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Anthony Alofsin’s book, When Buildings Speak: Architecture as Language in the Habsburg Empire and its Aftermath, 1867-1933 is coming out in a paperback edition in October, 2008, from the University of Chicago Press. The book won the Vasari Award from the Dallas Museum of Art in 2007. A recent review noted: "“…this book marks an undisputable contribution not only to the knowledge of the Central European architecture, but also to the ongoing remapping of modern architecture. Alofsin introduces a new reading of the architecture of the region and supports it with an extremely rich use of illustrations, including many large color photographs of breathtaking quality….Alofsin demonstrates here that modern architecture implies several and different means of expression, all of which are equally worth investigating. While certainly contributing to the continuing shifts of historiography of modern architecture, this book will also open pathways to the study of even more ‘adventurous’ territories that have yet to be considered by mainstream architectural history.” Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians, June 2008.

Shulamith Behr contributed interpretive essays to the catalogue of the Georg Baselitz retrospective, held at the Royal Academy 22 September – 9 December 2007, and wrote the gallery guide and didactic panels for the exhibition. For the academic year 2007/8 she is the recipient of a Leverhulme Research Fellowship and Visiting Fellowships at the Centre for Research in the Arts, Social Sciences and Humanities and Wolfson College, University of Cambridge.

An expanded version of the exhibition "Technical Detours: the Early Moholy-Nagy Reconsidered" curated by Oliver Botar, which opened at the Gallery of the Graduate Center, CUNY, in New York last February and continued on to the Jane Voorhees Zimmerli Art Museum at Rutgers University, will be shown at the Janus Pannonius Museum in Pecs, Hungary from December 20, 2007 - March 15, 2008. It will then go on to the Magyar Nemzeti Galeria (Hungarian National Gallery) in Budapest, opening in April. Revised Hungarian and English versions of the accompanying book of the same title will appear with Vince Kiado, Budapest in time for the Pecs opening.

Peter Chametzky is serving as Interim Director of the School of Art and Design at Southern Illinois University Carbondale in 2008-9. He presented, “Monument, Memory, Screen: The Reichstag, its Environs, and Questions of German National Identity,” to the session “A Model of Democracy, Art in Action: Hans Haacke at the Reichstag,” at the German Studies Association Annual Conference in Minneapolis in October 2008, where he was also Commentator for the session, “Weimar Art and Gender I: Men and Materials.” His article, ” Not What We Expected: The Jewish Museum Berlin in Practice,” will appear in either the November 2008 or March 2009 issue of Museum and Society, (http://www.le.ac.uk/ms/museumsociety.html), while “Global Art, National Values, Monumental Compromises: ‘German' 9/11 Commemoration in America, ‘American’ Holocaust Commemoration in Germany,” will appear in the 50th Anniversary issue of The Massachusetts Review in March 2009. His book, Objects as History in Twentieth-Century German Art: Beckmann to Beuys, is forthcoming from University of California Press in fall 2010.

Jay A. Clarke, Associate Curator of Prints and Drawings at The Art Institute of Chicago, was awarded a grant from the American-Scandinavian Foundation for research towards her forthcoming Edvard Munch exhibition and publication. Clarke also received an award for "Outstanding Essay of 2006" from the American Association of Museums Curators for her article "Originality and Repetition in Edvard Munch's 'The Sick Child'" published in Edvard Munch: An Anthology, ed. Erik Morstad (Oslo Academic Press, 2006).

Marion Deshmukh presented two invited lectures at the Goethe-Institut, Washington DC: "Simplicissimus: Image and Satire in Imperial Germany," (Sept. 2006) and "Caspar David Friedrich and German Romanticism," (April, 2007). She moderated a session at a symposium on German-American relations (The Cultural Dimension) at the American Institute for Contemporary German Studies, Washington, DC, in May, 2007. She also reviewed exhibition catalogue Glitter and Doom, German Portraits of the 1920s (Sabine Rewald, ed., Metropolitan Museum of Art, NY, 2007) for German Quarterly in 2007.

