On a cold Pennsylvania day in January of 2016 I stopped to visit my former professor, Brian Curran, and his wife, Mary, at their home. Brian, at that time, had been suffering with amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) for a few years, but on that afternoon I was particularly struck by the fact that despite the enormous difficulty that it posed for him physically, Brian continued to teach, mentor, and dynamically contribute to every area of life that interested him. We talked about his plans for the spring semester, the presidential race, editing woes, his students, my young son, the chapter of the American Association of University Professors that Brian founded at Penn State, his love of La Befana and the Italian celebration of the Epiphany, and how much he missed Rome. Brian’s curiosity, intellect, and his desire to help others were relentless, even as his body failed him.
I continued to think about that day and that conversation with Brian after I flew back home to Los Angeles and a few weeks later sent an email to Craig Zabel, then head of the Penn State Department of Art History, about an idea that I had for a symposium honoring Brian in which his former doctoral students would be invited to give papers illustrating Brian’s influence on their current research. Prof. Zabel was incredibly supportive, the conference was organized quickly, and a date was set for late September. It is a testament to Brian that so many of his former students, now successful art historians in their own right, enthusiastically agreed to travel from across the country to present papers in celebration of their mentor. To date, the symposium held in honor of Brian Curran on September 24, 2016 remains the highest attended event ever hosted by the Penn State Art History Department.
From that event came the idea for the present volume. With the support of Brian’s former students, as well as his friends and colleagues—particularly Tony Cutler, Craig Zabel, Robin Thomas, and Nancy Locke, all of whom gave valuable insights and advice at this book’s inception—Douglas Dow and I began to solicit contributions for a festschrift that at its heart would be a volume about the continuity of the past within the present. This theme, ever at hand in Brian’s scholarship, remained foremost on our minds as we thought about the impact of his life and work on our own and on that of the contributors to this volume. Our collective past—as students, colleagues, and friends of Brian Curran—remains a vital part of our current work and lives.
We have tried to keep what Brian would have done and what he would have wanted for this book as our guidance but acknowledge that he would have continued to surprise us had he lived to see its completion. This was already the case when we first told him about the project in the spring of 2017. In our minds, the contributors’ list and scope of the book was already set. Brian, weeks away from the end of his life but as active in thought as he ever was, immediately proposed more than a dozen additional colleagues and friends who should be asked to contribute while simultaneously saying that we would eventually have to narrow the length and thematic scope of the project from the much more prodigious undertaking that we envisioned at that time. He was right. We were surprised, although for anyone that has ever been taught or edited by Brian, his ability to look at a project and make it better ought to have been the most predictable thing in the world.
I would like to thank my friend and co-editor, Douglas N. Dow, to whom I am extremely indebted. Douglas can take any piece of writing (including this one) and improve it. I am thankful every day that he volunteered to be part of this project. I would also like to thank my husband, Tim Anderson, for his unflagging support and my son, Erik Thomas Anderson, who has been living with his mother’s submersion in this endeavor for as long as he can remember.
Douglas would like to thank his friend and co-editor Jennifer Cochran Anderson. As she has already eloquently described, this incredible tribute grew from her initial idea to do something kind in recognition of all the things Brian did for so many of us. As the contributors to the volume already know, Jen took on the difficult task of organizing and contacting all of the authors, becoming the face of this operation as well as its most capable administrator. I am grateful to her for all of the hard work she invested in this project.
Together we would like to express our gratitude to Walter Melion, editor for Brill’s Studies on Art, Art History, and Intellectual History, and to Ivo Romein of Brill Academic Publishers, who shepherded this project to completion with kindness and good advice. We would like to thank Elizabeth Mansfield and the Pennsylvania State University Department of Art History; Barbara O. Koerner, former dean of the Penn State College of Arts and Architecture; as well as Joyce Hoffman, director of Alumni Relations and Communications for the Penn State College of Arts and Architecture, for their encouragement to see this volume to fruition. We thank the Pennsylvania State University Department of Art History’s George Dewey and Mary J. Krumrine Endowment, the Pennsylvania State University College of Arts and Architecture Alumni Society, and the Italian Art Society for their generous financial support and the many friends, mentors, colleagues, and students of Brian Curran who contributed to and encouraged this volume in myriad ways. Most importantly, we thank Mary Curran, who was never far from Brian’s mind, and who has served as our touchstone to Brian throughout this undertaking. Lastly, thank you Brian. We hope that we did right by you. Any mistakes or oversights in the composition of this volume are our own.
1 August 2020