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Five junior art majors will travel across Spain studying Jewish, Christian and Muslim Spanish art and architecture as part of the Rothkopf Scholars Program, May 21 – June 2.
The Rothkopf Scholars program is funded by an endowment established through gifts made to the Lafayette Leadership Campaign in honor of former Lafayette president Arthur J. Rothkopf ’55 and Barbara Sarnoff Rothkopf. Also established through this endowment is the Arthur J. ’55 and Barbara S. Rothkopf Professorship in Art History, which is held by Diane Cole Ahl.
This year’s Rothkopf Scholars include Lindsay A. Gonzalez ’09 (Towanda, Pa.), who is also an English major; Marissa Halderman ’09 (Rushland, Pa.); Peter G. Gildner ’09 (Hatboro, Pa.), who is also a chemistry major; Rachel Miller Pidcock ’09 (Allentown, Pa.); and Jesse Lagle ’09 (White Plains, N.Y.), who is also an English major.
The students will be visiting several museums, palaces, and places of worship in various cities in Spain, including Madrid, Barcelona, Grenada, and Toledo.
The participating students were selected through a competitive process on the basis of essays they submitted, grade point average, and their overall record within the art department and the College. Ahl believes that the Rothkopf Scholarship allows students to experience an area of study first-hand, outside of the classroom, with experts and scholars who know it best.
“Through the Rothkopf Scholars program, Lafayette students have the opportunity of seeing monuments under the guidance of world-class scholars, an experience that expands their intellectual and artistic horizons as well as their historical knowledge and global awareness,” Ahl says.
Leading them will be Lynette Bosch, professor of art at State University of New York’s (SUNY) Geneseo College. Bosch has published widely on Latin American contemporary art, especially that of the Cuban diaspora in the United States and elsewhere, as well as on the visual culture of late medieval and Renaissance Spain and Italy. Her publications include Art, Liturgy, and Legend in Renaissance Toledo: the Mendoza and the Iglesia Primada (Pennsylvania State Unversity, 2000), which won the Eleanor Tufts Book Prize, The artistic splendor of the Spanish kingdoms: the art of fifteenth-century Spain (Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, 1996), along with various articles and catalogues.
Since the Rothkopf Scholars program was established in 2005, students have traveled to France, the Netherlands and Belgium and, previously, to Spain.