William Ross Shealy, J. Sweeney, Rebecca Bedell, P. Bermingham, Ruth L. Bohan, Michael Brayndick, Henry Nichols Blake Clark, M. Dunn, N. Geske, L. Meixner, Angela Miller, A. Abrams, Willem Frederik Nooter, Mary Panzer, Penny Bealle, Sarah E. Boehme, F. Moffatt, Thomas P. Somma, Susan E. Strickler, Jane Clark, N. Corwin, David C. Miller, Kate Ogden
{"title":"Appendix","authors":"William Ross Shealy, J. Sweeney, Rebecca Bedell, P. Bermingham, Ruth L. Bohan, Michael Brayndick, Henry Nichols Blake Clark, M. Dunn, N. Geske, L. Meixner, Angela Miller, A. Abrams, Willem Frederik Nooter, Mary Panzer, Penny Bealle, Sarah E. Boehme, F. Moffatt, Thomas P. Somma, Susan E. Strickler, Jane Clark, N. Corwin, David C. Miller, Kate Ogden","doi":"10.1086/712749","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1086/712749","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":43434,"journal":{"name":"American Art","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.2,"publicationDate":"2020-09-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1086/712749","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"48550168","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"艺术学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
From the early days of video art in the 1960s and 1970s to the networked museum of today, the Smithsonian American Art Museum’s attitude toward the moving image has reflected and, in turn, influenced the expansion of the American art canon within universities, grant-making bodies, and the public’s perception of contemporary creative expression in the United States. In this paper I will trace film, video, and digital media as a focus of scholarship in SAAM’s academic programs, as well as the ways in which it intersects with the museum’s own investment in new media by the establishment of relevant curatorial positions and landmark acquisitions (e.g., the Nam June Paik Archive).
{"title":"Out of the Shadows","authors":"Dimitrios Latsis","doi":"10.1086/712746","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1086/712746","url":null,"abstract":"From the early days of video art in the 1960s and 1970s to the networked museum of today, the Smithsonian American Art Museum’s attitude toward the moving image has reflected and, in turn, influenced the expansion of the American art canon within universities, grant-making bodies, and the public’s perception of contemporary creative expression in the United States. In this paper I will trace film, video, and digital media as a focus of scholarship in SAAM’s academic programs, as well as the ways in which it intersects with the museum’s own investment in new media by the establishment of relevant curatorial positions and landmark acquisitions (e.g., the Nam June Paik Archive).","PeriodicalId":43434,"journal":{"name":"American Art","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.2,"publicationDate":"2020-09-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1086/712746","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"41661277","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"艺术学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
In 1934, the American textile designer Ruth Reeves traveled to Guatemala to study and collect Indigenous textiles that would inspire a group of her own pieces. The 1935 Guatemalan Exhibition of Textiles and Costumes displayed Reeves’s designs directly next to their Guatemalan sources. While Reeves repeatedly claimed that she created her designs “in the spirit, rather than in the letter” of the Guatemalan textiles, her methods of adaptation ranged from allusive to direct. Thus, the exhibition’s unusual structure was balanced by curatorial devices used to distinguish the two groups of works. This essay argues that Reeves’s exhibition challenged common concepts of modern authenticity and her own self-image as an original artist-designer. Furthermore, I contend that it was precisely the location of Reeves’s work at the intersection of art and design that enabled her to occupy this complex position in regard to her cross-cultural practice.
{"title":"Maya Modern","authors":"N. Bernstein","doi":"10.1086/712750","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1086/712750","url":null,"abstract":"In 1934, the American textile designer Ruth Reeves traveled to Guatemala to study and collect Indigenous textiles that would inspire a group of her own pieces. The 1935 Guatemalan Exhibition of Textiles and Costumes displayed Reeves’s designs directly next to their Guatemalan sources. While Reeves repeatedly claimed that she created her designs “in the spirit, rather than in the letter” of the Guatemalan textiles, her methods of adaptation ranged from allusive to direct. Thus, the exhibition’s unusual structure was balanced by curatorial devices used to distinguish the two groups of works. This essay argues that Reeves’s exhibition challenged common concepts of modern authenticity and her own self-image as an original artist-designer. Furthermore, I contend that it was precisely the location of Reeves’s work at the intersection of art and design that enabled her to occupy this complex position in regard to her cross-cultural practice.","PeriodicalId":43434,"journal":{"name":"American Art","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.2,"publicationDate":"2020-09-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1086/712750","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"42358443","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"艺术学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Beginning in about 1943, the search for a suitable model for capturing the sphere of the Earth on a two-dimensional map grew into an expansive cultural project of imaging space as a dynamic field of strategic information available at one’s fingertips. Whether in periodicals, such as Life and Fortune magazines or the New York Times; specialized publications, such as Look at the World or War Atlas for Americans; or in the galleries of the Museum of Modern Art, Americans were urged to consider cartographic representation as a step to developing a comprehensive yet flexible understanding of global space. This article considers two trends in map production at the time: dynamic fragmentation as a means of communicating the shifting parameters of strategic relationships, and innovative designs that stimulate an active and prolonged perceptual process. Drawing on this evidence, I outline a paradigmatic shift in the American spatial imagination that becomes contingent on the relationship between the map and the beholder. The article offers examples of specific instances of cultural production that were informed by this discursive shift, while also arguing for its lasting effect on postwar American art.
