Issue 10.1
Welcome to our spring 2024 issue (number 10.1). This issue represents the work of forty-one editors, scholars, curators, artists, and students across the United States and Europe. We hope their labors will interest and inspire you.
With this issue, we are pleased to announce that the Terra Foundation for American Art has awarded the journal a five-year $250,000 grant to support the journal’s long-term financial sustainability and provide funding for professional development, digital art history projects, workshops, and new initiatives in diversity, equity, and inclusion. As part of this grant, Panorama is providing its editors and contributors modest stipends to acknowledge the value of their work. Beginning with this issue, honoraria will be offered to all editors and contributors for the next five years. Issues of equity continue to plague our field as exclusiveness is reinforced through unpaid labor—a key barrier to social mobility and access to our profession. Compensating editors and authors is one of the ways Panorama seeks to support both emerging and established scholars and endeavors to lead the field in diversity, equity, and inclusion initiatives.
We are proud to offer two compelling features in this issue of Panorama: “Peripheral Prints: Karamu House and the Rise of African American Art in the Midwest” by Erin Benay and David McKinney’s “Psychedelic Federalism? Peter Max’s Art Sparks a Debate on Modern Representations of America.” Benay considers the little-known history of a storied Black printmaking cooperative, based in Cleveland, that began under the auspices of the Progressive Era and continued as a flourishing community and performing arts center through the 1960s. As Benay writes, Karamu House “facilitated the professionalization of Black artists in Cleveland” outside of the auspices of the WPA. McKinney’s essay examines another lesser known chapter in postwar American art: Peter Max’s federal commission to create welcome signs for United States border crossings, which resulted in a surprising tug-of-war over psychedelic art’s possible currency as nationalist propaganda. No fewer than four US presidents and many more bureaucrats ultimately weighed in.
Taking inspiration from the ongoing fallout of larger cultural trends like the Great Resignation, this issue’s In the Round, “Ex-Artists in America,” guest-edited by C. Oliver O’Donnell, explores the role of quitting in the history of American art. Contributors Paul Staiti, Diana Strazdes, Chloe Julius, and Tom Day re-examine the careers of Samuel F. B. Morse, William James Stillman, Lee Lozano, and Techching Hsieh, respectively—artists who abandoned artmaking for a variety of reasons.
Three Research Notes: “The Republic of the Spirit: Thomas Cole’s The Voyage of Life in Two Novels by Edith Wharton” by Jessica Skwire Routhier, “Sigismund Ivanowski: Illustrating Teddy Roosevelt” by Mindy Farmer, and “Louis Carlos Bernal’s Photographs of TV Screens and Domestic Interiors” by Jennifer Wingate offer compelling new insights collectively, examining crossover moments found within other works of art. Our Managing Editor Jessica Skwire Routhier looks at ekphrasis found within Edith Wharton’s use of Thomas Cole prints in circulation as a pronounced judgment about class in nineteenth century America. Mindy Farmer examines a little-known portrait of Theodore Roosevelt by an artist better known for his political cartoons. Jennifer Wingate studies commemorative presidential portraits that appear within the domestic interiors of everyday Americans.
Digital Dialogues include “Rediscovering Florence Arquin’s Documentary Photography,” co-authored by Emily A. Fenichel and Camila Afanador-Llach, and two reviews: one of “Banana Craze,” an online expansive digital exploration and exhibition of how the banana has shaped life, art, and identity in South America, and Act As If You Are a Curator, the AI-generated online exhibition at the Nasher Museum of Art at Duke University.
As always, our reviews editors work tirelessly to commission reviews of the latest work shaping our field. This issue includes Book Reviews of Ross Barrett’s Speculative Landscapes: American Art and Real Estate in the Nineteenth Century, Eva Hagberg’s When Eero Met His Match: Aline Louchheim Saarinen and the Making of an Architect, Laura Katzman (et al.)’s Ben Shahn: On Nonconformity, Alexander Nemerov’s The Forest: A Fable of America in the 1830s, and Jennifer Van Horn’s Portraits of Resistance: Activating Art During Slavery. We also have five Exhibition Reviews: A Movement in Every Direction: Legacies of the Great Migration, co-organized by the Mississippi Museum of Art and the Baltimore Museum of Art, Han, the inaugural exhibition of the Korean American Artist Collective at Culture House in Washington D.C., Marking an Era: Celebrating Self-Help Graphics & Art at 50 at the Laguna Art Museum, Dawoud Bey: Elegy at the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts, and Fashioned by Sargent co-organized by the Tate Britain and the Museum of Fine Arts Boston. With these contributions we endeavor to keep readers abreast of the latest scholarship in our field.
