HART Students Receive Numerous Department, University, and External Awards

Along with Houston’s heavy rains, spring brought numerous awards to undergraduate and graduate students in the department of Art History. Some of these were celebrated at our department awards ceremony in April; others were first announced at the Humanities commencement reception in May; all of them demonstrate the excellence of our students and the exceptional projects they undertake!
 
Graduating seniors Clair Hopper and Zelda Ziebell both received the Christine Croneis Sayres Memorial Art Award, graduated with high honors, and were recognized with Distinction in Research and Creative Works for their insightful honors theses. Zelda also received the 2019 Louis Sudler Prize in the Arts. In addition, Elaine Hu, Spoorthi Kamepalli, Naomi Kass, Zheng Wang, and Shichong Zhou received Mary Ellen Hale Lovett Travel Fellowships to undertake independent research.
 
Among the graduate students, Ümit Açikgöz received the excellent honor of the John W. Gardner Award in the Humanities, which recognizes the best humanities dissertation at Rice in 2018/19. Giovanna Bassi, Adrienne Rooney, and Yuri Yoshida were all awarded Wagoner Foreign Study Scholarships to support their research, and Philip Kelleher was awarded the Lodieska Stockbridge Vaughn Fellowship in recognition of his “outstanding achievement and promise.” Adrienne, finally, was also awarded a Junior Fellowship from London’s Paul Mellon Centre for Studies in British Art, where she will undertake dissertation research this summer.
 
Congratulations to all of these recipients—as to our other students, too many to list, who received museum fellowships and internships, workshop scholarships, and departmental graduate research awards. We look forward to the exhibition and writing projects these will allow you to pursue!