Kathleen Nolan shaped the art history program into a multi-faceted program and taught majors, minors, and nonmajors the skills to perceptively and thoughtfully interpret images from the past and present alike. She focused on medieval, Renaissance, and Baroque art history during her 35-year career at Hollins, and her scholarly interests include the history of women in the Middle Ages and the works of art commissioned by women to tell their stories. She co-edited Arts of the Medieval Cathedrals: Studies on Architecture<\/em>, Stained Glass and Sculpture in Honor of Anne Prache<\/em>. Her book Queens in Stone and Silver<\/em>: The<\/em> Creation of a Visual Identity of Queenship in Capetian France<\/em> (Palgrave 2009) looks at queens\u2019 personal seals and effigy tombs. Her articles and essays have appeared in The Art Bulletin<\/em>, the Gazette des Beaux-Arts<\/em>, Studies in Iconography<\/em>, and Gesta<\/em>.<\/p>\n Hands-on research was a hallmark of Nolan\u2019s teaching. Thanks to a loan of decorative objects from the Huntington Museum of Art in West Virginia to Hollins\u2019 Eleanor D. Wilson Museum, Nolan\u2019s 2017 Islamic Art class engaged with rare artifacts from the Near East, including rugs, pouring vessels, a traveling scribe set, a dish, a manuscript page firman, and bath sandals that date as far back as the 11th and 12th centuries and originated in Iran, Syria, and Turkey.<\/p>\n \u201cThe students and I were thrilled to have these,\u201d Nolan said at the time. \u201cThere was great excitement in the vault of the Wilson Museum when we got to experience these objects firsthand.\u201d<\/p>\n The following year, students in Nolan\u2019s Gothic Art seminar conducted original research on a handmade French volume of prayer from the late 15th century called a book of hours<\/em> that came to Hollins in the 1940s as part of an extensive collection of manuscripts donated by industrialist Samuel Herbert McVitty in memory of his wife Lucy Winton McVitty, who served as a member of the Hollins Board of Trustees. Produced throughout the medieval period, the books contained devotional text and also \u201csome of the greatest paintings and drawings of the late Middle Ages and early Renaissance,\u201d according to Wendy A. Stein of the Metropolitan Museum of Art.<\/p>\n Nolan\u2019s class centered on the book\u2019s images, or \u201cminiatures,\u201d and created detailed catalogue entries for Wyndham Robertson Library\u2019s Digital Exhibits website. \u201cI wanted the students in this particular seminar to develop a visible record of their research and enhance the online presence of this gorgeous manuscript,\u201d she explained.<\/p>\n For students in the Gothic Art seminar, examining the book of hours<\/em> left an enduring impression. \u201cI never thought I\u2019d have the opportunity to come into such a close encounter with a manuscript like this that isn\u2019t behind glass in a museum,\u201d said art history major Clara Souvignier \u201920. \u201cIt\u2019s a prize that we have something this old and this worthwhile. The trust that Professor Nolan and the library placed in us means a lot.\u201d<\/p>\n Another memorable experience for a number of students was Nolan\u2019s January Short Term course, \u201cJulie and Julia and Me: French Cooking and Food Culture for Everyone,\u201d where they immersed themselves in books and videos about French culture and also got to gather at Nolan\u2019s home to try their hand at preparing French cuisine.<\/p>\n \u201cYears later, equations and theories may have no applications in daily life,\u201d a Roanoke Times<\/em> columnist wrote in a January 2012 article about the course. \u201cBut I\u2019ll bet some of Kathleen Nolan\u2019s students at Hollins University this term will never forget how to make French onion soup, flip an omelet, or truss a chicken.\u201d<\/p>\n Among the honors Nolan received during her academic career at Hollins was the 2002 Herta Freitag Faculty Legacy Award, which recognizes a full-time teaching faculty member who has received external recognition of professional excellence in the form of publications and papers, exhibits and performances, prizes, and other related expressions of their work.<\/p>\n Nolan once called teaching at Hollins \u201cone of the best jobs in America.\u201d It\u2019s easy to see why she found it so gratifying.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" PROFESSOR OF ART EMERITA Kathleen Nolan shaped the art history program into a multi-faceted program and taught majors, minors, and nonmajors the skills to perceptively and thoughtfully interpret images from the past and present alike. She focused on medieval, Renaissance, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":10250,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6,131],"tags":[129],"class_list":["post-10285","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-in_the_loop","category-retirees","tag-fall-2021"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.糖心传媒.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10285","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.糖心传媒.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.糖心传媒.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.糖心传媒.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.糖心传媒.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=10285"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/www.糖心传媒.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10285\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":10808,"href":"https:\/\/www.糖心传媒.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10285\/revisions\/10808"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.糖心传媒.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/10250"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.糖心传媒.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10285"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.糖心传媒.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=10285"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.糖心传媒.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=10285"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}