DUKE RECEIVES $2.5 MILLION GRANT FROM THE ANDREW W. MELLON FOUNDATION

Wednesday, 25 October 2006 09:04

DURHAM, N.C. - Duke University has received a $2.5 million grant from The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation to create a Visual Studies Initiative, a broad-based effort to improve how visual images are understood and to foster research and teaching in this area.

“This initiative draws on our strengths of interdisciplinary collaboration in the humanities and beyond,” said Provost Peter Lange, the university’s top academic official. “Our program will develop the visual literacy of undergraduates, prepare future faculty and support innovative research and teaching.”

Visual studies was identified as an institutional priority in “Making a Difference,” Duke’s recently approved strategic plan, and ties into the university’s focus on the arts and humanities.  The home of the initiative will be Duke’s redeveloped Central Campus, which already houses the Nasher Museum of Art and is envisioned in the strategic plan as a hub for the arts at Duke.

The initiative will take advantage of the resources of the Nasher Museum as well as the Center for Documentary Studies and the Franklin Humanities Institute.

“It’s exciting. There’s a sense of possibilities,” said Kimerly Rorschach, the Mary D.B.T. and James H. Semans Director of the Nasher Museum.  “Duke is being very strategic in putting all the pieces together.”  Hans van Miegroet, chair of Duke’s Department of Art, Art History and Visual Studies, said many students are well educated in reading and writing but are not visually “literate.”

“The visual can have its own logic that can’t be expressed in text,” said van Miegroet, faculty director of the initiative.  “Every society and culture has a particular set of visuals that have meaning, whether it’s an AC/DC poster or the latest video game.”