News

At Syracuse Florence, our studio art professors are more than educators—they’re practicing artists who bring their expertise, creativity, and passion into the classroom. One such individual is Professor Kirsten Stromberg, who teaches painting and sound art. She epitomizes the dynamic nature of our faculty, sharing not only her knowledge but also her experience as an accomplished artist actively engaged in innovative projects.

Over the past two years, Professor Stromberg has been involved in a series of extraordinary initiatives that highlight her dedication to sound as an artistic medium. We’re thrilled to share some highlights of her recent achievements.

In December 2023, Professor Stromberg traveled to Goa, India, to participate in The Listening Academy. This unique research academy explores listening as both a creative and critical practice, bringing together artists, researchers, and thinkers from around the world to investigate the profound act of listening.

In March 2024, she brought her talents to Warsaw, Poland, where she led a captivating workshop and performance in collaboration with artist Benedetta Manfriani for the Lost and Found International Symposium. Together, they engaged with a 15th-century painting, translating its bodily gestures into sound, creating a bridge between visual and auditory art forms.

Later that year, in October, she performed at the Murate Art District (M.A.D.) in Florence. Her text score, Master Piece (materpieces), is part of the series Open Throat Histories which reimagines and critiques the history of European painting. Through this work, Professor Stromberg pays homage to iconic artworks while offering a feminist perspective on the cultural and socio-economic conditions in which these masterpieces were created.

In addition to her international endeavors, Professor Stromberg has made significant contributions closer to home. Throughout 2024 and 2025, she has collaborated with local elementary school children on sound art projects, also in partnership with M.A.D. These initiatives not only introduced young students to the world of sound art but also fostered creativity and community engagement.

Professor Kirsten Stromberg’s work exemplifies the intersection of education, artistic practice, and social impact. At Syracuse Florence, we are proud to have such inspiring faculty who continue to push the boundaries of art and inspire the next generation of artists.

Professor Elia Nichols, who teaches Presentational Speaking at Syracuse Florence, has achieved an impressive milestone. Her TEDx talk, delivered last August, has been published on TED.com and selected as an Editor’s Pick—a distinction awarded to only 0.07% of TEDx talks.

In just one week of being online, Professor Nichols’ talk has already garnered over 36,000 views. Titled The Secret to Looking More Confident, the talk draws from her extensive acting career to share practical tips on radiating confidence, even when you might not feel it.

Professor Nichols is thrilled to share this achievement with the Syracuse Florence community, and invites everyone to watch her talk here. Whether you’re preparing for a presentation, navigating social interactions, or simply looking to boost your confidence, her advice is sure to resonate.

On Wednesday, April 23, our art and architecture students celebrated three months of artistic and academic exploration with the Final Art and Architecture Show. The event highlighted the impressive projects they’ve worked on since arriving in January.

Before opening to the public, the studio art students received valuable critiques from Christian Levett, a prominent contemporary art collector and museum owner. His visit was an inspiring addition that motivated and encouraged the students as they prepared to showcase their work.

The exhibition drew an enthusiastic crowd, who admired an array of creative pieces reflecting the students’ journey in one of the world’s most historically rich cities. From intricate architectural designs to thought-provoking works of art, the show was a celebration of their growth, dedication, and connection to Florence’s cultural heritage.

The evening was a joyful and fitting conclusion to a successful semester, leaving attendees inspired by the results of their transformative experience in the birthplace of the Renaissance. Bravo to all involved!

Professor Alexandria Brown-Hejazi, who teaches a class on art and science in the Renaissance, published an article in the March 2025 issue of the prestigious art history journal The Burlington Magazine. She told us about her exciting discovery:

This article presents a document I discovered in the state archives in Rome in 2018. I was participating in an archival training seminar led by Notre Dame that prepared students for working in Italian archives at the start of their dissertations. While completing my PhD in Art History at Stanford, my dissertation explored artistic exchange between Safavid Iran and Italy, looking particularly at embassies sent from Isfahan to Venice, Florence, and Rome in the 1600s. While hunting for documents related to this exchange, I discovered the last will and testament of Teresia Shirley, the wife of one of the Safavid ambassadors. It is a very exciting find as it highlights the voice of Teresia, who was an essential and powerful figure in the embassies, but who usually gets overlooked. I am hoping this discovery will contribute to our knowledge of how women in the early modern world were agents of power in the diplomatic world as well. 

By Holly Anderson

During my time in Florence, I have been interning under videographer Kirsten Hills as her sole production assistant. Kirsten works with several organizations to document events and tell stories through her films.

