The center of conversation

Honored

Photographer Tod Papageorge was honored in October with a Lucie Award for his life’s achievements in documentary photography. Papageorge, the Walker Evans Professor of Photography at the School of Art, has taught at Yale since 1979. The Lucie Foundation cited him as part of “a small circle of photographers engaged in transforming the documentary ‘style’ of the medium into a poetic form driven more by subjective perception than journalistic literalism” in New York in the 1960s.

Remembered

Cernard Chaet, the William Leffingwell Professor of Painting from 1979 until his retirement in 1990, died on October 23. He was 88. A noted expressionist painter, Chaet joined the faculty in 1951 as Yale’s traditional art program was shifting to a modernist approach. He chaired the art department of what was then the School of Art and Architecture from 1959 to 1962. His students included Janet Fish ’63MFA and Chuck Close ’64MFA.

Appointed

The chair of the Spanish and Portuguese department, Rolena Adorno, has been named Sterling Professor of Spanish. No more than 27 active faculty members at a time can hold a Sterling professorship, Yale’s highest faculty honor. Adorno, who studies colonial Spanish-American literature and history, has taught at Yale since 1996. She is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and the National Council on the Humanities.

Stepping down

In June, Jeffrey Brenzel ’75 will resign his post as dean of undergraduate admissions, a position he’s held since 2005. During his tenure, Brenzel revamped the admissions website and print publications and increased outreach to international, low-income, and science and engineering students. Brenzel will continue as master of Timothy Dwight College and will return to teaching philosophy in the Directed Studies program.