Dianne Loftis ’15 of Atlanta, GA, has been named a Watson Fellow, a prestigious designation that includes a stipend to be used for travel and study abroad for 2015-2016. Loftis is one of only 50 graduating college seniors nationwide awarded the fellowship.
“Dianne’s Watson proposal was an eloquent statement of how she wants to use what she has learned at Rhodes as inspiration for an amazing international experience,” says Dr. Robert Saxe, co-director of postgraduate fellowships at Rhodes and the campus Watson liaison.
Loftis plans to visit United Arab Emirates, Norway, Ecuador, Senegal, and China while completing her project, “Exhibitions and Empathy: Curating Contemporary Art as Living Heritage.
“I am interested in exhibitions as spaces where art engages with an audience and is activated,” says the art history major. Over the course of the year, I will explore the geopolitics of contemporary art as played out in five large-scale shows and experiment with exhibition-making using a more intimate curatorial approach.”
A graduate of The Westminster Schools in Atlanta, Loftis has served as an archival fellow for Rhodes’ Mike Curb Institute for Music and a fellow at the Metal Museum in Memphis as well as a gallery intern for Rodeo in Istanbul, Turkey. She currently is an intern for DC Moore Gallery Inc. in New York City.
Established in 1968, the Thomas J. Watson Fellowship provides for one year of independent study and travel outside the United States.