During my third week in Florence, Kirsten and I worked on a massive project together for a travel company named Tauck. They held a week-long event in Florence to celebrate 100 years of the company and helped their staff and clientele immerse themselves in the rich history of the city.

Working alongside Kirsten to document this massive event has become a core memory abroad for me and gave me a deeper understanding and appreciation for the city I get to call home for four months. Kirsten and I worked with a team of three other professionals in order to successfully cover each massive event. With over 800 participants in the celebration, our video team often had to split up our responsibilities, giving me a much bigger role than I was expecting in my internship. 

While I had worked in film before, I only have experience documenting things on strategically planned-out film sets. Filming events in real time was a completely different experience, one that was extremely challenging to jump into, but also super exciting and rewarding in the long run. 

Through this internship, Kirsten has exposed me to different sides of the film industry that I have never experienced before. While it has certainly been a challenge jumping into a new field of work in the midst of a major project, with Kirsten’s help I have learned how to quickly adapt to new situations and acquire new skills, as well as how to remain professional in high-stress situations. These soft skills are some of the most important things I have taken away from my abroad experience in Florence. 

In March, Syracuse Florence Director and Director of Global Innovation of Syracuse Abroad Sasha Perugini presented her latest research on AI and study abroad at the Forum of Education Abroad Conference in Toronto, where she participated in two panels.

In the first, “From Tensions to Transformations: The EU Perspective on Study Abroad,” Dr. Perugini presented with Syracuse Abroad colleagues Associate Provost and Executive Director Erika Wilkens, Director of Global Teaching & Learning Troy Gordon, and Syracuse Strasbourg Director John Goodman. In it they explored the challenges of managing expectations versus reality in the field of international education.

Perugini chaired the second panel, “AI and Study Abroad: An Overview,” in which she explored ethical tensions with Attorney Gianfranco Borio and delved into the AI-driven job market. Panelists discussed questions like: What does it mean to study abroad in an age when ‘place’ is increasingly decoupled from presence? How do we preserve learning, while engaging with tools that can simulate it but that can also dumb us down?

“Far from a futuristic abstraction,” Perugini explained, “artificial intelligence is reshaping how we design, deliver, and experience international education.”

By Natalie Bahl (Whitman College)

Being in Florence this semester has been a whirlwind. I am two months into my stay here and it has flown by, what with school, travel, and my internship at the Recovery Plan and Black History Month Florence (BHMF), a local research center and arts organization. My majors include Art History and Rhetoric, Writing, and Public Discourse. I hope to become an art curator in some capacity, so this experience has been an educational and rewarding first look into the art world for me.

I am so grateful for the opportunity Syracuse and Justin Randolph Thompson (Director of BHMF) have given me to further pursue my academic and career goals. Every day I am offered a chance to learn and grow in my prospective field, and I have had a lot of creative liberty and flexibility to work on projects I am interested in.

I have been able to help put up and take down multiple shows this semester, including the tenth edition exhibit of BHMF, which revisits BHMF programs from past years, as well as a project looking into the life and art of William Demby, a local artist. Currently I am working on a project proposal to submit to a gallery highlighting an exhibit that I helped curate at a different location for BHMF.

Here’s what an average week looks like working for BHMF:

Tuesday
11:00am – Begin work on project proposal assigned by On-Site Supervisor, Justin Randolph Thompson.
2:00pm – Meet with Syracuse Supervisor, Professor Jonathan Nelson to discuss current projects, receive advice, and check in.
6:00pm – Continue work on project proposal after receiving feedback from my Syracuse Supervisor.

Tuesday to Monday
Continue work on project proposal in contact with On-Site Supervisor to discuss specific details of exhibit space.

Monday
10:00am – Prepare for project proposal meeting with On-Site Supervisor.
11:30am – Meet with Justin Randolph Thompson, the head of the Recovery Plan/BHMF. Present and discuss my proposal, edit and collaborate proposal together.
2:20pm – Edit proposal independently and prepare to re-send it to On-Site Supervisor.

At the time of writing, my project proposal is in its final stages. If all looks good, it will be fully ready for review by the end of the week. This proposal has been one of my favorite aspects of this internship so far, as I have learned a lot of valuable skills such as project organization, material gathering, and communicating professionally. I feel like I am able to have a lot of hands-on learning experiences with a lot of freedom to work independently which has been really rewarding.

