Erin Riggins, an Art History graduate student, was awarded a 2018 travel grant to conduct research for her Master’s thesis. The funds allowed Riggins to travel to Marfa, TX in summer 2018 to study Ilya Kabakov’s School No. 6 installation at the Chinati Foundation.

For the School installation, Kabakov transformed an army barracks on the Chinati property into an abandoned Soviet-era schoolhouse. In Marfa, Riggins examined the School installation and the Chinati Foundation’s archives to establish formal and conceptual trends in Kabakov’s work. Riggins’ Master’s research links Kabakov’s use of fragmentation and voids in the School installation to his later 2000s paintings.

Riggins is a second-year MA student in Art History. After completing her BA in Art History in 2014 at the University of North Carolina at Greensboro, she worked for two and half years on the curatorial staff at the Green Hill Center for North Carolina Art in Greensboro, NC. Under the advisement of Dr. Nell Andrew, Riggins will defend her Master’s thesis in spring 2019.