Brooklyn College is proud to announce that three professors from the School of Visual, Media and Performing Arts—Patricia Cronin, David Grubbs, and Jason Eckardt—have been designated Distinguished Professors by the CUNY Board of Trustees, the highest academic honor that CUNY can offer faculty. As of Fall 2022, CUNY had 7,266 full-time faculty, and currently, there are 146 active Distinguished Professors, which puts the trio in rare air. The trio joins Eric Alterman (English); Alexandra Juhasz (Film); Benjamin Lerner (English); Ursula Oppens (Conservatory of Music); Corey Robin (Political Science); and Jeanne Theoharis (Political Science) on Brooklyn College’s Distinguished Professor list. Patricia Cronin Cronin is an art professor and interdisciplinary artist whose work examines issues of gender, sexuality, and social justice. Cronin has had numerous solo exhibitions in the U.S. and internationally. The artist’s work has been featured at the 56th Venice Biennale in Venice Italy, the American Academy in Rome Art Gallery and Musei Capitoni, Centrale Montemartini Museo in Rome, Italy; Tampa Museum of Art; Newcomb Art Museum; The FLAG Art Foundation; the Brooklyn Museum; and the LAB Gallery, Dublin, Ireland. Bronze versions of Cronin’s acclaimed marble sculpture titled, Memorial To A Marriage (2002)—the world’s first marriage equality monument—are permanently on view at Woodlawn Cemetery, Bronx, NY, and Kelvingrove Art Gallery and Museum in Glasgow, Scotland. She is the recipient of numerous awards, including the Rome Prize from the American Academy in Rome, the Louis Comfort Tiffany Foundation Grant, New York Foundation for the Arts Fellowship, Anonymous Was a Women Award, two Pollock Krasner Foundation Grants, and a Civitella Ranieri Foundation Fellowship, among others. Her work is included in the permanent collections of the National Gallery of Art, and the Smithsonian National Portrait Gallery in Washington, DC, the Perez Art Museum in Miami, and Kelvingrove Art Gallery and Museum in Glasgow, Scotland. “I am honored to receive this recognition for my feminist artistic practice centering the international human rights of women, girls, and LGBTQ+ persons,” Cronin said. “Being appointed Distinguished Professor helps me prepare the next generation of artists and encourages them to use their imagination, technical skill, and creativity to champion their values and speak truth to power.” Jason Eckardt Eckardt is a professor in the Conservatory of Music at Brooklyn College who played guitar in jazz and metal bands until, upon hearing the music of Webern, immediately devoted himself to composition. Since then, his music has been influenced by his interests in perceptual complexity, psychological and physical dimensions of performance, and self-organizing processes in the natural world. He has been recognized through commissions and awards from Carnegie Hall, Tanglewood, the Guggenheim, Rockefeller, Koussevitzky and Fromm Foundations, the American Academy of Arts and Letters, the Guggenheim Museum, Chamber Music America, the ISCM, Deutschen Musikrat, and percussionist Evelyn Glennie. Eckardt’s music has been performed at major festivals and recorded on the Albany, Capstone, CRI/New World, Helicon, New Focus, Metier, Mode, Tzadik, and Urlicht labels. An active promoter of new music, Eckardt was co-founder and the executive director of Ensemble 21, the contemporary music group. Eckardt’s expertise focuses on composition, post-tonal theory, and analysis, extended instrumental and vocal techniques, music cognition, and perception. “I am honored to have earned the support, trust, and recognition of CUNY and Brooklyn College for my teaching and composing,” Eckardt said. “Since joining the faculty, it has been a great reward to work with such talented and passionate students and witness their unique creative voices emerge. I look forward to further contributing to the Conservatory of Music and continuing my work with students and colleagues.” David Grubbs Grubbs is a professor of music who has released 14 solo albums and appeared in more than 200 commercial releases. He came to Brooklyn College in 2005 as part of the CUNY Digital Media Initiative that created several interdisciplinary positions and bolstered the then-new Performance and Interactive Media Arts (PIMA) advanced certificate program—soon to become an MFA program—for which he currently serves as director. “I’m profoundly humbled by this news,” Grubbs said. “Nearly all the student work in the PIMA program is done collaboratively, as is most of the teaching. I have also been fortunate to teach in the Creative Writing MFA program and the Sonic Arts MFA program. More recently, I’ve been working with doctoral students in a range of disciplines at the CUNY Graduate Center. Both the caliber and the breadth of students that I have the opportunity to work with continue to thrill; I think myself the luckiest of souls.” Grubbs is the author of Good Night the Pleasure was Ours, The Voice in the Headphones, Now that the Audience has assembled, and Records Ruin the Landscape: John Cage, the Sixties and Sound Recording. In addition to writing his books, Grubbs has co-authored collaborative artists’ books including, Simultaneous Soloists and Projectile. Grubbs was a founding member of the group Gastr del Sol and has appeared in recordings by Tony Conrad, Pauline Oliveros, Matmos, Will Oldham, the Red Krayola, and many others. His ongoing collaborations include projects with visual artists Anthony McCall and Angela Bulloch and poet Susan Howe. Grubbs is a grant recipient in music/sound from the Foundation for Contemporary Arts and directs the Blue Chopsticks record label.
