College of Arts + Architecture

As they complete their spring semester, students in Christina Singer’s Design Research class have published the sixth digital book to emerge from the Department of Art and Art History’s graphic design program since Singer joined the department in 2021. 

Distinguished alumna Caridad Svich ’85 was awarded a 2024 Guggenheim Fellowship from the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation. Svich, appointed in the field of Drama and Performance Art, is one of 188 international recipients chosen from more than 3,000 applicants through a rigorous application and peer review process.

Guggenheim Fellows are named because of prior career achievement and exceptional promise. Each fellow receives a monetary stipend to pursue independent work at the highest level under “the freest possible conditions.”

“Staging Sovereignty: Ephemeral Architecture and the Entry of Maria Teresa Rafaela into France, 1745,” recently published in the Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians, examines the architectural dimensions of the remise, a courtly ceremony that marked the moment when a royal bride departed her homeland to be given into her new husband’s possession. 

Voice students Christian Souza and DeLenn Rumbolo brought home prizes from the Mid-Atlantic National Association of Teachers of Singing Student Auditions at Furman University in Greenville, South Carolina.

Souza, a student of Brian Arreola, received first place in the Advanced Post-Baccalaureate Classical Tenor, Baritone, Bass division.

Rumbolo, a student of Christina Pier, claimed third place in the Advanced Post-Baccalaureate Classical Treble division.

Lydia Thompson, professor of art, will receive a 2024 National Council on Education for the Ceramic Arts Honorary Member Award at the organization’s annual conference in Richmond, Virginia.

For more than five decades, recipients of the Honorary Member Award have been recognized as individuals “whose commitments to creativity, scholarship, activism or professionalism have made transformative contributions to the ceramic arts.”

Associate Professor of Art History Lisa Homann is a key member of a team developing the internationally traveling exhibition “New Masks Now: Artists Innovating Masquerade in Contemporary West Africa.” The exhibition is organized by the New Orleans Museum of Art and supported by a $500,000 grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities.

CarlosAlexis Cruz, associate professor of theatre, is the 2024 Engaged Faculty Award  recipient as presented by North Carolina Campus Engagement.

Five UNC Charlotte music students are getting a taste of the touring life this academic year through Opera Carolina’s educational outreach program, Opera Xpress.

On the third floor of the Fretwell Building is a new mural — the latest project by students in the mixed-media studio taught by painting professor Maja Godlewska and printmaking professor Erik Waterkotte.

Movement Migration, the dance company founded by Associate Professor of Dance Kim Jones, received two grants from the North Carolina Arts Council, a division of the Department of Natural and Cultural Resources. The two grants, more than $20,000 combined, support both project-based work and company operations.