Besides project proposals, I am often working within the exhibits themselves. Typically, I meet with Justin and Professor Nelson once a week for official meetings, communicate via email or Whatsapp throughout the week, and am called to help with exhibit set up and take down. When putting up exhibits, I am often given the space to add creative input on what material is used, the configuration of the space, and communication with art lenders.

Taking down exhibits is quicker and focuses more on hands-on work with repackaging the art and cleaning the exhibition space. I have already made what I think to be lasting connections and am grateful to be a part of something so widespread throughout Italy, Florence, and the world.

By Lena Ann Rimmer (Dickinson College)

On Monday, February 24th, 2025, Syracuse University Florence and the Advancing Women Artists Foundation, promoted by Calliope Arts, hosted a Wikipedia Editing Marathon at the Villa Rossa. The event was open to graduate and undergraduate students and the focus was to edit existing Wikipedia articles and write new articles on Wikipedia concerning female artists who were members of the Accademia dell’Arte di Disegno in Florence.

Although the presence of these women artists has been recorded at some level, there is a lack of scholarship on many of them, even on basic databases like Wikipedia. These artists were members of the Accademia and received commissions, sometimes becoming very successful. Getting even minimal information on these women on Wikipedia opens a conversation about their presence and careers, even inspiring further research and interest by scholars. Advancing Women Artists (AWA) works on restoring artworks by female artists while also creating more scholarship on these women to establish their presence in the digital world.

During this event groups of Syracuse Florence staff and students worked on both creating new pages for female artists and expanding existing pages. The event began with a presentation on the current AWA restoration project, which centers around the female artist, Violante Beatrice Siries. Siries was an established portraitist in 18th-century Florence, even gaining patronage by members of the Medici family. She was taught by other artists in addition to attending the Accademia, and later, she taught other female artists.

Paintings done by Violante were discovered in a private Prior’s Chapel in the monastery of the Certosa di Firenze. One of these paintings depicts a post-Annunciation reading Madonna and the other a portrait of Saint Catherine. The paintings were placed here with a third painting depicting Saint Agnes that is being restored alongside the other two. Although originally attributed to Violante during the process of restoration, it has been discovered that the painting is not by Violante. Violante has been the subject of previous AWA restoration projects, and there was existing information including a Wikipedia page on her. However, there is always space to expand and improve.

After a brief editing tutorial, attending staff and students split into smaller groups and got to work. During the editing marathon, three groups of Syracuse students and faculty worked on collecting information for three different female artists into new and existing Wikipedia pages. This process involves taking information from a source and paraphrasing it into an article as opposed to directly quoting or writing one’s own thoughts and ideas. Everything on Wikipedia has to be tied back to a reputable source in an accurate way, which at times can be a tedious writing process. Through Wikipedia pages, writers can directly link other pages mentioned, for example, other artists, locations, and cultural and historical events. This connection pushes them as recommended to readers which will hopefully allow the public to become more knowledgeable on these often-overlooked female artists. With these articles, these artists do have a presence and even a better chance of additional research.

One group included members of the Italian and art history departments who worked with students on translating the Italian version of Violante Siries’ page onto the smaller English version of her Wikipedia page. This involved translating sentences and then cross-referencing sources to fit them into the English page. Frequently, Italian artists will have more information accessible in Italian sources, which leads to pages being written in Italian. Wikipedia publishes the page only in the language it is written. In this case, this meant Violante Siries had a much longer Italian Wikipedia page compared to her English page. While this ensures the information on each page will be clear as opposed to auto-translated, it can be limiting for readers.

Another group included AWA art restorer and Syracuse alumnae Elizabeth Wicks. With this direct connection to past AWA projects, Wicks and her group were able to help make edits to other existing female artists’ pages, all of whom AWA has restored works for previously. The third group began the process of creating a new Wikipedia page for the artist Carlotta Lenzoni De’Medici. Although there was some existing information online, collecting the sources onto one Wikipedia page can make research easier in the future or possibly inspire new research into the life and career of the artist. The process of creating a new Wikipedia page is more complicated than editing an existing page and requires additional approval; as of March 2025, this page is still not live.

Although the event was only two short hours, the group was able to accomplish a lot. This is nowhere near the end of this project, and readers and historians should be aware that, although the presence of women artists was not always publicized, they existed. From the list of female artists that were members of the Accademia dell’Arte di Disegno, several do not have Wikipedia pages or easily accessible information. These were artists and teachers, and although not nearly as common as male artists, their presence needs to be recorded.