American Art and Architecture Commons^™

The Aesthetic Philosophy Of John Cage And The Visual Arts Of The Twentieth Century, Craig Griffeath

Master of Arts in Humanities | Master's Theses

This thesis presents a biographical analysis of the role of American composer, writer, and artist John Cage (1912-1992) in the evolution of visual arts in the twentieth century. The origins of Cage's aesthetic stance are discussed, particularly his melding of Marcel Duchamp's Dada orientation with philosophical positions derived from the study of Zen Buddhism. The influence of His views on painters, sculptors, and performance artists of the postwar period is documented, along with the aesthetic foundations of his own work in the visual arts.

Remembering Wenonah: Colonialism And The Power Of Representation, Adam Gaffey, Monica De Grazia, Iyekiyapiwiƞ Darlene St. Clair, Jill Ahlberg Yohe

CLASP Lecture Series

This panel explores how the lover’s leap narrative and its representation of Native American figures has been used to forge distinctive visions of public memory both in and beyond Winona, Minnesota. For most, details of the lover’s leap are reduced to Wenonah’s fatal action, specifically how she protested her family’s rigid customs of arranged marriage by jumping to her death from a bluff atop the Mississippi River. The goal of this panel is to offer a fuller account of the purposes this story has served in popular memory and the implications of its persistence for different audiences, past and present. …

The Historical Significance Of St. David’S Church In Colonial America, Maximus E. Marlowe

Bound Away: The Liberty Journal of History

Located approximately twenty miles west of Philadelphia St. David’s Episcopal Church in Wayne/Radnor, Pennsylvania is one of the oldest churches in southeastern Pennsylvania. This paper started out as an extra-credit assignment for a Colonial American History course offered last fall. However, through Dr. Sam Smith’s passion for colonial church history, I became passionate about sharing the history of St. David’s as it is located only two miles from my home. This paper discusses the foundations of this important church highlighting the history and growth of Episcopal churches throughout the colonial period in Pennsylvania. This paper also discusses how St. David’s …

Artist-Scholar: Tradition And Modernity In The Work Of Tseng Yuho, Jennie Tang

Theses and Dissertations

Chinese American artist-scholar Tseng-Yuho (1925-2017) developed an original, modern style called dsui hua based on her extensive knowledge of traditional Chinese ink art and scroll mounting techniques, Chinese and Western art history, and experiences living in or travelling to mainland China, Taiwan, Hong Kong, Paris, Hawai‘i, and New York.

Keith Haring And Jean-Michel Basquiat: Visionaries Of The Legendary Art Movement Of The Eighties In Downtown, New York City, Ritu Cipy

MA Theses

The 1980s in New York Downtown culture was about rebellion. A vibrant community of young artists had occupied Lower Manhattan; interested in various art forms like painting, music, dance and theatre. The community thrived in an area largely ignored by Ronald Reagan’s presidency. It was an explosion of creativity that has had reverberations ever since. Jean-Michel Basquiat’s and Keith Haring’s art grew out of that zeitgeist. Their art was an uprising against a world that did not support their talent. Their need to enforce a social change prompted them into
using their work as a call to action. Their illegal …

The Feminization Of Mexico City In The Late Twentieth Century: Polvo De Gallina Negra, Pola Weiss, And Lourdes Grobet, Alexis N. Corral

Theses and Dissertations

This thesis centers on select artworks in public intervention, photography and video as an exploration of female's relationship to Mexico City's social landscape and urban space during the late 1970s into the early 1990s. In three case studies, I explore historical urban planning, gender relations, and the effects of modernization.

Nikki S. Lee’S Self-Stereotyping And Refiguring Cultural Stereotypes, Somi Lee

Theses and Dissertations

This thesis examines a Korean Conceptual photographer, Nikki S. Lee’s performative photographs and film in the series of Projects (1998-2001) and Parts (2002-2005). Through a theoretical analysis of her self-representation in disguise, my research explores established Western stereotypes as well as the artist’s fluid identity in relation to other cultures.

Sconce Upon A Time: Evaluating Multimodal Methods Of Researching Period Lighting Technology, A Case Study Of Drayton Hall, Neale Elizabeth Grisham

All Theses

This thesis reviews several methods of researching light sources and lighting schemes from the “long eighteenth century,”[1] on a historical site. Despite the period’s cultural reliance on lighting as well as technological advancement in this era, there has yet to be published documentation on how to engage with evidence of lighting technology on historic sites for better understanding of the site’s relationship with lighting.

Using Drayton Hall in Charleston, South Carolina as a case study, this thesis outlines and demonstrates the process of five methods of investigating period lighting technology. These methods are: wall investigation, anchorage points comparison and …

The Dance Of Domesticity: How Gender Constructs Obscure Lived Experience At Museums, Marcy J. Botwick

Museum Studies Theses

My thesis focuses on Mary Shepard Greene Blumenschein and Ernest L. Blumenschein, married artists born in the late 1860s. Ernest Blumenschein was an important regional artist and member of the Taos Society of Artists (TSA). Paintings by Blumenschein and other TSA members promoted tourism in the Southwestern United States through annual exhibitions and their use in advertising the Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe Railway (AT&SF). Mary Greene Blumenschein was an award-winning painter and illustrator whose work focused on images of women at the beginning of the twentieth century, however, she is now a secondary and obscure figure in art history. …

