University of South Florida

School of Art & Art History

USF College of Design, Art & Performance

Points of Pride

Our students and alumni at work:

  • Art History students present research at national and international conferences: Mariana Gomez, James Cartwright, and Ashley Williams.
  • Undergraduate students selected for Juried Annual University Student Exhibition at the Atlantic Center for the Arts every year since it began in 1990.
  • Catherine Gomez, BFA alumna, awarded the Benjamin A. Gilman International Scholarship to study abroad in Chile. Gomez was also a 2018 Research in Arts Scholar.
  • Ellen Mueller, a 2011 alumna of the USF MFA in Studio Art program and a professor at the Minneapolis College of Art and Design, published a textbook in 2018 with Routledge Press entitled, “Remixing and Drawing: Sources, Influences, Styles.”
  • Skowhegan Artist Residencies, by invitation: Pat Blocher (2019), Jake Troyli (2019), Bahareh Khoshooee (2018), Walter Mathews (2017).

Studio Faculty – Awards and Recognitions

Jason Lazarus

In 2024, Associate Professor, Jason Lazarus' collaborative project with Eric Fleischauer, twohundredfiftysixcolors, was acquired by the Whitney Museum of American Art (NY) for their permanent collection.
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Noelle Mason

Associate Professor Noelle Mason's wool tapestry titled Ground Control, depicting satellite images of the US/Mexico border, was included in RugLife at the Museum of Craft and Design in San Francisco in 2024. Guest curated by Ginger Gregg Duggan and Judith Hoos Fox of c2-curatorsquared, RugLife, features the work of 14 contemporary artists (including: Ai Weiwei, Nicholas Galanin, Sonya Clark, and Andrea Zittle, among others) from around the world who use the rug as a medium to address cultural issues such as religion, technology, social justice, housing, and the environment. 
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Susanna Wallin

Assistant Professor Susanna Wallin’s film “Lizzy” (2024) screened at the Whitechapel Gallery as part of the shortlisted films by Swedenborg Film Festival and won joint Best Film together with the magnificent “To cut a tree on a green moon” by Felipe Esparaza Perez, awarded by guest judge Xiaolu Guo.
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Shengwei Zhou

Assistant Professor, Shengwei Zhou’s animation, Perfect City: The Bravest Kid has been included in eight international film festivals, and was nominated for the best animation short film by the Norwich Film Festival. Perfect City: The Bravest Kid was recognized at Emerging Lens Cultural Film Festival, Dallas International Film Festival, and The Houston International Film Festival in 2024.
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Sue Havens

Associate Professor, Sue Havens was selected to participate in the significant exhibition Drawing by Sculptors at the Helena Anrather Gallery in New York City curated by Carl D’Alvia. The exhibition brought together more than 80 drawings made by sculptors over the last half century. The result is both an intergenerational dialogue between artistic practices and an intensive conversation between two mediums, revealing how ideas ricochet between drawing and sculpture as each reshapes the other in an ongoing and ever-changing coevolution.
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Anat Pollack

Associate Professor, Anat Pollack’s video/dance project in collaboration with Merry Lynn Morris, The North Wind and The Sun recently won Best Dance Film Short at the Kiez Berlin Film Festival, Berlin, Germany. In 2023 and 2024, this work also travelled to Film Festivals around the world.
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McArthur Freeman 

Associate Professor, McArthur Freeman will be the inaugural Artist-In-Resident at the Center for African and African American Studies at Rice University in Houston, TX in 2025. The center provides a unique hub for conversations on crucial topics: critical approaches to race and racism, the nature of diasporic histories and identities, and the complexity of Africa’s past, present, and future to name a few.
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Andrew Scott Ross

In 2024, USF School of Art and Art History Director, Andrew Scott Ross’s wax drawings were included in the Delta Triennial at the Arkansas Museum of Fine Arts. Founded by AMFA in 1958 as a juried exhibition, the Delta is named after the fertile floodplains surrounding the Mississippi River and seeks to amplify artistic voices in the Mid-South as they reflect complex histories and shifts in the cultural landscape.
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Joo Woo

Associate Professor Joo Woo’s recent (2024) solo exhibition, Do Not Draw a Red Star at A.I.R. Gallery in Brooklyn consists of over one-hundred hand painted paper cutouts. Celebrating the twentieth anniversary of Woo’s immigration from South Korea to the United States, the collaged imagery reflects the intricate layers of the artist’s identity and the personal stories that have influenced her practice.
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Adam Farcus

Assistant Professor of Instruction, Adam Farcus’ work “FIRE IN AMERICA,” was selected for the group exhibition Mark: Current Approaches to Drawing at Artlink Contemporary Gallery in Fort Wayne, IN juried by Shelby Shadwell. This group exhibition featured artwork by 25 US artists exploring current approaches to drawing.
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Art History Faculty – Awards and Recognitions

Dr. Helene Szépe

Professor Helena Szépe published with Gianmario Guidarelli, Chiara Ponchia, and Federica Toniolo a new book titled, Il monastero femminile di Santa Croce alla Giudecca. Spazi, libri e immagini a Venezia tra Medioevo ed età moderna (Rome: Viella, 2024).  Her previous book Venice Illuminated: Power and Painting in Renaissance Manuscripts (Yale University Press, 2018) was voted the winner of the 2019 Gladys Krieble Delmas Foundation Best Book Prize in Renaissance Venetian Studies, and also received the prestigious Helen & Howard R. Marraro Prize. 

Dr. Esra Akın-Kıvanç 

Dr. Esra Akın-Kıvanç contributed a book chapter on the Ottoman art of calligraphy to A Sourcebook on Ottoman Studies, ed., Linda Darling (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, in print, 2024). Associate Professor Esra Akın-Kıvanç has been awarded Outstanding Undergraduate Teaching Award by the Provost’s Office (2023-2024).

Dr. Sheramy Bundrick

Professor Sheramy Bundrick’s new peer-reviewed article “Pompê, Peplos, Poikilia: Picturing the Panathenaia on an Athenian Amphora” was published in Greek and Roman Musical Studies 12 (March/April 2024): 3-38.

Dr. Pamela Merrill Brekka

Associate Professor of Instruction, Dr. Pamela Merrill Brekka published “Introduction,” Escondidos no Caminho, exhibition catalog, Dan Pelegrin, ed. Museo de Arte DA UFC, Universidade Federal do Ceará, 2023.

Dr. Elisabeth Fraser

Professor Elisabeth Fraser’s book Mediterranean Encounters: Artists between Europe and the Ottoman Empire, 1774–1839 (Penn State University Press, 2017) received a “2017 Choice Outstanding Academic Title” award.