foundation Grant, a MacDowell Fellowship and a New York Foundation for the Arts Fellowship in painting. He has had one person shows at the George Billis Gallery in New York City and Los Angeles, the Martin Art Gallery, Muhlenberg College in Allentown, Pennsylvania and the Jamaica Bay Wildlife Refuge in Queens, New York. His work has been included in exhibitions at Cal State Fullerton, and the Hampden Gallery, UMass Amherst. His work has appeared in the following publications: New American Paintings, New York Spaces Magazine and American Art Collector. Wright’s works on paper are included in the Pierogi Flat Files, New York City.  christopherjonwright.com