This has been a busy year for us at Panorama. Funding from the Wyeth Foundation for American Art, Henry Luce Foundation, Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, and Terra Foundation for American Art have made it possible for us to incorporate as an independent 501(c)(3) corporation under Section 509 (a)(3). We continue to operate as a supporting organization for the Association of Historians of American Art (AHAA), but we now have our own bylaws, Board of Directors (composed of Panorama and AHAA leadership), and an Advisory Council composed of leaders in the field. Panorama is the first born-digital, open-access journal dedicated to the study of the diverse artistic production that circulates within and beyond the constructed geographies of what is now the United States; as such, we endeavor to lead the publishing industry in equitable, accessible, and just business practices. With our new tax status and generous foundation support, Panorama is embarking on a number of new initiatives. This year, we have begun compensating Section Editors and others who perform essential labor for the journal. We also have created two new positions: a Finance and Grants Manager and a Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion/Digital Art History Manager.
Keri Watson, who currently serves as an Executive Editor, has been working as the journal’s Finance and Grants Manager since September. In this role, she oversees the journal’s finances, including applying for and managing grants and leading fundraising efforts. Working closely with the Executive Editors, Advisory Council, and Investment Advisory Committee, Keri works to ensure the long-term financial sustainability of Panorama.
Keidra Daniels Navaroli is joining Panorama as our inaugural Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion/Digital Art History Manager. Keidra is a McKnight Doctoral Fellow and candidate in the Texts and Technology PhD Program at the University of Central Florida and serves on the boards of the Surface Design Association, Association of Academic Museums and Galleries, and Mennello Museum of American Art. At Panorama, Keidra will lead initiatives in both DEI and DAH, ensuring the journal fulfills its mission of supporting diversity, equity, and inclusion in all its manifestations and continues to offer groundbreaking open-access digital scholarship to readers across the world.
With this issue, we also welcome several new editors, including Cyle Metzger, who joins us as an Executive Editor. Cyle is an Assistant Professor of Art History at Bradley University whose research investigates how marginalized identities—especially those of transgender and disabled people—have been made to appear (or disappear) in art. He has published in Transgender Studies Quarterly, the Journal of Visual Culture, and Art and Queer Culture, and his book manuscript Deep Cuts: Transgender History in American Art after World War II, currently under review, engages histories of gender transformation in American art since the end of the Second World War. We also welcome several new Section Editors: Adam M. Thomas, Curator of American Art at the Palmer Museum of Art, Penn State University, in Exhibition Reviews; Michael Hartman, Associate Curator of American Art at the Hood Museum of Art, Dartmouth University and Christa Noel Robbins, Associate Professor of Art History at the University of Virginia, in Book Reviews; and Vanessa Meikle Schulman, Associate Professor of Art History at George Mason University, in Research Notes. Welcome to the team!
Sadly, this issue marks the last for Research Notes Editor Emily C. Burns and Exhibition Reviews Editor Liz Kim. Thank you, Emily and Liz, for your years of service and dedication to the journal. Your commitment to excellence and your positive attitudes have made a difference at Panorama.
In February, Michael Hartman, Margaretta Lovell, Jessica Skwire Routhier, Jenni Sorkin, Keri Watson, and Jennifer Way presented at the annual meeting of the College Art Association, and Elizabeth McGoey treated AHAA members to a behind-the-scenes tour of the American collection at the Art Institute of Chicago. It is such a pleasure to build community at annual convenings, and the editors of Panorama look forward to seeing you at upcoming conferences, including the AHAA Biennial Symposium, which will be hosted by Birmingham Museum of Art, the University of Alabama at Birmingham, and Birmingham-Southern College October 16–19, 2024. 2024 marks the tenth anniversary of Panorama, and we will be delivering the keynote address at the AHAA Biennial. Join us as we reflect on the origins of the journal, its present positionality, and its plans for the future. We hope to see you there!
No need to wait for a conference or convening, though. We welcome you to join the conversation anytime by reaching out to us through the Talk Back section of the journal and by responding to our new issue in person and on social media (#journalpanorama). Please share our content—in your classrooms, on social media, and in conversation—and encourage your colleagues to become subscribers. Finally, we ask readers to support and sustain our annual operations by making a donation today. Your support helps ensure the long-term financial health and sustainability of the journal. Thank you for being a part of our community.
Cite this article: Keri Watson, Katherine Jentleson, and Jenni Sorkin, “Editors’ Welcome,” Panorama: Journal of the Association of Historians of American Art 10, no. 1 (Spring 2024), https://doi.org/10.24926/24716839.19045.
About the Author(s): Keri Watson, Katherine Jentleson, and Jenni Sorkin are the Executive Editors of Panorama