By: Chana Goldstein
Professor Sarah Warren with her housemates playing in their punk band in the basement of their house in Mount Pleasant, Washington D.C., in the spring of 1995. (Photo by: Purchase alumni)
From playing in a nineties punk band in the basement of her Washington D.C. house to studying Russian modern art and counterculture craft, it’s easily said that Purchase associate art history Professor Sarah Warren has had quite the journey.
According to Veronica Murphy, a previous student of Warren, her “fun, interesting, and entertaining” lectures come from her intimate hands-on involvement in the realm of art history. “I realized that I was more interested in other people's work than I was in my own,” is how Warren analyzed her interest in art history.
Warren discovered her love for art originally from her childhood home. Her mother made quilts, quilted pillows, quilted wall hangings, and quilted clothing. The constant artistic
environment, alongside her “nerdy” interest in history, as Warren phrased it, made art history the obvious answer.
After the encouragement of her art professor to enhance her schedule with the beauty of art, she deviated from her original plan of majoring in English. “I'm not here to make the Italian Renaissance relevant to you. I'm here to make you relevant to the Italian Renaissance,” Warren recalls her Italian Renaissance professor saying.
Immediately after college, many of Warren’s friends moved to teach English as a foreign language overseas. By the time she realized what she wanted to do, however, it was pretty late; the only places left were in Bulgaria. Her time in Bulgaria made her fascinated with recent Bulgarian history and the tension between anti-nationalist Soviet ideology and ethnic nationalism.
Warren said, “I became interested in it, looking at revivalist architecture and public art in Bulgaria, like the reconstruction of medieval churches with these weird postmodern decorations on the inside.”
Professor Warren is a professor of art history at SUNY Purchase. (Photo by: Sarah Warren)
Warren learned that she needed to care about art history in order to succeed in it when she returned to the U.S. for graduate school, where she incorporated her interest in “nationalism and internationalism in the sort of post-Soviet space” into her art history studies.
This interest became a reality when she went to Russia in the summer of 1999, during the Second Chechen War. Warren said, “It was fascinating to be there, in retrospect, it's like, wow, that was amazing that I witnessed that, you know?” Loving Russian culture, yet not quite feeling comfortable living it anymore as the war went on, Warren gained the energy to finish her dissertation. This immediately led her to her first job at James Madison University.
Remembering her mother’s craft, the 1970’s counterculture craft became a new genre of Warren’s interests. She wrote a proposal, and a book, got a senior Smithsonian fellowship for studying American craft, and curated a Soviet and contemporary Russian art exhibition at the Neuberger Museum.
Here at Purchase College, people ravish about Warren and her impact on their campus lives. “Professor Warren gives an amazing amount of background history and context for the pieces that she picked,” said Ari Carlo, a previous student of Warren. Carlo remarked that Warren explains art in a way that “you feel like you get the whole picture.” The fact that Warren is also fluent in Russian impressed Carlo.
Colleague Paul Kaplan, professor of art history, mentioned that when he met Warren, he was impressed by her “smarts and how interesting her scholarly work was.” Kaplan comments, “I can think of so many times in which we've talked about individual students who are having trouble and how we could help them, and she's always full of good ideas about that.”
“It’s sometimes a little hard to talk about somebody you've been working with for, you know, almost 20 years now," continued Kaplan. "They're just kind of part of the landscape here.”
"She's wise and she's funny. She's a terrific cook,” Associate Professor of Philosophy, Jennifer Uleman, also a close colleague of Warren, commented on her character. “Her shift from Russian scholarship on Russian art to craft is inspiring because she really followed her passion.”
When asked about art of her own, Warren said that she would paint in undergrad every once in a while, and tried to get back into it for her 12-year-old son. Warren said, “he would make these amazing drawings, and I was so into it, so I started drawing with him to try and get him to do it more, but I didn't have the juice for it. We made some really cool drawings together.” Warren said that her son now focuses his creative outlets into his piano playing as of recently. “My mother still makes art,” she said, “and so sometimes the both of us will do it with her a little bit.”
Fuck yeah Sarah Warren