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Marissa Vigneault (Ph.D. ’09, History of Art), assistant professor of art history in the Caine College of the Arts at Utah State University, has accepted a prestigious Andrew W. Mellon Fellowship in the Department of Modern and Contemporary Art at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City.

With the support of the Mellon Fellowship, Professor Vigneault will complete the manuscript of her book Sugargiver: Hannah Wilke and New York City. Sugargiver is a look at the work of New York feminist artist Hanna Wilke. Vigneault said the book “reads Wilke’s body, performance, and video art of the 1970’s through the lens of New York City visual and material culture.” In particular, she frames Wilke’s artistic production within the context of New York’s legacy of vaudeville, burlesque, and strip club, which the artist identified as a subject to confront the systematic exploitation of the female body. 

Vigneault adds that Wilke’s 1976 performance at the Philadelphia Museum of Art, Hannah Wilke Through the Large Glass is an operative theme throughout her book – in particular, thinking through the artist’s critical engagement with and of specular objectification of female bodies via stripping, makeup, and fashion, as well as her feminist disruption of the legacy of Marcel Duchamp.

Read more about Professor Vigneault’s Mellon Fellowship .