Senior Fellow Holly Pittman Honored with Publication
ISAW Senior Fellow and Advisory Board Member Holly Pittman was honored at the 62nd annual meeting of the Rencontre Assyriologique Internationale (RAI), held last week at the University of Pennsylvania. Two of Holly's former students at the University of Pennsylvania, Karen Sonik, an Assistant Professor in the Department of Art and Art History at Auburn University and former ISAW Visiting Research Scholar, and Christopher Thornton, Senior Director of Cultural Heritage at the National Geographic Society, surprised Holly with a paper session that was a sneak preview of a book to be published in her honor.
The book, tentatively entitled Art/ifacts: Images, Objects and Aesthetics in the Ancient Near East, has contributions from many of Holly’s students and colleagues. The book will contain chapters that address the broad range of Holly’s scholarly fields of interest: art history, archaeology, anthropology, philology and museum curatorship. ISAW Professor Beate Pongratz-Leisten and NYU Department of Anthropology Professor Rita Wright gave presentations in the celebratory session at the RAI. ISAW Research Associate Karen Rubinson will also be a contributor to the volume.
Holly’s many significant contributions to the study of the Ancient Near East through excavation, research, publication, and museum curatorship, as well as her dedication to her students, were also celebrated at a reception at the University of Pennsylvania Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology during the conference.