History of Art, Architecture, and Archaeology Commons^™

The Black Arts And Black Power Movements In The Artwork Of John T. Riddle, Jr., Isabella Vitti

Theses and Dissertations

This thesis examines the under-studied work of the Black sculptor John T. Riddle, Jr. and how he was influenced by the politics of Los Angeles in the 1960s and 1970s. Police brutality, the Vietnam War, the Black Power Movement, and the Watts uprising had a major impact on Riddle’s work.

Routed Through Rubber: Ulises Carrión And Marginal Media (1972–1980), Mary-Elisabeth Moore

Theses and Dissertations

Directed by Aart van Barneveld with support from his partner Ulises Carrión, the Stempelplaats gallery (1976–1981) in Amsterdam developed out of larger trends in independent publishing and mail art, as artists on the margins of conceptual art explored the potential of rubber stamps toward various ends. The thesis examines the role the rubber stamp played in Ulises Carrión's early poetic book works and his later mail art activities: how it allowed him to draw out the sequential aspects of a book's structure and forged strong links through his network.

The Rise Of Domestic Travel Imagery During Isolation: Looking At The Seclusion Of Japan And England, Tiffany I. Kang

Theses and Dissertations

This thesis outlines the periods and conditions of isolation, of Japan and England, and how they have contributed to the rise of domestic travel imagery. The limited travel caused by isolation provided a time for interior thinking which resulted in distinct artistic genres central to the identity of both countries.

Francesco Clemente: In One's Self Lies The Whole World, Lorraine Robinson

Theses and Dissertations

Francesco Clemente’s body of work, especially between 1992 and 2014, theoretically draws from the Hindu concept of the avatāra, wherein the figures he portrays interminably exist in a state of flux and unraveling. Many of the figures discussed are inspired by Indian spirituality, mythology, and popular culture. Nonetheless, rather than comprehending them as literal interpretations, they exist through a prism of references.

The research conducted throughout this thesis combines analyses gathered from academic essays and books by notable Indian scholars, such as Jyotindra Jain and Partha Mitter. These two distinct voices coalesce to elucidate deep insight into Clemente’s aesthetic, personal, …

Scattered Fragments: Art, Architecture, And Archives In Revolutionary Urban Cairo, Mounira M. Makar

Theses and Dissertations

This thesis analyzes how revolutions impact urban Cairo and its communities, specifically within artistic, architectural and archival practice while acknowledging the central role of public spaces in giving way to such revolutionary practices. Fundamentally, this paper highlights the foundational nature of such practices in developing urban communities.

Lutz Bacher: 1975-2019, Jeremy Gloster

Theses and Dissertations

"Lutz Bacher: 1975-2019" is a monographic study of the artist Lutz Bacher (1943-2019), detailing the artist's trajectory from participant in the Bay Area photography scene of the mid-1970s to an established figure in the art world. Alongside this exposition, the thesis contends theoretically with Bacher's work, turning toward the theorist Peter Osborne's recent writings to examine Bacher's multifarious engagements with the photographic image and her own stagings of contemporaneity.

Stourhead In Arcadia Ego: The English Countryside And The Expanding British Empire In Eighteenth-Century, Rachel C. Sherr

Theses and Dissertations

Stourhead Gardens, an emblematic eighteenth-century landscape, reflects Britain's socio-cultural and imperial changes. Owned by the Hoare family, it melds classical influences and Enlightenment ideals. Existing research deciphers its iconography, but this thesis broadens the perspective, placing Stourhead in its era's socio-cultural context. It's a narrative rich in cultural and historical significance, shedding light on identity, art, and culture, past and present.

"This Other Way": Photography At Black Mountain College, Kyle Canter

Theses and Dissertations

Relying on the photographic collections of the Western Regional Archives in Asheville, NC, as well as oral histories, personal correspondence, course notes, official college records, and other archival material, this thesis examines the history and pedagogy of photography at Black Mountain College.

