News 2021: CVPA student awarded fellowship

Integrated Studio Art major Rosalia Elizabeth Amato Bauer is the inaugural recipient of the New Bedford Art Museum/Artworks! Fellowship

Rosalia Elizabeth Amato Bauer is the inaugural recipient of the New Bedford Art Museum/Artworks! Fellowship. Rosalia is a junior majoring in Integrated Studio Art and minoring in Art History at UMass Dartmouth’s College of Visual & Performing Arts. The fellowship was launched for UMassD students who intend to pursue a career in the arts. The program aims to promote scholarship focused on the New Bedford City Art Collection, raise community awareness about the city’s art collection, and enhance strategic linkages between community cultural institutions and UMassD. 

Each year a selected student and supervising faculty member will conduct art historical research based on the collection of the New Bedford Free Public Library. Under the supervision of Dr. Pamela Karimi (Professor of Art History), Rosalia will conduct research at the New Bedford Free Public Library’s extensive collection of works by the New Bedford Impressionist artist and writer Clifford W. Ashley (1881-1947).

“In her research, Rosalia will investigate the formal and iconographic features of Ashley’s oeuvre, particularly how he seemingly drew on the aesthetic elements of social realism,” says Karimi. “Most studies of impressionism frame these works in the context of artistic virtuosity, connection to photography, durational art, and leisurely life. By focusing on Ashley’s unique interest in labor, Rosalia will reveal an understudied aspect of Impressionism in North America that reacted to the harmful aspects of rapid industrialization and machine-based manufacturing.”

Building on current and past published work on this artist as well as original archival investigation, Rosalia will employ a Marxist lens in examining the theme of labor in Ashley’s work. She will demonstrate how the artist’s knowledge of sailing, knots, and whaling may have contributed to the physical intimacy of the depiction of human labor. In conducting this research, Rosalia will also engage in oral interviews with the family members of the artist, who currently reside in New Bedford.

Rosalia’s plan for featuring the result of her fieldwork and research includes curating an exhibition of Ashley’s work. The paintings will be presented with papers and correspondence from the New Bedford Public Library, the Whaling Museum, and the Clifford W. Ashley Papers at the Delaware Art Museum, where Ashley received his art education. Rosalia will give a public lecture as well as a presentation to New Bedford school students.

In addition to being awarded the New Bedford Art Museum/Artworks! Fellowship, Rosalia has made the Dean’s list for the past three semesters. The St. Paul, Minnesota native is also the 2020 recipient of the International Lace Organization Young Lacemaker’s Grant for forthcoming research on the Sybil Carter Indian Lace Association.