UNIVERSITY PARK, Pa. — Craig Zabel, associate professor of art history in the Penn State College of Arts and Architecture’s Department of Art History, will retire at the end of the fall 2024 semester after an impactful career in higher education that spanned four decades.
Zabel came to Penn State in 1985, after teaching in the Department of Fine Arts at Dickinson College and the School of Architecture at the University of Virginia and the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.
He served as head of the Department of Art History from 1998 to 2017, after serving as interim head from 1996 to 1998. From July 2006 to January 2008, he served as interim associate dean for undergraduate studies and outreach in the College of Arts and Architecture.
“One of my proudest accomplishments as department head was being directly involved in the rebuilding of the interior of Borland Building,” Zabel said.
Borland was home to the Creamery until 2006 when it moved to its current location in the Rodney Erickson Food Science Building. Renovations were completed in 2008, and Borland became the hub of the College of Arts and Architecture, including the Department of Art History on the second floor.
“We were able to create first-rate classrooms for the teaching of art history, with our particular need for the exceptional presentation of visual images,” Zabel explained. “In Borland, the graduate students and teaching assistants moved into a spacious two-room suite with dedicated carrels, a convivial communal area and generous fenestration so that they truly could do some profound thinking.”
Also as department head, Zabel led the department’s transition from a curriculum primarily emphasizing European art, to a more inclusive faculty and curriculum with a global reach.
“Technologically, the department moved from an earlier world of typed memos, rotary phones, daily walks to the library and slide library and carousel slide projectors into what are now considered the basics: computers, email, the internet and digital projections,” Zabel said.
As a scholar of American and modern architecture, Zabel has published on diverse subjects such as the Prairie School, bank architecture, William Penn’s Philadelphia and the architecture of Penn State. His recent research has explored such topics as Frank Lloyd Wright’s Robie House and modern transportation, and the 1939 cinematic presentation of the “Emerald City of Oz.”
For more than three decades, Zabel taught an introductory course on renaissance to modern architecture with class sizes as high as 350 students. His upper-level courses have recently included The Skyscraper: New York and Chicago; Frank Lloyd Wright; German Architecture: Brandenburg Gate to the Present; and Russian architecture.
During his time at Penn State, Zabel advised 15 doctoral students as they completed their doctoral degrees and moved on to have influential careers — a group he said he is “particularly proud of.”
In recognition of his contributions to the University, he was a recipient of the College of Arts and Architecture Faculty Award for Outstanding Teaching, Penn State’s Graduate Program Chair Leadership Award and the Penn State Teaching Fellow Award (the Alumni Association and Student Award for Teaching Excellence).
The Teaching Fellow Award provided Zabel with the funds to create the iconic “Modern Chairs Collection” in the University’s Architecture and Landscape Architecture Library.
“Interior design is an essential part of architecture,” Zabel said. “By placing these chairs in a library setting, students can test ride some of the great modern chair designs, from a tubular steel chair created by the Bauhaus designer Marcel Breuer, to the outrageous laminated cardboard Wiggle chair by Frank Gehry.”
When reflecting on his accomplished career, Zabel said that simply being a teacher was at the core of how he approached his work.
“In thinking back over my 43 years in higher education, I must conclude that my greatest passion was for teaching,” Zabel said. “Even when I was serving both as a department head and an interim associate dean, I insisted on teaching one course a semester.”
Those who wish to make a gift celebrating Zabel’s career and retirement can do so online or by contacting Emily Aubertine, assistant director of arts advancement, at 814-863-2456. Gifts made to celebrate Zabel will be directed to the Art History General Fund. If contributions raised exceed $20,000, an endowed fund can be created in the Zabels’ name to support students in the Department of Art History.
Gifts to honor Zabel will advance the University’s historic land-grant mission to serve and lead. Through philanthropy, alumni and friends are helping students to join the Penn State family and prepare for lifelong success; driving research, outreach and economic development that grow our shared strength and readiness for the future; and increasing the University’s impact for families, patients and communities across the commonwealth and around the world. Learn more by visiting raise.psu.edu.