American Art and Architecture Commons^™

Visualizing War, Andrew Egbert '13

Student Publications

Popular artwork during the era of the Civil war can be placed into three broad categories. The first is a prewar theme of political discontent, in which political leaders were viewed as ineffective and ill-prepared to address the political challenges of the day. Additionally, this prewar theme was also characterized by a romanticized interpretation of war and unrealistic ideas about the nobility and honor of war. The second period is the wartime period in which the romanticized depictions of war disappeared as the harsh reality of prolonged civil war set in. Popular artwork was much more focused on the ugly ...

'Not Unworthy Of His Hand': Crossing Borders In Benjamin West's A Drayman Drinking, Lauren K. Lessing, Terri Sabatos

Faculty Scholarship

In May 1797, Benjamin West—President of the Royal Academy, Historical Painter to the Court of King George III, and Surveyor of the King's Pictures—exhibited a small genre painting titled A Drayman Drinking at the annual exhibition of the Royal Academy in London. It was one of seven paintings West exhibited that year, and the only one overlooked by the reviewer for the Times. The critic's oversight may have stemmed from the unprecedented number of paintings on view (nearly twelve hundred, four hundred more than were hung the previous year) and the resulting overcrowding of the principle ...

Many Worlds Converge Here: Vision And Identity In American Indian Photography, Alicia L. Harris

Theses, Dissertations, and Student Creative Activity, Department of Art and Art History

Photographs of Native Americans taken by Frank A. Rinehart at the Trans-Mississippi and International Exposition in 1898 were then and continue to be part of the construction of indigenous identities, both by Anglo-Americans and Natives. This thesis analyzes the ramifications of Rinehart’s portraits and those of his peers as well as Native American artists in the 20^th and 21^st centuries who have sought to re-appropriate these images to make them empowering icons of individual or tribal identity rather than erasure of culture.

This thesis comprises two sections. In the first section, the analysis is focused on the ...

Wpa Projects In Anaheim, Ca, During The Great Depression, Laura Enomoto

LUX: A Journal of Transdisciplinary Writing and Research from Claremont Graduate University

The Works Progress Administration (WPA), served as a catalyst for public works programs, specifically in the area of providing work to the unemployed. In cities all over the nation, the WPA provided grants that either paid employees directly or allocated funds to private firms. These programs were fundamental not only to the individuals they employed, but to the future of the cities themselves. Through the construction of public buildings, art projects, parks, and roads, American cities endured, remained intact, and even flourished as a result of the WPA.

Metal Detecting: One Step To Better Consideration Of African American Resources, Chris Espenshade, Patrick Severts

African Diaspora Archaeology Newsletter

Difficulties in discovering, delineating, and evaluating ephemeral archaeological sites is a recognized issue in African American archaeology. It is argued that the addition of metal detecting to the methodological toolbox for survey, boundary definition, and testing will result in the better treatment of ephemeral sites of African American occupation.

Prelude To A Master Plan: Ware, Massachusetts, Belen Alfaro, Bruno Carneiro, Margaret Engesser, Kathryn E. Fox, Evadne R. Friedman, Timothy Inacio, Anita Lockesmith, Christina Mills, Stephanie Molden, Meagen Mulherin, Russell Pandres, Vinicius Pereira, Brian Reid, Pedro Soto, Jennifer Stromsten

Landscape Architecture & Regional Planning Graduate Research and Creative Activity

Prelude to a Master Plan offers ideas, recommendations, and a toolkit to help the town chart its own path towards that future. While the teams and individual students worked to ‘drill down’ into specific topic areas, the Studio defined three basic areas in order to think about how the various assets, challenges and ideas undermine or reinforce one another. The report is loosely organized in those terms: addressing the outlying rural areas and issues specific to these places, considering one of the key growth areas that has extended from town and the conflicts that arise from the many uses occurring ...

'Not Unworthy Of His Hand': Crossing Borders In Benjamin West's A Drayman Drinking, Lauren K. Lessing, Terri Sabatos

Lauren K. Lessing

In May 1797, Benjamin West—President of the Royal Academy, Historical Painter to the Court of King George III, and Surveyor of the King's Pictures—exhibited a small genre painting titled A Drayman Drinking at the annual exhibition of the Royal Academy in London. It was one of seven paintings West exhibited that year, and the only one overlooked by the reviewer for the Times. The critic's oversight may have stemmed from the unprecedented number of paintings on view (nearly twelve hundred, four hundred more than were hung the previous year) and the resulting overcrowding of the principle ...

The Elements Of A Creative Environment: Was The Roycroft Campus Of 1900 - 1915 A Hothouse?, Katherine Somerville

The Exposition

Ancient Athens, Renaissance-era Florence, and Germany’s Bauhaus community that practiced between the two World Wars are all examples of what Barton Kunstler refers to as a hothouse. He defines a hothouse as an area where creativity flourishes wildly and magnificently, producing results that neither nature nor the usual round of human activity could ever anticipate. Out of each of Kunstler’s notable hothouse communities came extraordinary achievements and he theorizes that a hothouse is created out of a relatively rare confluence of forces – 36 factors within four dimensions, to be exact. In this essay I will show how the ...

Relational Viewing: Affect, Trauma And The Viewer In Contemporary Autobiographical Art, Matthew Ryan Smith

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

This dissertation examines the communicative relationship between contemporary autobiographical art and the viewer. By analyzing the work of six artists, Richard Billingham, Jaret Belliveau, Larry Clark, Nan Goldin, Lisa Steele and Bas Jan Ader, I maintain that lived experience and personal history condition the way viewers respond to autobiographical art. I turn to literary theory as a critical methodology to argue that autobiographical art operates as a catalyst for identification, memory and self-discovery. I use affect and trauma theory to demonstrate how artwork produces meaning and discourse through the viewer’s feelings, emotions and bodily sensations. Consequently, I survey the ...

Framing Cultural Capitalism: William Wilson Corcoran And Alice Walton As Patrons Of The American Art Museum, Kelsey E. Tyler

Theses, Dissertations, and Student Creative Activity, Department of Art and Art History

In 2011, Alice Walton opened what is now considered to be among the most important American art collections in the country, in a museum called Crystal Bridges, in Bentonville, Arkansas. What is remarkable is not only the exorbitant amount of money spent to open the museum - over $800 million dollars - but also that she was the primary financier. William Wilson Corcoran, a mid-nineteenth-century banker, in many ways is a better comparison than Morgan or Gardner, as like Walton he intended to found a museum dedicated specifically to American art. His museum, which he hoped would become a national gallery, would ...

Narrative Brought To Life: The Wizarding World Of Harry Potter, Stefani Klaric

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

This thesis explores The Wizarding World of Harry Potter and the motivations for creating fictive, immersive environments. These can be defined as spaces that generate new physical environments or worlds that engage our senses. The theme park is the experiential space where entertainment, fantasy, and commodity consumption come together. By including recognizable objects, narratives, characters, and the like, taken directly from the Harry Potter books and films, audiences and participants are brought into The Wizarding World of Harry Potter in a way that immerses them in the space and allows them to experience the narrative by participating in a journey ...