Andrea Blum, Professor of Studio Art
Andrea Blum came to Hunter as a Visiting Professor in 1986, and is stepping away after 37 years as a Full Professor and Associate Chair for Studio Art. She has helped shape the Studio Art program over the decades, and has pushed to assemble a new generation of artists here who can lead the program forward. Thank you, Andrea! Andrea designs work for Public Space in Europe and the United States that range in site and scale from urban space and parks, to exhibition design, libraries, domestic space, and furniture. She exhibits in museums, galleries, and other international exhibition venues, and has had numerous one-person exhibitions including Kunsthaus Baselland, CH; La Conservera Centro de Arte Contemporaneo, SP; Stroom Center for Art & Architecture, NL; Henry Moore Institute, UK; and Le Crestet Centre D’art Contemporarin, FR. Blum built special projects for the 51st Venice Biennale, IT; Maison Rouge, Paris, FR ; the MUDAM Luxembourg; l’Observatoire, FR; and was the Set Designer for the Opera La Favorite by Donizetti commissioned by Theatre des Champs-Elysees, Paris. Andrea has been the recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship, Graham Foundation Fellowship, SJ Weiler Fund Award, Art Matters, NYSCA and National Endowment for the Arts Grants, and in 2005 was named Chevalier, Order of Arts and Letters, by the French Minister of Culture. In Fall 2024, she will have an exhibition of her work at the 205 Hudson Gallery.
Maria Loh, Professor of Art History
Joachim Pissarro first taught at Hunter in 2002, as a Visiting Professor, and has been, since 2007, the Bershad Professor of Art History and Director of the Hunter College Galleries. Joachim came to Hunter from the Museum of Modern Art’s Department of Painting and Sculpture, where he organized the exhibitions Pioneering Modern Painting: Cézanne and Pissarro 1865–1885 (2005); Out of Time: A Contemporary View (with Eva Respini, 2006); and Van Gogh and the Colors of the Night (2008-09). From 1997 to 2000, he was the Seymour H. Knox, Jr. Curator of European and Contemporary Art at the Yale University Art Gallery, and before that he was Chief Curator at the Kimbell Art Museum in Fort Worth. Joachim brought his curatorial expertise to Hunter, and under his directorship the Hunter College Art Galleries flourished. He organized a number of exhibitions with students and colleagues at Hunter, including to: Night: Contemporary Representations of the Night (2008), a contemporary response to his Van Gogh show at MoMA; Notations: the Cage Effect Today (2012); and Buren, Mosset, Parmentier, Toroni (2016). Joachim established the ongoing MAs Curate MFAs program, and was a much sought-after advisor and mentor for both MA and MFA students. He received his M. Phil. in History of Art from the Courtauld Institute, London, and a Ph D. in History of Art from the University of Texas at Austin. Beyond Hunter, Joachim was a founding partner of PARALLEL (with partners, architects John Keenen and Terry Riley), and in 2021 joined forces with Philippe de Montebello and Jennifer Stockman in creating GMSG (Global Museum Strategies Group), consulting and helping to develop museum projects, mostly in China and the Gulf Region.
Sarah Watson, Chief Curator and Director of AdministrationSarah Watson earned her MA in Art History from Hunter College in 2010, and returned to Hunter as Curator in 2012. She leaves Hunter as Chief Curator and Director of Administration of the Hunter College Art Galleries, to serve as Director of the Joseph S. Murphy Institute at the CUNY School of Labor and Urban Studies (SLU); Sarah earned her second MA, in Urban Studies, from SLU. The growth of the Hunter College Art Galleries and the success of the department’s Advanced Curatorial Certificate would not have been possible without Sarah’s professionalism and dedication. She has been an important mentor to a generation of curatorial students and gallery employees, and has pushed to make the galleries’ programing responsive to Hunter’s diverse communities. Sarah has had a shaping hand in every exhibition, catalogue, and program produced at the Leubsdorf and 205 Hudson galleries since 2012, and her absence will be felt. Among the exhibitions Sarah curated or co-organized with Hunter students, colleagues in the galleries, or visiting curators are Vistas Latinas: Archives of a Collective, 1989–2014 (2014); Robert Barry: All the things I know . . . 1962 to the present (2015); The Experimental Television Center: A History, Etc… (2015); Elective Affinities: A Library (2017); Ugo Rondinone: I Love John Giorno (2017); The School of Survival: Learning with Juan Downey (2018); Axis Mundo: Queer Networks in Chicano L.A. (2018); Refiguring the Future (2019); Constance DeJong: A Survey Exhibition (2021); and The Black Index (2022), a nationally touring exhibition organized with curator Bridget Cooks of the University of California, Irvine.
