Spring 2021 (7.1)
Special Section
Art and Politics in the US Capitol
Wendy Bellion, Anna O. Marley
As an art historian, there are a few things you never want to read about; tear gas residue on paintings is one of them.
As an art historian, there are a few things you never want to read about; tear gas residue on paintings is one of them.
In the Round
Asian American Art, Pasts and Futures
The nine essays that comprise this In the Round section . . . show Asian American art as polyvocal rather than monolithic, encompassing a range of ethnicities and experiences, and intersecting with gender, sexuality, and class. What unites the essays is an attentiveness to the myriad ways Asian Americans have engaged with a range of overlapping power structures that seek to control and determine their existence.
Colloquium
American Art History in the Time of Crises
Taken together, the responses to this Colloquium present the individual experiences of nine contributors who personally reflect upon the events of the past year. We hope that their narratives create a rich stage for understanding how such critical issues and questions—many of them long lying in wait, but raised acutely by 2020—intersect.
Responses
Crystal L. Keels
Anuradha Vikram
Courtney A. McNeil
William L. Coleman
Adam M. Thomas
Mark A. Castro
Taylor Bythewood-Porter
Andrea Barnwell Brownlee
Kelli Morgan
Research Notes
A Research Portal for American Watercolors, Prints, and Drawings 1850–1925: A Source for Obscure Catalogues, Artists’ Societies, and Women Artists
This resource also offers a model for sharing the background research that is often too detailed, wide-ranging, and extraneous to be published in a conventional format, as well as too inaccessible in museum archives or scholars’ homes for general use.
Nature: A Nineteenth-Century Engraving Linking Charles Willson Peale, James Akin, and Peale’s Mastodon
“Did you know Peale’s mastodon is in Germany?!,” I asked in emails and in a post on social media. No one seemed to have known, with responses generally disbelieving.
New Discovery: Robert S. Duncanson’s Ruins of Carthage (1845)
By depicting a celebrated African site singled out by African Americans at an 1843 state convention in Michigan as proof that “we are worthy of the name of American citizens,” as asserted by Committee Chairman William Lambert, Duncanson was expressing race pride and alliance with African Americans seeking enfranchisement.
“The Most Perfect Manner”: Paul Weber and the Transnationalism of US Landscapes
I was struck that contemporary viewers of Weber’s painting apparently did not mind the vagueness of the image’s relation to the American land it was thought to depict. . . . Weber was thought to ably capture a quintessential national identity through nature, even if he appeared unwilling to brand his work as a glorification of a strictly American spirit.
“Anglo-Saxon”: Nationalism and Race in the Promotion of Edward Hopper
Taking cues from the critique of institutional racism sharpened by the Black Lives Matter movement and from more recent scholarship, I consider here how Hopper’s work was promoted in a time of cultural nationalism, as well as how his art should be reassessed in the light of today’s attention to cultural diversity.
