May 9, 2017

Support for creative and scholarly research for Westphal faculty is vital now more than ever in our time of diminishing governmental, foundation, and corporate support. The Westphal College’s Mini Grants and Creativity Awards program is dedicated to doing just that.

This year awardees include Lewis Colburn, Assistant Professor of Studio Art, who received support to present a solo exhibition of his sculpture at South China Normal University in Guangzhou, China. Jacqueline Kilmartin, Assistant Teaching Professor of Fashion Design, will travel to Osaka, Japan this June to attend an exhaustive three-week training course hosted by Shima Seiki, Inc., the prominent manufacturer of automated knitting and computer assisted design systems. We acquired the Shima Seiki SSR 112 variable gauge electronic weft knitting machine, along with three SDS-1 Apex 3 computer design stations earlier this year. Dr. Linda Kim, Assistant Professor of Art History, will receive support for her forthcoming book which explores the connections between art and anthropology and the conditions of race in the interwar years of the 1920s and 1930s. Mark Stockton, Associate Teaching Professor of Design and Drawing, will magnify his professional artistic practice from gallery exhibitions to a stand-alone, narrative driven graphic novel. Jennifer Morley, Assistant Teaching Professor of Dance, will receive support for her ongoing original choreographic work, We Wouldn't Want the Moon to Fly Away, whose research is based on the child archetype and focuses on love, acceptance, playfulness, spontaneity, wonderment, and imagination. Dr. David Raizman, Professor of Art History, will use funds from a Mini Grant to continue indexing Expanding Nationalisms: Identity, Diversity, and Exchange 1855-1915, for which Professor Raizman is serving as editor alongside Ethan Robey of the New School. Expanding Nationalisms focuses on the design history of world’s fairs, the history of the decorative and industrial arts, and will illuminate the role art and design played in constructing national identity. Once complete, Expanding Nationalisms is expected to be published shortly.

Roberta Gruber, Associate Professor of Fashion Design and Depart Head of Design, will attend a Monotype Studio with Stuart Shils, a Masters workshop at the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts this May. Shils is an expert in painting and monotyping (a type of printmaking made by drawing or painting on a smooth, non-absorbent surface. The surface, or matrix, was historically a copper etching plate, but in contemporary work it can vary from zinc or glass to acrylic glass.) Clare Sauro, Assistant Professor of Fashion Design and Director & Chief Curator of the Robert & Penny Fox Historic Costume Collection, has received funding in support of research at the Special Collections and Research Archives at the Gladys Marcus Library at the Fashion Institute of Technology in New York. Professor Sauro’s research will concentrate on the records of fashion publicist Elanor Lambert, and will form the first step in the creation of an exhibition of items celebrating designer James G. Galanos, whom Lambert represented, which were obtained by the Collection in September 2016 directly from the James. G. Galanos Foundation. Cyrille Taillandier, Associate Teaching Professor of Music Industry, was awarded a Mini-Grant to conduct a recording workshop that will culminate in the release of the first E.P. produced by Mad Dragon Community Recording (MDCR), a new enterprise designed to foster empowerment and self-expression through music, and will bring members of the Mantua, Powelton, and Drexel communities together to produce and release original music. Neville Vakharia, Assistant Professor of Arts Administration, has received an award in support of his ongoing research in investigating how a range of organizational practices for creating and managing institutional knowledge can impact organizational performance in arts organizations. Andrew Zitcer, Assistant Professor of Arts Administration and Program Director of the MS in Urban Strategy, has received funding to conduct an examination into artists’ practices of creating and maintaining a space for working and living in their home cities and neighborhoods. Through focus groups, mapping exercises, and interviews with the local Philadelphia arts community, Professor Zitcer hopes to thoroughly investigate how artists are political and economic actors for urban change in Philadelphia. 

The Westphal Mini Grant provides modest financial support to full-time faculty. Grants must have a finished outcome that also enhances or promotes the visibility of the College as an academic institution, including through peer-reviewed published works, research competitions, performances and exhibitions. For more information please contact Karin Kuenstler, Associate Dean for Research and Graduate Studies, at kuenstls@drexel.edu.