Angi Bourgeois named MSU art department head

Contact: Sasha Steinberg

Angi Elsea Bourgeois (Photo by Megan Bean)

STARKVILLE, Miss.—A longtime faculty member in Mississippi State’s College of Architecture, Art and Design is the new permanent leader of its art department.

Since 2014, Angi Elsea Bourgeois has headed the Magnolia State’s largest undergraduate studio art program on an interim basis. Her permanent appointment begins July 1.

In making the announcement, Dean Jim West said Bourgeois “brings broad experience in administrative responsibilities to this critical leadership role,” adding that he is confident “the department will flourish and the College of Architecture, Art and Design will benefit from her leadership as well.”

After graduating with honors in art history from Rhodes College in Memphis, Tennessee, Bourgeois went on to complete a doctorate in Italian Renaissance and medieval art history from Emory University in Atlanta, Georgia.

Since joining the Mississippi State faculty in 2002, Bourgeois has taught a variety of art history courses and has climbed the academic ranks with a promotion to professor coinciding with her new appointment.

“I have spent my career as a member of this great department and am constantly in awe of the amazing work that is created by our students and our faculty every day,” Bourgeois said. “I am excited to lead the department into the future, growing our strengths and expanding our mission in the coming years.”

Earlier this year, she was elected to a two-year term as secretary for the Italian Arts Society, an international scholarly organization where she has been a member since 2004.

Bourgeois is the author of “Reconstructing the Lost Frescoes of Santa Maria sopra Minerva in Rome from the ‘Meditationes’ of Cardinal Juan de Torquemada: A Case Study in the History of Art” (Edwin Mellen Press, 2009). In 2010, she published a digital textbook for art history survey courses titled “The History of the Art of the Western World from Prehistory through the Gothic.For more biographical information, see http://caad.msstate.edu/wpmu/abourgeois.

Additional information about MSU’s College of Architecture, Art and Design and its art department is found at www.caad.msstate.edu, facebook.com/CAADatMSU, twitter.com/CAADatMSU and http://tinyurl.com/CAADatMSUYouTube.

MSU is Mississippi’s leading university, available online at www.msstate.edu.

Thursday, June 2, 2016 - 12:20 pm