The Boston University School of Visual Arts has announced the appointment of Josephine Halvorson as professor of art and chair of graduate studies in painting. She succeeds John Walker, who led the program from 1999 to 2015, and will start her new post in fall 2016.

Halvorson has taught at Yale University’s MFA program since 2010 and at Princeton University, Cooper Union, Columbia University, and the University of Tennessee, Knoxville. Halvorson is from Cape Cod and attended Cooper Union School of Art, where she received her BFA, and Columbia University, where she earned her MFA. She was the first American to receive the Rome Prize at the French Academy at the Villa Medici and has received a Louis Comfort Tiffany Foundation Award and a New York Foundation for the Arts award in painting.