Eva Forgacs’s recent publications include: The Avant-Garde in Hungary and Its Audience,” in Modernism and Central- and East European Art & Culture, edited by Tsukasa Kodera (Osaka: Osaka University, The 21st Century COE Program, 2007); „The Safe Haven of a New Classicism. The Quest for a New Aesthetics in Hungary 1904-1912,” Studies in East European Thought, No. 60, 2008; and “Does Democracy Grow under Pressure? Strategies of the Hungarian Neo-Avant-Garde throughout the late 1960s and the 1970s,” Centropa 8, no. 1 (Jan. 2008). She also reviewed ARRIVALS > ART FROM THE NEW EUROPE, edited by Suzanne Cotter, Andrew Nairne and Victoria Pomery (Oxford: Modern Art Oxford, Turner Contemporary, 2007) in www.artmargins.com (April 2008); Elizabeth Clegg’s Art, Design & Architecture in Central Europe 1890-1920 (New Haven, London: Yale University Press, 2006) for The Hungarian Quarterly 48, no.188 (Winter 2007). She published two catalogue essays, „Gobelin 2008: Zsuzsa Péreli’s Exhibition” (Budapest: Kogart, 2008) and „Painter with Camera. Recent Works by László Fehér” (Budapest: Ludwig Múzeum, 2007). Eva presented the following lectures: „Modernism under Wraps” at EAM conference, Ghent, May 2008; “The Transparent Picture Plane,” at the conference “Moholy-Nagy Reconsidered,” held at Hungarian National Gallery, April 25, 2008; “Beginnings of Hungarian Modernism,” at Zimmerli Museum at Rutgers University, Feb. 2008; “The Necessity of Writing Local Art History in the Global Context,” CIHA, Budapest, November 2007; “Modernity and Its Discontents,” at Central Europe MSA conference Long Beach, Nov. 2007; and “L’Autre Europe, at INHA (Institut Nationale d’Histoire de l’Art) Paris, May 2007. She also gave the Opening Address at the exhibition “The Early Moholy-Nagy Reconsidered,” curated by Oliver Botar, Hungarian National Gallery, April 24 2008.

Françoise Forster-Hahn’s book Max Beckmann in Kalifornien: Exil, Erinnerung und Erneuerung was published in 2007 by Deutscher Kunstverlag. A shorter English version was published as "Max Beckmann in California: Exile, Memory, and Renewal," in Caught by Politics: Hitler Exiles and American Visual Culture, eds. Sabine Eckmann and Lutz Koepnick (New York: Palgrave/Macmillan, 2007). She delivered lecture, "Harry Graf Kessler's Definition of a Modern Identity: Being 'a Good German' and 'a Good European,'" at the international symposium Le comte Harry Kessler: Penser l'Europe å travers les arts, April 15 and 16, 2008 at the Musée d'Orsay and the Centre allemand de l'histoire de l'art in Paris. Françoise was also a recipient of Alexander von Humboldt-Fellowship for three months abroad (Paris and Berlin) for research on her project: "Inventing the History of Modern Art: The Centennial Exhibition of German Art (1906) in Berlin's Nationalgalerie and Meier-Graefe's 'Entwicklungsgeschichte der Modernen Kunst' (1904)."

Charles Haxthausen will be honored at this year's CAA Conference with the Distinguished Teaching in Art History Award. His recent publications include: „Schicksal eines Aquarells: Paul Klees Die Zwitscher-Maschine / Fate of a Watercolor: Paul Klee’s Die Zwitscher-Mschine,“ in: Zeige deine Sammlung: Jüdische Spuren in Münchner Museen / Show Your Collection: Jewish Traces in Munich’s Museums, edited by Renata Stih and Frieder Schnock, Nürnberg: Verlag für Moderne Kunst, 2008, 97-106; and “Raumerforschungen: Zu Sigmar Polkes ‚Linsenbildern’/ Space Explorations: On Sigmar Polke’s ‘Lens Paintings,’“ in: Sigmar Polke : Wunder von Siegen/Sigmar Polke: Miracle of Siegen, edited by Eva Schmidt, exh. cat., Cologne: Dumont, 2008, 32-41 (German); 44-51 (English). He presented the following lectures: “Painting Media: Gerhard Richter and Neo Rauch,” at Detroit Institute of Arts, on March 26, 2008; “The Cathedral of Cinema: Fritz Lang’s Metropolis," at German Studies Association Annual Meeting, in Saint Paul, Minnesota, on October 3, 2008; “Framing Movement: Kirchner in Berlin,” at Kirchner and the Berlin Street: A Symposium, held at Museum of Modern Art, New York, on October 17, 2008; "Carl Einstein's Cubism," at conference Revolución, Vanguardia, y las nuevas narraciones del arte. Carl Einstein y su legado en la historia del arte contemporáneo, held at Museo Reina Sofia, Madrid, on January 30, 2009.

