Art History Professor Awarded Paul Mellon Visiting Senior Fellowship

Courtesy of Indianapolis Museum of Art

Edward Hopper, Hotel Lobby, 1943, oil on canvas, Indianapolis Museum of Art

FAYETTEVILLE, Ark. – Leo Mazow, associate professor of art history in the J. William Fulbright College of Arts and Sciences, has been awarded a Paul Mellon Visiting Senior Fellowship by the Center for Advanced Study in the Visual Arts at the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C.

The fellowship supports research in the history, theory and criticism of the visual arts of any geographic area and of any period. Fellows are given access to the library of the National Gallery of Art, the Library of Congress and other specialized research libraries and collections in the area. The Paul Mellon Visiting Senior Fellowship is one of the most competitive art history fellowships.

"The department continues to be impressed with the research and awards garnered by Dr. Mazow," said Jeannie Hulen, chair of the Department of Art. "This time afforded to Leo through this fellowship will greatly increase his already immense scholarly efforts and is well deserved."

The Fellowship supports Mazow's work on his present book project, Hopper's Hotels, which explores the artist's depictions of hospitality services industries and amenities. Edward Hopper (1882-1967) was a realist American painter who remains best known for such paintings as Nighthawks (1942, The Art Institute of Chicago).

"CASVA is the research center at the National Gallery of Art, which is one of the top museums in this country," said Lynn Jacobs, professor of art history. "So it is extremely prestigious for an art historian to win a fellowship at CASVA. Professor Mazow's receipt of this fellowship is evidence of the top-notch quality of his work and the importance of his project studying the theme of hotels in the works of Hopper."

Hopper produced paintings, drawings and illustrations related to the hotel subjects. In the 1920s, he designed 25 covers for two widely read hotel trade magazines, and from the 1930s through the 1950s he produced several acknowledged paintings of hotels and related establishments such as motels, boarding houses and apartments. Mazow calls attention to the shifting status of fine and popular art within the hotel setting, and gives a special focus to the guests' relationship to the wall hangings.

"This is an opportunity to make significant headway into my present book project, a summer worth of uninterrupted research and writing time," Mazow said. "Having ready access to the library collections and the extraordinary collections of the National Gallery of Art, along with the Smithsonian Museums and the Library of Congress, will be a real boon to my progress in completing the manuscript."

Mazow, a specialist in American art history, will be in residence at the Center for Advanced Study in the Visual Arts during summer 2015. His book, Thomas Hart Benton and the American Sound (Penn State University Press, 2012), was supported by a Wyeth Foundation for American Art Publication Grant, administered by the College Art Association. The book was awarded the 2013 Eldredge Prize for Distinguished Scholarship in American Art by the Smithsonian American Art Museum.

Mazow came to the University of Arkansas in 2010 after eight years as curator of American art at the Palmer Museum of Art at Penn State University. He has published articles on regionalism, New York Dada and American landscape painting in such journals as Art Bulletin, American Art and Winterthur Portfolio.