Photo Caption: Connie DeJong (on left) receives the 2015 Kenneth Marantz Distinguished Alumni Award from Chair Deborah Smith-Shank and the late Sylvia Marantz

Save the date for the AAEP Barkan Award & Marantz Award combined celebration on April 15 from 1 – 3:30 p.m. in the Barnett Collaboratory on the first floor of Sullivant Hall. 

In 1999 The Marantz Distinguished Alumni Lecture Fund was established with gifts from Harold and Kenneth Marantz to honor a distinguished alumni of the program. Each year, graduate students in the department select the winner. This year's recipient is Dr. Vittoria S. Daiello, PhD 2011.

Vittoria Daiello is an assistant professor in the College of Design, Architecture, Art, and Planning (DAAP) at the University of Cincinnati. Based in the School of Art and Art Education Program, she teaches arts-informed writing, research, and pedagogical methods courses, spanning the disciplines of Art Education, Fine Arts, Art History, and Design. A recipient of the DAAP Award for Outstanding Teaching in 2011, Vittoria emphasizes arts-based, reflective writing practices and dialogic composition methods in her courses. Vittoria holds a bachelor of fine arts degree from Ohio Wesleyan University and a doctorate in art education from The Ohio State University. Her arts education experiences include teaching in K-12 public schools and interdisciplinary artist-in-residence projects. Her research is included in the proceedings of the American Educational Research Association (AERA), the International Congress of Qualitative Inquiry (ICQI), the National Art Education Association (NAEA), and the 1st Conference on Arts-Based and Artistic Research. Peer-reviewed publications include Visual Arts Research Journal, The Journal of Social Theory in Art Education, Studies in Art Education, and Creative Approaches to Research. Forthcoming in 2016 are “Writing, Awry: Poetic (Dis)Junctions and Voluptuous Disruptions in Arts-Informed, Contemplative Writing Practice” in The Mindful Eye: Contemplative Pedagogies in Visual Arts Education (M. Garbutt & N. Roenpagel, Eds.), and in 2017, “Arts-Based Writing: The Performance of Our Lives,” co-authored with Candace Jesse Stout (OSU), in The Handbook of Arts-Based Research (P. Leavy, Ed.). 

Dr. Daiello will deliver a presentation titled  A Shimmering Assemblage: The Unexpected Gifts of Uncertainty, Doubt, and Transdisciplinarity [pdf] as related to her scholarship in art education.

The Manuel Barkan Fellowship was established in 1995 in the name of the first chair of the department by his wife, Toby Barkan Willits. This competitive award supports the academic and living expenses of a doctoral candidate in Art Education who is completing his/her dissertation. This year, AAEP announced that PhD candidate Verónica Betancourt is to receive this prestigious award. 

Verónica E. Betancourt holds a BA in Art History from Swarthmore College, and an MA in Art Education from OSU. She researches the intersection of Latina/o Studies and Museum Studies and works to improve visitor inclusion at art museums. She has published in Multiculturalism in Art Museums Today, Oxford Bibliographies in Latino Studies, and Visual Culture & Gender. Betancourt was a 2013 Latino Museum Studies Program Fellow for the Smithsonian Latino Center and her scholarship has been supported with grants and fellowships from the American Alliance of Museums, the Caucus on Social Theory in Art Education, and The Ohio State University. Betancourt has worked in both curatorial and education departments at institutions such as the National Gallery of Art and National Portrait Gallery in Washington DC, and the Wexner Center for the Arts in Columbus, Ohio.  

Verónica will lecture on Visiting while Latina/o: An Intersectional Analysis of the Experiences of Subjectivity among Latina/o Visitors to Encyclopedic Art Museums via Skype.