Julie Johnson, University of Texas at San Antonio, was awarded a residential grant at the IFK Vienna (International Research Center for Cultural Studies)from October 2007 to January 2008.

Dorothy Rowe (Department of History of Art, University of Bristol, UK)has been awarded a two-year Leverhulme Research Fellowship to conduct research for a project entitled 'Weimar women: photography and modernity'. The main aim of the research is to demonstrate how gender influenced the development of 'the new photography' in Weimar Germany between 1925 and 1933. The research will include the collation of little-known biographical information about women photographers in the Weimar Republic. It will also offer new iconographical readings and interpretations of photographs and photomontages produced by women photographers during the period in relation
to contemporary mass media discourses around the role of women in Weimar culture and society. The research will also explore how access to training,as well as different cultural, social and geographical backgrounds affected the choice of styles, subject matter and themes produced by women as photographers in Weimar Germany. The final outcome will be to produce a single-authored monograph that will serve as a research resource for an exhibition planned for the National Gallery of Scotland in 2013.

Brett Van Hoesen has a new position as Assistant Professor of Modern and Contemporary Art History at the University of Nevada, Reno. In September, she presented the paper, "Modernity and Weimar Re-Visions of Germany's Colonial Past: The Photomontages of Hannah Höch and Laszlo Moholy-Nagy" at the conference, "Germany's Colonialism in International Perspective" hosted by San Francisco State University. See the website: http://www.sfsu.edu/~german/GCC/program.html Brett will also present the paper, "Weimar Photomontage and the Visual Legacy of German Colonialism" on the panel, "Visuality and Colonial Empire: From Wilhelmine to Weimar Germany" at the German Studies Association conference in October. She is currently working on a book project in which she discusses the interrelationship between photomontage, documentary photography and the visual legacy of Germany's colonial past during the Weimar Republic.

In 2007-2008 Isabel Wünsche held a research fellowship at the National Humanities Center in Research Triangle Park, North Carolina; in 2008-2009 she will be a fellow at the Institute for Advanced Study, Collegium Budapest. In April 2008, she organized, together with Nina Gourianova, Chicago, the symposium "Art before and after Ideology" at the National Humanities Center in Research Triangle Park, NC. Speakers included Mark Antliff, Nina Gourianova, Pamela Kachurin, Terry Smith, and Isabel Wünsche. Her exhibition, “The Heritage of the Russian Avant-Garde: Vladimir Sterligov and his School,” selections from the Nancy and Norton Dodge Collection of Nonconformist Art from the Soviet Union was shown at the Jane Voorhees Zimmerli Museum of Art at Rutgers University, April 7 – October 14, 2007 (part 1) and October 21 -- May 23, 2008 (part 2). Isabel’s most recent publications include “František Kupka: Creation in Nature and Art,” in The Structurist, No. 47-48 (2007-2008) and “The Heritage of the Russian Avant-Garde: Vladimir Sterligov and His School,” in Journal of the Jane Voorhees Zimmerli Museum of Art, Fall 2008. Her essay “Wassily Kandinsky und František Kupka: Alternativen zum Kubismus” (Wassily Kandinsky and František Kupka: Alternatives to Cubism) will be published in Slavische und nichtslavische Literaturen und Kulturen in Europa – Parallelen, Beziehungen, Zusammenhänge. Die Ost-West-Problematik (Slavic and Non- slavic Literatures and Cultures in Europe – Parallels, Relations, Interconnections. The East-West-Problem), Prague: Academy of Sciences, 2009. Her most recent book Harmonie und Synthese. Die russische Moderne zwischen universellem Anspruch und nationaler kultureller Identität (Harmony and Synthesis: Russian Modernism between Universal Aspiration and National Cultural Identity) was published by Wilhelm Fink Verlag (Paderborn) in 2008. At the 97th Annual Conference of the College Art Association in Los Angeles in February 2009, she is chairing the HGCEA session “Forging California Modernism: Central European Emigrés on the West Coast between 1920 and 1945."