The David M. Robb Thesis Prize is awarded to a student (or students) whose senior essay merits special distinction.  The Prize is not awarded every year and is reserved for those theses that represent a substantial contribution of research, exceptional qualities of interpretation and critical reasoning, and the highest standards of composition. 

The Department is proud to acknowledge the accomplishments of the following recent award-winners:

2023
Cloe Cho, "Lee Bul: Monsters, Cyborgs, and the State" (J. Katz)
 
Annie Ma, "Porcelain Odysseys: Ai Weiwei's Mythologies of Displacement" (A. Kuttner)
 
2022
Ashley Sniffen, "Reframing Joan Mitchell: Feeling, Memory, and Abstract Impressionism" (M. Leja)
 
2021
Reese Berman, "Disjointed Bodies and Feminine Politics: The Collages of Hannah Höch and Marisol Escobar" (S. Brisman)
 
John Willis, "Lucas Samaras (1960-1975): Eros and Death" (J. Katz)
 
2020
William Kahn, "Duchamp's Queen Sacrifice: Chess and Étant donnés, Reconciled" (A. Dombrowski)
 
Delaney Keenan, "Face & Fabric: The Influences on Spanish Painting from Seville to Madrid" (S. Brisman)
 
2018
Andrew Park, "Nothingness” (A. Dombrowski)
 
Mariel Regenstrief, "Inversion of the Secession Rebirth Construct in Egon Schiele’s Dead Mother I" (A. Dombrowski)
 
2016
Annie Bennett, "The Art of the Steal: Organized Art Plunder in Italy under Napoleon Bonaparte” (A. Dombrowski); also awarded the College's Rose Prize for an Outstanding Senior Thesis
 
2014
Samuel Schnittman, “All Are Punished”: Violent [Self-]Destruction in Pieter Bruegel’s Triumph of Death" (L. Silver)
 
Elliott Brooks, "Exploding the halqa: La Source du Lion's engagement with Hermitage Park in Casablanca" (D. Brownlee)
 
2013
Ian Bussard, "Public Enemies: Jenny Holzer and Sharon Hayes" (C. Poggi)
 
2012
James Tyler Ebeling, "Massacre: "Gérôme, Orientalism, and Violence at the 1867 Exposition Universelle" (A. Dombrowski)
 
2011
Pablo Barrera, "Yangjindang and Wonjijongsa:  The Syncretism of Chinese Thought and Korean Culture as seen in Hanok Architecture and Design" (N. Steinhardt); also awarded the College's Rose Prize for an Outstanding Senior Thesis
 
Sol Jung, "Situating Korean Ceramics in the Discourse of Mingei:  Understanding the Curatorial Concerns Surrounding the 50th Anniversary at the Japan Folk Museum" (J. Davis)
 
2010
Emily Kaplan, "Matisse's Surrealism, 1935-1950" (A. Dombrowski);also awarded the College's Rose Prize for an Outstanding Senior Thesis
 
2009
Madeleine Grant, "Gustav Klimt and the Femme Fatale" (L. Silver)
 
Michael Sall, "Uncovering the Typeface behind the Text" (R. Holod)
 
2008
Chloe Nielsen, "Art Exhibition for Blind and Visually Impaired Audiences" (R. Holod)

2007

Jenna Moss, "The Color of Industry: Frank Stella, Donald Judd, and Andy Warhol" (C. Poggi)
 
2006
Jackie Hayward, "Contradictory Treatments of Human Materiality: Yves Klein's Anthropometries and Air Architecture" (C. Poggi)
 
Melissa Shive, awarded the College's Rose Prize for an Outstanding Senior Thesis. (M. Cole)
 
2005
Maryse Brand, “Thomas Struth: Where a Tradition of German Documentary and Art Photography Converge” (K. Beckman)
 
Jessica Fain, “Tides of Resistance and Resilience: Changes in Cuban Art in the ‘Periodo Especial’,1985-1995” (K. Beckman)
 
2004
Meredith Gamer
, “Imag(in)ing the Capital: Maps and City Views of 17th-century Paris” (L. Silver)
 
2003
Erica Hope Fisher, “From Manhattan to Queens and Back Again: Art and Culture in Transit at MoMA QNS” (C. Poggi)
 
2002
Naureen Chowdhury, “Spectacle of the Virgins: Regarding Women in Medieval Public Spaces: An Exploration of the Sala dei Novi, Palazzo Pubblico, Siena” (R. Maxwell, S. Campbell)
 
Julia Wozniak, “Through a Glass Darkly: The Function of the Icon within the Iconostasis” (R. Maxwell)
 
2001
Shira Rudavsky
 
2000
Anastasia K. Schulze
 
1999
Peter S. Maitland
 
1998
Adina Leob
 
1997
Kristine R. Juncker, “Jan Van de Velde and the Dutch Print” (C. Minott)
 
1996
Bett Schumacher, “Mary Cassatt au Louvre: Subversion of the Spectacular” (S. Sidlauskas)
 
1995
Elizabeth Steinberg
 
1994
Francine Jaxkiewicz, “Mind/Rock: Reflections of Nature and Culture in the Art of Richard Long”
(C. Poggi)
 
1993
Nancy Kim, “The Aesthetics of Rape in Art: Artemisia Gentileschi and the Female Perspective”
(A. Kuttner, M. Campbell)
 
1992
Marvin Brown, “Art and the London Underground: The Vision of Frank Pick and the Formation of London Transport, 1908-1933” (C. Poggi)
 
1991
Steven A. Melnick, “Brothers on the Cross: The Christian Representation of Jews and Judaism in the Art of Late Medieval Italy”
 
1990
Thomas Dilling, “A Study of the Giottesque Allegories over the Crossing of the Lower Church of San Francesco in Assisi"