{"title":"Cartography as Collage/Collage as Cartography","authors":"Tatsiana Zhurauliova","doi":"10.1086/712751","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1086/712751","url":null,"abstract":"Beginning in about 1943, the search for a suitable model for capturing the sphere of the Earth on a two-dimensional map grew into an expansive cultural project of imaging space as a dynamic field of strategic information available at one’s fingertips. Whether in periodicals, such as Life and Fortune magazines or the New York Times; specialized publications, such as Look at the World or War Atlas for Americans; or in the galleries of the Museum of Modern Art, Americans were urged to consider cartographic representation as a step to developing a comprehensive yet flexible understanding of global space. This article considers two trends in map production at the time: dynamic fragmentation as a means of communicating the shifting parameters of strategic relationships, and innovative designs that stimulate an active and prolonged perceptual process. Drawing on this evidence, I outline a paradigmatic shift in the American spatial imagination that becomes contingent on the relationship between the map and the beholder. The article offers examples of specific instances of cultural production that were informed by this discursive shift, while also arguing for its lasting effect on postwar American art.","PeriodicalId":43434,"journal":{"name":"American Art","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.2,"publicationDate":"2020-09-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1086/712751","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"41901645","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"艺术学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
The SAAM Fellows program, founded in 1970 by the new director, Dr. Joshua C. Taylor, has had a transformative and salutary effect on the field of American art and culture studies. Pre-doctoral students are combined in community with senior scholars, and both with conservation specialists, all immersed in the rich holdings of the Smithsonian Institution. There the close study of artworks and archival records has thrived, serving the burgeoning field both in the academy and the museum. The program as envisioned by Taylor has helped wed the interests of those two parties in a new and fruitful partnership.
{"title":"Scholarship in the Museum","authors":"Charles C. Eldredge","doi":"10.1086/712745","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1086/712745","url":null,"abstract":"The SAAM Fellows program, founded in 1970 by the new director, Dr. Joshua C. Taylor, has had a transformative and salutary effect on the field of American art and culture studies. Pre-doctoral students are combined in community with senior scholars, and both with conservation specialists, all immersed in the rich holdings of the Smithsonian Institution. There the close study of artworks and archival records has thrived, serving the burgeoning field both in the academy and the museum. The program as envisioned by Taylor has helped wed the interests of those two parties in a new and fruitful partnership.","PeriodicalId":43434,"journal":{"name":"American Art","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.2,"publicationDate":"2020-09-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1086/712745","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"42415192","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"艺术学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
This article examines an essay by Florence Nightingale Levy, published in The American Magazine of Art in 1917, arguing for its significance as a major contribution to the historiography of the study of the art market. and a prescient analysis of the art market. As an art museum employee and publisher, Levy worked strenuously to correct the asymmetry of information that she believed put museum directors and curators at a distinct disadvantage. Her essay, in addressing this imbalance, reveals an emerging understanding of the art market as a system and the power of statistical analysis as a means of penetrating the market’s apparent opacity. Critically examined, her essay offers insights into potential pitfalls of focusing exclusively on price as the means of understanding the market as a system, as well as a useful framework for advancing analysis of the art market and the study of the relationship between art and economy.
{"title":"The Art Market as a System","authors":"A. Helmreich","doi":"10.1086/712752","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1086/712752","url":null,"abstract":"This article examines an essay by Florence Nightingale Levy, published in The American Magazine of Art in 1917, arguing for its significance as a major contribution to the historiography of the study of the art market. and a prescient analysis of the art market. As an art museum employee and publisher, Levy worked strenuously to correct the asymmetry of information that she believed put museum directors and curators at a distinct disadvantage. Her essay, in addressing this imbalance, reveals an emerging understanding of the art market as a system and the power of statistical analysis as a means of penetrating the market’s apparent opacity. Critically examined, her essay offers insights into potential pitfalls of focusing exclusively on price as the means of understanding the market as a system, as well as a useful framework for advancing analysis of the art market and the study of the relationship between art and economy.","PeriodicalId":43434,"journal":{"name":"American Art","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.2,"publicationDate":"2020-09-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1086/712752","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"41355167","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"艺术学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Due to biases and lacunae in the discipline of art history, the importance of illustrating to the work of artists of color, particularly African American artists, has been understudied. Consequently, we will only change existing art-historical narratives by more fully incorporating material like illustrations into our broader histories of art. Illustrating was a crucial outlet for many artists: it provided a source of income when other means of financial support were limited, and offered a way to communicate important stories in the face of modernism’s general dismissal of narrative. The continuing lack of robust attention to practices like illustration, still often framed as a mere prelude or addendum to an artist’s oeuvre, deprives us of a richer sense of the contributions of artists of color to the history of art.
{"title":"Seeing the Survey Anew","authors":"K. Buick","doi":"10.1086/722519","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1086/722519","url":null,"abstract":"Due to biases and lacunae in the discipline of art history, the importance of illustrating to the work of artists of color, particularly African American artists, has been understudied. Consequently, we will only change existing art-historical narratives by more fully incorporating material like illustrations into our broader histories of art. Illustrating was a crucial outlet for many artists: it provided a source of income when other means of financial support were limited, and offered a way to communicate important stories in the face of modernism’s general dismissal of narrative. The continuing lack of robust attention to practices like illustration, still often framed as a mere prelude or addendum to an artist’s oeuvre, deprives us of a richer sense of the contributions of artists of color to the history of art.","PeriodicalId":43434,"journal":{"name":"American Art","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.2,"publicationDate":"2020-09-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"41496653","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"艺术学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"In Memoriam: David C. Driskell (1931–2020)","authors":"","doi":"10.1086/710467","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1086/710467","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":43434,"journal":{"name":"American Art","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.2,"publicationDate":"2020-06-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1086/710467","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"43734417","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"艺术学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}