New Chairs Named for Creative Arts Therapy, Photography, and History of Art and Design
L to R: Julie Miller, Stephen Hilger, and Dorothea DietrichPratt Institute has appointed three new chairs to its School of Art and Design. Julie Miller, an experienced dance/movement and creative arts therapist, social worker, and educator, has been named chair of the Creative Arts Therapy Department. Dorothea Dietrich, a modernist art historian, academic, author, curator, and administrator, has been named chair of the History of Art and Design Department. Stephen Hilger, photographer, academic, curator, and administrator, has been named chair of the Photography Department. All will begin their appointments on July 1, 2012.
"Professors Miller, Dietrich, and Hilger bring a wealth of academic experience and scholarly and creative practice to their departments and to the School of Art and Design," said Pratt School of Art and Design Dean Concetta M. Stewart. "They are also each actively engaged in using their knowledge and expertise to benefit the broader community and society, and I look forward to working with them to make the Departments of Creative Arts Therapy, History of Art and Design, and Photography leading forces in our cultural and social landscape," she added.
Julie Miller has taught in the Creative Arts Therapy Department since 1996 and has served as an associate adjunct faculty member. At Pratt, Miller teaches courses on dance/movement therapy, stress management, dance/movement therapy theory and practice, and improvisation. In addition to her faculty position, she is co-director of the New York Center for the Study of Authentic Movement. She also maintains her own private practice in psychotherapy and dance/movement therapy in Brooklyn, where she provides individual psychotherapy and dance/movement therapy for adults. Miller received a duel master's degree in dance therapy and social work from Hunter College. She also received a bachelor of science degree in psychology and dance, also from Hunter College. She is a long-time Brooklyn resident.
Dorothea Dietrich currently teaches in the Smithsonian-Mason M.A. Program in the History of Decorative Arts in Washington, D.C., where she has also been an adviser for the program. She specializes in modern German art, political culture, and aesthetic theory with a focus on the Weimar Republic and the post-World War II period, especially the 1960s–1980s. Her current work focuses on art and technology in the former German Democratic Republic. Recently, Dietrich held a Senior Research Fellowship at the Henry Moore Institute in Leeds, England, where she studied the relationship of found and formed objects, painting, and performance in the late work of Kurt Schwitters. She is author of The Collages of Kurt Schwitters: Tradition and Innovation (Cambridge University Press, 1995) and German Drawings of the 60s (Yale University Art Gallery and Art Gallery of Ontario, 1982) and has contributed many essays to international exhibition catalogs, journals, and scholarly volumes. Dietrich received her B.A., M.A., M.Phil., and Ph.D. degrees from Yale University.
Stephen Hilger has been an assistant professor and director of photography at Tulane University in New Orleans since 2008. His photographs trace historical memory in the social landscape. Working on projects that unfold over extended periods of time, Hilger constructs visual archives of the disappearing. He has exhibited widely in the United States and abroad and will participate in "Grand Hotel," a project that charts the social and architectural history of the hotel at the Vancouver Art Gallery. He also recently exhibited photographs chronicling the demise and destruction of the historic Ambassador Hotel in Los Angeles at the Muse Center of Photography and the Moving Image in New York. Hilger writes about photography and contemporary art and curates exhibitions including recent solo shows by Lee Friedlander and Andy Warhol, both at Tulane. Previously, Hilger taught at Columbia University, New York University’s Steinhardt School, and Pace University, all in New York. Hilger received his B.A. and M.F.A. degrees from Columbia University and participated in the Whitney Museum's Independent Study Program.
Text: Amy Aronoff
Photos: Jonathan Weitz, Paula Burch-Celentano, and D. A. Peterson
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