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Full-Text Articles in Arts and Humanities

Leonard Freed's Black In White America, Jennifer Cherry Wilkinson Dec 2016

Leonard Freed's Black In White America, Jennifer Cherry Wilkinson

Theses and Dissertations

Through a dynamic range of photographs and texts from the 1960s, Leonard Freed’s Black in White America is an exceptional artwork that both illustrates the numerous ways the photo book format creates meaning and provides an alternate history of the Civil Rights movement and the lives of those impacted by it.


“Vital Glowing Things”: The Art Of Women’S Writing, 1910-1935, Elizabeth C. Decker Sep 2016

“Vital Glowing Things”: The Art Of Women’S Writing, 1910-1935, Elizabeth C. Decker

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

The rising field of new modernisms continues to breathe new life into the literature of marginalized writers of the late-nineteenth and early-twentieth century. By imagining modernism as a series of modes and strategies, and expanding the axes upon which we map modernism’s boundaries, we make way for writers who were shut out by the often imbalanced, limited modernism of the past and illuminate the field with new possibilities. This dissertation takes part in this exciting, vibrant conversation by identifying a mode of modernism present in the literature of three early twentieth-century women writers, who all used visual art techniques to …


Windows On The World: The Aesthetics Of Difference In Neoliberal New York, Nicholas Gamso Jun 2016

Windows On The World: The Aesthetics Of Difference In Neoliberal New York, Nicholas Gamso

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This dissertation seeks to refine critical methods for interpreting global cities and their cultures, charting an aesthetic history of neoliberal New York — from the 1929 regional plan to the present. Surveying a range of literature, art criticism, and planning discourse, I argue that the global has served as the dominant motif of spatial production and political power during this watershed era. I trace this argument through analyses of midcentury planning’s global spatial imaginings, gentrification and imperial metaphor, transnational encounter in World literature, and the city’s contemporary waste and recourse imaginaries. While I follow the Marxist account of the New …


The Artist And The "Information" Machine: Conceptualism, Technology, And Design In 1970, Jeremiah William Mccarthy May 2016

The Artist And The "Information" Machine: Conceptualism, Technology, And Design In 1970, Jeremiah William Mccarthy

Theses and Dissertations

This thesis explores the dialectical relationship between conceptualism and design in the year 1970, by focusing on Kynaston McShine’s landmark exhibition Information, held at the Museum of Modern Art. Specifically, it centers on the understudied “information machine,” a film apparatus designed by Ettore Sottsass, Jr., for use within the exhibition.


Photographing The "Uncelebrated" Truth: The Newspaper Pm, New York 1940-1942, Nancy Wechter May 2016

Photographing The "Uncelebrated" Truth: The Newspaper Pm, New York 1940-1942, Nancy Wechter

Theses and Dissertations

The left-liberal NYC newspaper, PM, used photography with unprecedented transparency as a crucial element in its mission to inform ordinary working people, teach them to be literate about the photographic message, and encourage them to be a participating audience during the tense period just before World War II.


David Alfaro Siqueiros’S Pivotal Endeavor: Realizing The “Manifiesto De New York” In The Siqueiros Experimental Workshop Of 1936, Emily Schlemowitz May 2016

David Alfaro Siqueiros’S Pivotal Endeavor: Realizing The “Manifiesto De New York” In The Siqueiros Experimental Workshop Of 1936, Emily Schlemowitz

Theses and Dissertations

The Siqueiros Experimental Workshop, initiated by David Alfaro Siqueiros (1896–1974) in 1936, is often considered a pivotal moment for the artist. This thesis unveils new documentation about the Workshop, illuminating heretofore-unobserved aspects of the group’s governance, political aims, and theoretical framework put forth by Siqueiros in his critical “Manifiesto de New York.”


Nature And Nostalgia In The Art Of Mary Nimmo Moran (1842-1899), Shannon Vittoria Feb 2016

Nature And Nostalgia In The Art Of Mary Nimmo Moran (1842-1899), Shannon Vittoria

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This dissertation is the first comprehensive study dedicated to the work of American painter-etcher Mary Nimmo Moran (1842-1899), an innovative printmaker and influential interpreter of the American landscape. She began her career in 1863, studying drawing and painting with her husband, artist Thomas Moran (1837-1926). Throughout the 1870s, she exhibited works at both the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts and the National Academy of Design, and published wood engraved illustrations in books and popular monthly magazines. Yet it was in the medium of etching that she achieved her greatest recognition: between 1879 and her untimely death in 1899, she …


Shadows And Light. Ernie Gehr Exhibitions At The Museum Of Modern Art, Sean M. Fuller Feb 2016

Shadows And Light. Ernie Gehr Exhibitions At The Museum Of Modern Art, Sean M. Fuller

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This thesis examines exhibitions and media installations of Ernie Gehr’s work at The Museum of Modern Art (MoMA), beginning with the pivotal 1970 show Information, which presented four films by Gehr. Wait (1968), Transparency (1969), Reverberation (1969), and History (1970) were screened alongside work by other avant-garde filmmakers and video artists in a circular viewing booth in the gallery space, in a show featuring works now considered masterpieces of conceptual art. It also considers the two site-specific video works, MoMA on Wheels (2002) and Navigation (2002), which Gehr created for the lobby space at MoMA QNS, …


Export / Import: The Promotion Of Contemporary Italian Art In The United States, 1935–1969, Raffaele Bedarida Feb 2016

Export / Import: The Promotion Of Contemporary Italian Art In The United States, 1935–1969, Raffaele Bedarida

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Export / Import examines the exportation of contemporary Italian art to the United States from 1935 to 1969 and how it refashioned Italian national identity in the process. I do not concentrate on the Italian art scene per se, or on the American reception of Italian shows. Through a transnational perspective, instead, I examine the role of art exhibitions, publications, and critical discourse aimed at American audiences. Inaugurated by the Fascist regime as a form of political propaganda, this form of cultural outreach to the United States continued after WWII as Italian museums, dealers, and critics aimed to vaunt the …


Silent Protest And The Art Of Paper Folding: The Golden Venture Paper Sculptures At The Museum Of Chinese In America, Sandra Cheng Jan 2016

Silent Protest And The Art Of Paper Folding: The Golden Venture Paper Sculptures At The Museum Of Chinese In America, Sandra Cheng

Publications and Research

Housed in the Museum of Chinese in America is the Fly to Freedom collection of paper art, which were produced by a traditional folk method of Chinese paper folding. The 123 paper works were created by detainees of the Golden Venture, a freighter used to smuggle undocumented immigrants into the U.S. On the evening of June 6, 1993, the ship ran aground off the Rockaways in New York City and nearly 300 migrants, gaunt from the four-month ordeal at sea, poured out of the cramped windowless hold of the vessel. Several drowned that night, a few escaped, but the majority …