Contemporary Art 101

Tatiana Sizonenko teaches Prehistory to Ancient Egypt, Ancient Greece and Rome, Late Gothic and Early Renaissance, High Renaissance and Baroque Age, Rococo to Impressionism, Contemporary Art 101 and Impressionism to World War II for the Art and the Creative Process certificate program. 

Tatiana is an art historian, curator and educator. She received her Ph.D. in Renaissance art history, with a specialization in Venice and the Mediterranean world, from the Visual Arts Department at UC San Diego. Her dissertation examines instances of artistic exchange in the context of diplomacy and politics in the Mediterranean. Ms. Sizonenko’s research and teaching has been informed by her wide-ranging curatorial practice, and she serves currently as guest curator for the University Art Gallery at UC San Diego.
 
Ms. Sizonenko has held positions as curatorial fellow at the Timken Museum of Art; curatorial fellow for the dean of the Division of Arts and Humanities at UC San Diego; curator of collections and special exhibitions at the Museum of Making Music in Carlsbad, CA; and guest curator at the La Jolla Historical Society in San Diego and at the Barrington Center for the Arts at Gordon College, MA. Before coming to the United States, she held the position of assistant curator in the Department of Medieval Art at the State Russian Museum in St. Petersburg, Russia. She has been the recipient of several fellowships including the Getty Foundation’s “Connecting Art Histories” Fellowship, the Timken Museum of Art Fellowship, the Dean of Art and Humanities Dissertation Research Fellowship from UC San Diego, the UC San Diego Visual Arts Department’s Funded Semester at Harvard University and Russia’s National Fellowship for Distinguished Scholarship in Art History.
 
In both university and museum settings, Ms. Sizonenko teaches courses on Western art, from ancient to contemporary, with a strong focus on the intended function of art objects in their respective historical settings and cultural contexts. Currently, she teaches “Introduction to Renaissance Art” at CSU Long Beach, “Pre-Twentieth Century Art” at CSU San Marcos, “Art Appreciation” at Grossmont College, as well as “Introduction to Art History” at UC San Diego Extension and Design Institute of San Diego.

"Art is a powerful expression of the human spirit, reflecting on and responding to what it means to be alive at a particular moment in time and culture. Art can inspire devotion, prompt social action, and even fuel a revolution, but, more important, it can encourage a conversation between people of different traditions, cultures, and ways of life. Art invites us to empathize with others and engage in discourse with ideas otherwise strange to ourselves. Art from the past holds clues to experiences and values that were important to those people so we can learn how they wanted to be remembered. I believe art teaches us openness, inclusiveness, and respect, and reveals something of ourselves in objects of beauty that delight us. Even subjects that trouble us often stimulate penetrating thoughts that invite us to reflect and take responsibility for our actions in this shared world. As an art historian, I am thrilled to introduce my students to the complexities of the history of art, to unique stories of masterpieces and their “surpluses” of meaning, and to the diversity of ever-changing artistic expression." – Tatiana Sizonenko