Undergraduate Wins UC Art History Scholarship and Research Travel Funds

Due to her academic achievements, University of Cincinnati student Kimberlynn Martin is this year’s recipient of the $1,000

Jonathan Riess Memorial Scholarship

from UC’s College of Design, Architecture, Art, and Planning (DAAP). She will use the scholarship in the upcoming academic  year.

Martin, a UC art history major from Springboro, Ohio, is also the recent recipient of DAAP’s George Stricevic Book/Travel Fund Scholarship, which provided her with $500 to fund recent travel to the Art Institute of Chicago earlier this summer. There, she attended a lecture, “The Byzantine Art Treasures of Orthodox Monasteries from Mount Sinai to the Holy Mount Athos and Beyond” by art historian Dimitri Liakos, retired from Northern Illinois University. She also visited two exhibitions there: “Late Roman and Early Byzantine Treasures from the British Museum” and “Of Gods and Glamour:  The Mary and Michael Jaharis Galleries of Greek, Roman, and Byzantine Art.”

The George Stricevic Book/Travel Fund Scholarship is named for a one-time art history faculty member in DAAP’s School of Art. Stricevic’s special area of study was Byzantine art and architecture, and he frequently led his students on study-abroad trips to Eastern Europe in order to visit exhibits and standing medieval art and architecture there. After he passed away, family members, friends and former students came together to fund the scholarship effort.

Says Martin of her first visit to Chicago’s art institute: “This experience was incredibly eye opening. To see collections as important and diverse as the ones in Chicago was a great experience. Also, it was my first opportunity to travel to attend a lecture. And I was able to meet amazing people at the lecture who shared my love of Byzantine art. I think that my introduction to this community in art history will be invaluable as I progress in my career.”

Upon graduation from UC in spring 2014, Martin, who is also minoring in French and has already earned a certificate in Italian Language and Culture, plans to continue her education, earning both a master’s and, later, a doctorate in art history since, as she explains, “My dream is to work either in the education department of an art museum or as a professor. I would love to be able to devote my career to teaching others about a subject that is so important to me. I am interested in a wide range of areas of research, but especially ancient through Renaissance art.”

Already, as part of her specialty interest, Martin was able to spend time in Italy where she was able to complete summer 2012 study abroad at the Lorenzo de Medici International Institute in Florence, Italy.

And UC’s Riess tuition scholarship will also help her toward her future goals by easing costs associated with her current undergraduate education allowing her to “save for graduate school.”

The $1,000 scholarship, UC’s first-ever tuition scholarship specifically for art history majors, honors Jonathan Riess, a noted scholar of Italian Renaissance art and a one-time art history faculty member who taught at UC for 30 years before his death in 2006.

Martin is the seventh annual recipient of the Riess Scholarship, and the first UC student to win both the Riess and Stricevic art history awards.

The Riess Scholarship is bestowed based on academic performance and an application that includes an essay and letters of recommendation. In a letter of recommendation for the scholarship, UC’s Miki Hirayama, associate professor of art history, says of Martin: She “was one of the few students in class who had the self-discipline and intellectual curiosity to quickly overcome the initial cultural barrier [in Hirayama’s “Survey of Chinese Art” course] and grasp the visual and spiritual significance of the images discussed in class. Her performance was superb.”

• Apply to UC’s undergraduate art history program.