Creating A 1940s Costume: A Historical Investigation, Jennifer Mott

The Confluence

The purpose of this Art History research investigation was to create a costume from the 1940s by immersing myself in a time period when people often made their own clothing. This was done to better understand what it means to have a personal connection to the items I wear. Our experiences as consumers in the twenty-first century are vastly different than those belonging to the people that lived during the mid-twentieth century because almost all of our clothing is purchased from corporations and created by people that we will likely never meet. For this investigative study, I shopped for and …

Constructing A Religious Paradox: The Nauvoo Temple, 1841-1846, Justin R. Bates

Montview Journal of Research & Scholarship

While still in poverty and fleeing heavy persecution in 1841, members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints committed themselves to an unexpected architectural endeavor. They decided to construct a temple to their God in their newly christened frontier city of Nauvoo, Illinois. What motivated these poor, homeless, persecuted Christians to start construction on such an ambitious project? Though they were being driven from the state, were about to lose the Temple, and had just lost their alleged prophet, they still chose to finish it. Despite significant financial and social challenges, the Latter-day Saints chose to build the …

Pioneers Of Evacuation, Pioneers Of Resettlement: The Photographic Archive Of The Japanese American Incarceration And The Settler Colonial Imaginary, Christina Hobbs

Theses and Dissertations

This thesis reexamines the photographic archive of the Japanese American incarceration during World War II produced by the US government, arguing that these images “restage” the evacuation, incarceration, and resettlement periods through a settler colonial “pioneer” mythology, thereby obscuring the precarity of Japanese Americans' racial positionality between “settler” and “native.”

An Early And Feminist History Of The Paula Cooper Gallery, Kristen Clevenson

Theses and Dissertations

This thesis provides a microhistory of Paula Cooper’s early efforts in creating a more cooperative gallery model with emerging artists and seeding the growth of SoHo, New York. It also argues for Cooper’s unheralded role in sustaining women artists through marketing, economic support, visibility, and wider institutional opportunities.

Ryan Hitt Collection, University Archives And Special Collections, Prescott Memorial Library, Louisiana Tech University

University Archives Finding Aids

The Ryan Hitt Collection (800 C.E. - 1600 C.E.; 2 linear feet) is a collection of pottery shards, points, and plumbs found by the donor hunting for artifacts in fields and woods.

How Can Biomimicry Inform A Sustainable, Ethical Future In Architecture And Design?, Chloe Hanf

University Honors Theses

This publication traces effects of systems theory and assemblage thinking on American architecture and design since the 1960's in relation to contemporary ecological thought and biological discoveries. Building upon these observations, the author concludes that biomimicry belongs at the forefront of contemporary theory and praxis in architecture and design.

Echoed Sites And The Unknowable Object, Joseph Canizales

MFA in Visual Art

This thesis will discuss the expanded field of sculpture, simulacra, digital technology, and two terms I’ve devised: the unknowable object, and echoed sites. Within these two terms, I’m concerned with the complicated relationship between humans and geology and how we extract material from the ground without reflecting on the geologic history of the site. In echoed sites I create sculptures with and without a geologic site or object, by way of digital technology. These forms display two states paradoxically in balance, where what’s presented leaves more questions than answers. Thus, as part of echoed sites, exists the unknowable object. …

Disorientations, Noah Greene-Lowe

MFA in Visual Art

The materials that make up the ordinary and mundane in the United States also reinforce and normalize a white spatial imaginary. Conventions of mapping, imaging of land and landscape, and elements of the built environment continue to orient us in a logic of space as property. In my sculptural work, I employ strategies of disorientation and creative repair, or reconstruction, to unsettle the spatial practices of whiteness and structures of power embedded in the mundane, the familiar, and the domestic. I consider the planned cohousing community where I grew up as an influence on my work, and my whiteness. By …

Preservation And Public History In Mound Bayou, Mississippi, Walker Bray

Honors Theses

This paper is an exploration of the history of Mound Bayou, Mississippi, an all Black community in the Mississippi Delta formed by freedmen in the wake of Reconstruction. This paper also discusses the ways in which Mound Bayou citizens are working to preserve their history and make it known to a wider audience. In particular, this work discusses the recently opened Mound Bayou Museum of African American Culture and History and related efforts to restore and preserve historic structures in Mound Bayou. In addition, this work also seeks to explore ways in which the University of Mississippi can effectively supplement …

Framing Colonialism: An Analysis Of Kent Monkman’S Mistikôsiwak (Wooden Boat People), Jasen D. Evoy

The Confluence

The 2019 diptych mistikôsiwak (Wooden Boat People) by Kent Monkman is one of a series of recent commissions by the Metropolitan Museum in New York granted to diverse artists, shifting the Museum’s focus to a broader, inclusive, and global scope. Monkman’s large scale paintings are site specific, exploring interactions between the work and the permanent collection of the Metropolitan Museum. The work uses visual quotation to connect to historical works within the collection of the Met, thereby commenting on the legacy of colonialism and subsequent impacts on Native peoples and cultures. The analysis of the work focuses on visual and …

Black And Silver Screens: Afropessimism And Filmic Appropriation In Contemporary Video Art, Madeleine A. Seidel

Theses and Dissertations

This thesis looks at the video works of artists Ulysses Jenkins, Ina Archer, and Garrett Bradley and their appropriation of images of Black actors in Classic Hollywood films through the theoretical framework of afropessimism.