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Eight junior art majors will travel abroad to study medieval art and architecture with emphasis on the great cathedrals of France June 1-12 as part of the Rothkopf Scholars program.
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.
Participating students include history and art double major Margarita Karasoulas (Harrison, N.Y.); art majors Kristin Hayes (Roseland, N.J.), Josephine Kurtz (Wilmington, Del.), Andrea Cerbie (Harrington Park, N.J.), Natasha Washlick (Mount Laurel, N.J.), and Caroline Conway (Winchester, Mass.); and art and English double majors Alli Thompson (Saddle River, N.J.) and Karen Ruggles (Easton, Pa.).
They will travel to Paris, Amiens, and Chartres, where they will study at renowned historical spots such as Notre-Dame of Paris, Cluny Museum, Musée Carnavalet, and others.
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. Bob Mattison, Metzgar Professor of Art, believes the Rothkopf Scholarship allows students to truly experience an area of study, rather than just learning about it in the classroom.
“In all of its teaching, the art department emphasizes international experience and direct contact with original works of art,” he says. “The Rothkopf Scholarship truly provides a superb opportunity for our best students to travel with a renowned expert in the field and to study these great monuments first-hand.”
Stephen Murray, professor of art history and archaeology at Columbia University, will lead this year’s trip. Educated at Oxford and London Universities, Murray has taught as a professor and has served as chairman at Indiana and Columbia Universities. He has held grants and fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundations, Stanford Center for Advanced Studies in Behavioral Sciences, National Humanities Center, National Endowment for the Humanities, and Andrew Mellon Foundation. He was founding director of the Media Center for Art History at Columbia.
In his research and publications, Murray has explored the life of the great Gothic cathedrals of France. He has taught numerous cathedral seminars in Europe and, under the auspices of a grant from the Andrew Mellon Foundation, currently is directing a project to create a database for Romanesque churches in the Bourbonnais in central France.
Since the Rothkopf Scholars program was established in 2005, students have traveled to Spain and the Netherlands and Belgium.