Studio Art and Art History Graduates Finding Success Beyond UMW

Spring 2023 was filled with good news from several of our UMW Studio Art and Art History graduates.

In March, Sarah Zhou was awarded a prestigious Virginia Museum of Fine Arts fellowship for 2023-2024, to pursue her painting. Zhou commented that:

My art has always been a part of my life where I can explore interests and topics where words cannot suffice. I’ve struggled to find what path I should go down, if I should pursue my passions or not. The VMFA Graduate Fellowship further made me see that the path I chose has potential. The fellowship will help me with investing in more opportunities to showcase my works and a space to create more art.

Two UMW Art grads will be starting graduate school in art next fall. McKenzie (Mack) Hoffman (Studio Art, 2023) has been accepted to the Graphic Design MFA program at George Mason (https://mackhoffman.com/).  Kaitlyn (Wren) Tiffany (Studio Art 2021) has been accepted into the Kinetic Imaging MFA program at VCU. Tiffany, who also had a minor in Digital Studies, works in multimedia art. https://filmfreeway.com/KaitlynTiffany.

Another graduate in Art History, Allison Stagg (2002), has a new book out with Penn State University Press, Prints of a New Kind (2023):

Prints of a New Kind details the political strategies and scandals that inspired the first generation of American caricaturists to share news and opinions with their audiences in shockingly radical ways. Complementing studies on British and European printmaking, this book is a survey and catalogue of all known American political caricatures created in the country’s transformative early years, as the nation sought to define itself in relation to European models of governance and artistry. Prints of a New Kind

Stagg is a researcher and lecturer in the Department of Architecture and Art History at the Technical University of Darmstadt, Germany.