Announcing Susan Rather as Chair of the Department of Art and Art History

Dear Advisory Council members,

I am pleased to announce that, effective immediately, Professor Susan Rather is now the department chair and Meredith and Cornelia Long Chair of Art and Art History in the Department of Art and Art History. She is the first woman chair in the department’s history and first art historian chair in many decades.

I am grateful to Susan for her able leadership as interim chair during the transition period this past year; she’s garnered my support and that of faculty. I’m also grateful to the search committee for their excellent work in evaluating internal candidates for this role.

In her more than three decades on the faculty of Art and Art History, Susan has served in key leadership roles, including three recent years as departmental associate chair, with extended prior terms as head of the Art History division and as its graduate advisor. She is a distinguished senior member of the faculty and an award-winning historian of American art, having received the 2018 Eldredge Prize for Outstanding Scholarship in American Art from the Smithsonian American Art Museum for her book The American School: Artists and Status in the Late Colonial and Early National Era.

Susan has done a terrific job these past several months in her interim role, and I have high confidence in her leadership. Please join me in congratulating Susan on her new role.

Excelsior!

Doug Dempster
Dean