New Assistant Professor of Art Anthony Lee will teach modern and contemporary Western art and nineteenth-century art, and is working on a book on the early paintings and photographs of San Francisco's Chinatown.
Anthony Lee, who comes to the College after four years at the Dallas campus of the University of Texas, has already noticed some differences between that large coeducational university and the women's college environment. "The students here seem more ambitious, intense, and refreshingly different from one another," he says. Lee, who is on leave this semester, will be teaching modern and contemporary Western art and nineteenth-century art in second semester.
Using his Getty postdoctoral fellowship, Lee is writing a book on the early paintings and photographs of San Francisco's Chinatown. "The artists I'm looking at are Asian and non-Asian. It's a long study, covering 1850 to 1941. In their work I see the loathing, fears, desires, and fantasies people projected onto Chinatown." Lee knows the modern San Francisco Chinatown well, having been raised there as the first-generation American child of a Portuguese-Dutch mother and Chinese father.
Lee's personal research interests are broad. "I was trained at Berkeley in canonical art in the grand tradition, but I'm also interested in ethnically identified art. I look at ways in which art history is in dialogue with other forms being examined. The new art history looks at what other kinds of arts and images beyond Western art can do and at the powers of other cultures represented through their art. I'm interested in visual images not just confined to painting, because what one thinks of as interesting visuals is changing rapidly."
Lee's first book, Painting on the Left: Diego Rivera, Radical Politics, and San Francisco's Public Murals, will be published by the University of California Press in 1999.
Another difference Lee sees in his new position is what he calls "the extended university" created by the Five Colleges. "No one school could have as many art historians or artists loosely connected as we do here. I'm also quite happy to be in such a nice department where the folks are bright and friendly and there's a strong commitment to one another."
Though many resources for his current work are across the country, Lee isn't concerned about the distance. "It's always good to get away to do research anyway. Being near New York City and Boston is exciting and helpful. There's a good arts scene around here too. There's a wide radius of places to visit, for myself and with students."
Lee and his wife, Catherine, who is currently a visiting lecturer in the College's English department, have three children under age ten and are living in South Hadley.
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