WELLESLEY, MASS.- Lisa Fischman, Ruth Gordon Shapiro ’37 Director of the Davis, has announced the appointments of two new fellowship positions—Dr. Michael W. Maizels as Mellon New Media Curator and Lecturer and Mazie McKenna Harris as the Linda Wyatt Gruber ’66 Curatorial Fellow in Photography—and two new members of the museum’s staff – Liz Gardner as Public and Interpretive Programs Specialist, and Sarina Khan-Reddy as Media Installation and Production Specialist.

As an integral part of an exciting new initiative funded by The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, Dr. Michael W. Maizels will be the Mellon New Media Curator-Lecturer at the Davis. During his three-year fellowship appointment, Mike will be creating a series of interventions and exhibitions at the Davis and at unexpected sites around campus, as well as organizing a series of New Media Art seminars and guest talks, in addition to strategic collections assessment and acquisitions at the Davis, and teaching several upper level courses on New Media Art in the Wellesley Art Department.

After studying photography and philosophy of mind at the University of Southern California, Mike received an M.A. in Art History from the University of Chicago, and a Ph.D. in Art History from the University of Virginia. He was a research assistant and pre-doctoral fellow at the Smithsonian’s National Portrait Gallery, where he co-curated and wrote the catalogue for the 2012 exhibition Beyond the Frame, Spatial Composition after Lucio Fontana.

His dissertation examines the work of the artist Barry Le Va (b.1941), who in the late 1960s, began to execute sculptures composed of scattered ball bearings, shattered glass, scraps of text, spools of felt, streams of sifted flour, and sharpened meat cleavers. These explorations of ephemeral art have lead to an interest in newer forms of "variable media," including electronic and digital art.

Lynda Wyatt Gruber ’66 Curatorial Fellow in Photography Mazie McKenna Harris holds a B.A. in Art History from Trinity University and a M.A. in Art History, with a specialization in Modern Art, from Boston University, and is currently a Ph. D. candidate in the History of Photography at Brown University. During the 2009—2010 academic year, Mazie coordinated Photography Beyond the Visual, a workshop and lecture series for Brown and RISD graduate students. She is currently finishing a dissertation that traces the impact of intellectual property laws on the development of photography in the United States. Her other research interests include portraiture, printmaking, and collaborative art practice.

Public and Interpretive Programs Specialist Liz Gardner comes to the Davis with a background in museum education forged through experience at the RISD Museum and the France Lehman Loeb Art Center at Vassar College, and most directly from the Cincinnati Art Museum, where she had been Assistant Director of Interpretive Programming since June 2012. Liz's research interests include using music as interpretation in art museum teaching and programming, multi-sensory teaching strategies, and issues of museum accessibility.

Liz received her B.A. in Art History at Vassar College with a concentration in American painting of the 19th and early 20th centuries. While at Vassar, she worked for three years on an interactive website for the Thomas Cole National Historic site as part of a National Endowment for the Humanities grant. Liz later received her M.A. in Teaching + Learning in Art + Design in the Museum Education track from RISD. She is excited to join the team at the Davis and looks forward to working with Wellesley students on the Student Advisory Committee and the Student Guide program.

Media Installation and Production Specialist Sarina Kahn-Reddy brings to her position an unusual and most welcome combination of skills and expertise: she has B.S. and M.S. degrees in Engineering, an M.F.A. from Tufts University/ School of the Museum of Fine Arts Boston, with a concentration on video, installation, and digital photography, and comes to the Davis from 20 years of employment at Eastman Kodak in project management, design, engineering and image science.