Locating American art : finding art's meaning in museums, colonial period to the present / edited by Cynthia Fowler.

Format:

Book

Contributor:

Fowler, Cynthia (Cynthia A.), editor.

George R. Gund Memorial Fund.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Art, American--Appreciation.

Art, American.

Art appreciation--United States--Regional disparities.

Art appreciation.

Regional disparities.

United States.

Physical Description:

xvii, 281 pages, 16 pages of plates : illustrations (black and white, and color) ; 24 cm

Place of Publication:

Farnham, Surrey, England : Ashgate Publishing Limited, [2016]

Summary:

How does museum location shape the interpretation of an art object by critics, curators, art historians, and others? To what extent is the value of a work of art determined by its location? Providing a close examination of individual works of American art in relation to gallery and museum location, this anthology presents case studies of paintings, sculpture, photographs, and other media that explore these questions about the relationship between location and the prescribed meaning of art. It takes an alternate perspective in that it provides in-depth analysis of works of art that are less well known than the usual American art suspects, and in locations outside of art museums in major urban cultural centers. By doing so, the contributors to this volume reveal that such a shift in focus yields an expanded and more complex understanding of American art. Close examinations are given to works located in small and mid-sized art museums throughout the United States, museums that generally do not benefit from the resources afforded by more powerful cultural establishments such as the Museum of Modern Art and the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York. Works of art located at institutions other than art museums are also examined. Although the book primarily focuses on paintings, other media created from the Colonial Period to the present are considered, including material culture and craft. The volume takes an inclusive approach to American art by featuring works created by a diverse group of artists from canonical to lesser-known ones, and provides new insights by highlighting the regional and the local. Book jacket.

Contents:

Part I: Local history/local artists. Blurred boundaries : La muerte en su Carreta as artifact and symbol / Miguel de Baca ; Echoes of the east, echoes of the past : Charles Caryl Coleman's Azaleas and apple blossoms / Adrienne Baxter Bell ; Shot through the heart, the woman is to blame : Philip Leslie Hale performs a symbolist game / Erika Schneider ; Raymond Jonson : a southwestern modernist alone on the prairies / Herbert R. Hartel, Jr. ; At the margins : the art of Josephine Tota / Jessica Marten

Part II: Marginalized works reinterpreted. Edward Mitchell Bannister and the aesthetics of idealism / Traci Costa ; Wandering pictures : locating cosmopolitanism in Frederick A. Bridgman's The funeral of a mummy on the Nile / Emily Burns ; "The one I most love" : Thomas Eakins's Portrait of Samuel Murray / Henry Adams ; Maynard Dixon and The forgotten man / James Swensen ; Arthur Dove's Carnival : nature, structure, and the problem of permanence / Jessica Murphy ; Palmer Hayden's John Henry series : inventing an American hero / Lara Kuykendall

Part III: Art outside of the art museum. The portrait of Mary Mcintosh Sargent : slavery and "natural slavery" in Federalist era America / Kimberlee Cloutier-blazzard ; An oblique view of New Orleans's St. Louis Cathedral / Sara Picard ; Complex negotiations : beadwork, gender, and modernism in Horace Poolaw's portrait of two Kiowa women / Laura Smith ; La fille au reflet de l'homme : a portrait of Pegeen Guggenheim / Elizabeth Kuebler-Wolf and Connie Cutler ; Silent protest and the art of paper folding : The golden venture paper sculptures at the museum of Chinese in America / Sandra Cheng

Appendix A: Museum information.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Local Notes:

Acquired for the Penn Libraries with assistance from the George R. Gund Memorial Fund.

ISBN:

9781472467997

147246799X

OCLC:

911921004