Issue 12.1
PDF: Editors’ Welcome issue 12.1
Welcome to our Spring issue of Panorama, which is invested in thinking carefully about museums, collection histories, and artists who act as disruptors, either in the present or the past!
In Mary Lee Corlett’s Feature Article, “Repetition, Resistance, and Remembering in the Prints of Elizabeth Catlett,” the artist is positioned as a democratizing force in her own printmaking practice. Catlett straddled historic binaries as a Black, United States–born, Mexican artist who challenged establishment histories in not just her content and thinking but strategically: in her use of the print medium to disseminate her prints widely, and in multiples, without regard to print runs and image management. Further, Catlett was an important mentor and teacher to Dr. Samella Lewis, whom Aja Roache writes about in her contribution to this issues’s Colloquium, as a way of thinking critically about the stewardship of HBCU gallery spaces and museums.
This issue is anchored by two major contributions in-house. In the Round, which is cleverly renamed In the Galleries to coincide with this Museum-themed issue, is led by Co-Executive Editor Liz McGoey and scholar Sara Picard. The section takes readers into nineteen museums across the United States through images and commentary on permanent collection hangs. Contributors examine the ways in which American art, as a category and a collection, delineates, activates, or breaks boundaries, responds to pressing social concerns, and reflects on, or mirrors back, our nation’s own self-image through its heritage of artistic production, reception, and consumption ahead of the approaching 250th anniversary of our nation.
This issue’s Colloquium is helmed by Panorama’s DEI/Digital Art History Manager Keidra Daniels Navaroli and Exhibition Reviews Editor Frederica Simmons and acts as an internal institutional critique, as well as a call to the field of American Art at large. Six contributors center Black voices and histories as a way to enact critical engagement in a moment when diversity initiatives have been strongly curtailed, abandoned, or otherwise prohibited federally and within many state legislatures. As they write, “To mark this anniversary is to read between the lines: to ask not only what has been written into the history of American art, but what has been flattened, folded, and assimilated into a story that was never constructed to be malleable enough to carry our multiplicities.” They introduce or examine a wide spectrum of viewpoints on current exhibition practice, funding cuts, and the forms of resistance undertaken by Black scholars across the United States
Three Research Notes in this issue illuminate how spatial, political, and social landscapes shape artistic identity and reception. In “New Archival Evidence on Robert Duncanson,” recently discovered nineteenth-century court transcripts reveal the Black landscape painter’s deep, lifelong ties to Underground Railroad leaders and his complex financial relationship with his enslaver father-in-law. Similarly tracking changing environments, “Drive By or Fly Over: Alexander Calder in the Age of Aerial Art” examines how the postwar rise of skyscrapers, interstates, and aviation shifted public spectatorship, prompting Calder to design vibrant sculptures and murals calibrated for mobile, high-rise, and aerial viewpoints. Finally, “Queer Localities: Space, Class, and Desire in Thomas Painter’s Visual Archive” uncovers a rare midcentury record of non-elite queer culture, demonstrating how an upper-middle-class documentarian constructed an ideal of working-class masculinity across shifting public and private terrains, despite the unequal economic transactions inherent in his gaze.
Four Book Reviews in this issue examine how artists, critics, and institutions navigate the powerful intersections of space, politics, and power to shape visual culture. Caitlin Frances Bruce’s Voices in Aerosol offers a rhetorical ethnography of graffiti in León, Mexico, analyzing how the state co-opted subcultural practices through “institutional attunement.” In Hidden in Plain Sight, Rachel Stephens provides an expansive look at how antebellum Southern visual culture used idealization and concealment to normalize slavery and white supremacy. Jennifer Sichel’s Criticism without Authority reframes the careers and personal “disintegration” of critics Gene Swenson and Jill Johnston as a radical form of queer practice that challenged the boundaries of traditional modernist criticism. Finally, Forms of Persuasion by Alex J. Taylor complicates 1960s art history by detailing the overt financial entanglements between artists and corporations, demonstrating how commercial interests actively shaped the era’s artistic production.
Exhibition Reviews offers critical insights into three monographic projects and one group exhibition. Susan H. Edwards takes readers into Ben Shahn: On Nonconformity and highlights the continued relevance of an artist committed to social justice across his diverse artistic practice. Manon Gaudet turns a spotlight on Sičáŋǧu Lakota artist Dyani White Hawk, whose work across media engages community and expresses the “triumphant power of art to build and sustain human connection.” Artist Alice Adams’s architectonic sculptures exhibited at Zürcher Gallery are the subject of Mark L. Hanin’s review, which reasserts her place within the American Minimalism movement. And Melissa Racleff unpacks a multi-artist project inspired and defined by art historian Meyer Schapiro’s vibrant and varied artistic circles.
In keeping with our commitment to being a force for a range of voices in scholarship, our editorial board is pleased to announce some staff changes to our masthead. Kaylee Alexander-Leunissen has been named our new Digital Dialogues editor and will work alongside DEI/Digital Art History Manager Keidra Navaroli Daniels to offer perspectives on digital initiatives, content, and communication. We extend a grateful farewell to Oliver O’Donnell from Research Notes, with a new call for participation for those interested in helping steer this vital section of the journal. This issue also marks the end of Jenni Sorkin’s tenure as Executive Editor, during which she has supported strong content including the state-of-the-field questionnaire for the journal’s 10th anniversary and introduced In Memoriam as a dedicated space within the journal for celebrating the lives of those who have shaped our field. Jenni has also been an advocate for the journal’s financial health, securing funding to support staff and contributor stipends, and we are grateful that this is not a full goodbye as she will continue to support this work alongside Finance and Grants Manager Keri Watson.
On a final note, many of the authors in this issue, as well as Panorama’s editors, address the power of art and artists to forge strong communities and affect change. The topic of the at-risk Wilbur J. Cohen Federal Building is addressed across essays, as is an invitation to seek out works of art in person. No matter the path, we hope this issue galvanizes readers into action beyond the virtual pages of the journal.
Cite this article: Jenni Sorkin, Cyle Metzger, and Elizabeth McGoey, “Editors’ Welcome,” Panorama: Journal of the Association of Historians of American Art 12, no. 1 (Spring 2026), https://doi.org/10.24926/24716839.20868.
About the Author(s): Jenni Sorkin, Cyle Metzger, and Elizabeth McGoey are the Executive Editors of Panorama