European Languages and Societies Commons^™

Christian Petersen, Sculptor, J. R. Christianson

The Bridge

Christian Petersen (1885-1961), a native of Dybb0l in what was once Prussian Schleswig and today is Danish S0nderjylland, became the first artist-in-residence at any American college or university in 1934. The most recent book about him and his art, by Lea Rosson DeLong and others, places Petersen alongside Grant Wood, John Steuart Curry, and Thomas Hart Benton as one of the leading American Regionalists of the nineteen-thirties and 'forties. DeLong also reveals Petersen's strong Danish-American ties and some of the Danish elements that helped to shape his art.