CAA News Today

anis Bergman-Carton is associate professor and chair of art history in the School of the Arts at Southern Methodist University in Dallas, Texas.

Karl Kilinski II

Karl Kilinski II, University Distinguished Teaching Professor of Art History at Southern Methodist University (SMU), died on January 6, 2011, after a long and courageous battle with cancer. He was 64 years old.

Born in New Orleans, Louisiana, Kilinski came to SMU in 1976 after completing a PhD in classical art and archaeology at the University of Missouri. He taught classes on the visual culture of Egypt and Greece, informed by his experiences as a land and underwater archaeologist, as a research fellow at the American School of Classical Studies in Athens, and as board member of the Society for the Preservation of Greek Heritage. His dynamic lectures attracted students from almost every department at SMU, as well as dozens of lifelong learners from the Dallas and Fort Worth communities.

A specialist in Greek vase painting, Kilinski published widely in scholarly journals and authored several books, including The Flight of Icarus through Western Art (2002) and Boetian Black Figure Vase Painting of the Archaic Period (1990). Cambridge University Press had recently accepted The Presence of the Past: Greek Myth in Western Art, the culmination of decade-long research and a teaching project that engaged several generations of MA students in art history, for publication.

Kilinski also served as guest curator for several exhibitions at the Kimbell Art Museum and SMU’s Meadows Museum. He held visiting appointments at the Danish Institute for Study Abroad (DIS) in Copenhagen and at Kwansei Gakuin University in Japan. He was also the recipient of summer grants from the Samuel H. Kress Foundation, the National Endowment for the Humanities, and the Ford Foundation.