"How Is Photography?": Robert Heinecken's Photographic Concept At The University Of California, Los Angeles, 1960–1991, Noa Wesley

Theses and Dissertations

This thesis examines the photography program Robert Heinecken established at UCLA, highlighting his interest in teaching photography as an idea rather than a technologically inflected medium. This pedagogical model provides a lens through which I trace the work of three of his students: Maria Nordman, John Divola, and Uta Barth.

Arth102: History Of Western Art Ii, Heather Horton

Open Educational Resources

Syllabus for History of Western Art II, a chronological survey of major periods, styles, artists, and monuments of western visual arts, primarily painting, sculpture, and architecture beginning with the development of the arts from about 1300 to the present day.

Archiving A Generation: Filipino Artists And Cultural Workers In Queens, Kimberly Izar

Capstones

While census data shows roughly 86,000 Filipinos live in New York City, data on Filipino artists has been sparse. Art is an expression of one’s being and more often than not, broader social resistance — but it’s also work that has left artists criminalized, ostracized, and even killed.

Over the last year, journalist Kimberly Izar collaborated with Filipino artists and cultural workers across Queens. Queens boasts the largest population of Filipinos compared to any other borough, but this enclave has gradually declined in numbers due to waves of gentrification and migration. Through in-depth coverage and a mix of engagement tools …

Mapping The Theaters Of Brooklyn's Past (1825-1925): A Gis Project, Elena Shefsky

Publications and Research

Despite its rich performance culture, Brooklyn remains underrepresented in theater history, eclipsed in fame by the well-known theaters of Manhattan. One of the most populous areas in America, Brooklyn has been an artistic home to actors, playwrights, directors, and impresarios for centuries. That said, there is a dearth of accessible information and scholarship on Brooklyn theaters. My objective was to update an ongoing mapping project, The City Performs, to include information and images of theater buildings from Brooklyn. The project is an interactive, open-source digital map that uses ArcGIS software to georeference data about NYC theaters. I collected data …

Hall Of Fame For Great Americans Collection, 1894-2008, Allen Thomas, Cynthia Tobar

Finding Aids

Finding aid for the Hall of Fame for Great Americans collection prepared by Bronx Community College Archives.

Justice, Pandemics, And Museums In Cyberspace: Archaeology Museums’ Decolonization Projects During The Covid-19 Pandemic, Samuel Besse

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This paper explores three Archeology Museums (Historic St. Mary’s City, James Madison’s Montpelier, and the American Museum of Natural History), their attempts at addressing the colonial narratives that museums are built on, and how the Covid-19 pandemic and protests over George Floyd’s death affected these projects. I place a special effort on the online presence of these museums, as this is the main way visitors interacted with the museums during the pandemic. After discussing the origins of museum’s decolonization efforts and their efforts to make an online presence, I talk about the Covid-19 pandemic and the events around George Floyd’s …

Cartographic Subjectivity In Fernand Deligny’S Lignes D’Erre, Anya Komar

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Fernand Deligny (1913-1996) was a French thinker, writer, and social worker who dedicated his entire life to an abolitionist project of protecting “severely autistic” children from internment in mental asylums by allowing them to move freely through the mountains of Cévennes where he established a support network for neurodiverse children. He privileged children’s nonverbal state and let them “direct” the community.

This thesis aims to historicize the drawings made under the guidance of Fernand Deligny between the 1960s and 1980s. His drawing method of tracing children’s movement offered an unprecedented way of providing visibility to children with nonverbal autism, outside …

Raphael Montañez Ortiz And Alternative Art Spaces, 1966–1971: From Repulsion To Exaltation, Ana Cristina Perry

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

In the 1960s, Brooklyn-born Puerto Rican artist Raphael Montañez Ortiz built a successful and provocative career in New York. Throughout the decade, Ortiz created sculptures, performances, and events that were part of a sustained investigation into how embodied destructive and uncomfortable actions could physically confront rationality and objectivity. His works attend to how rationality and objectivity were valued in the United States as a consequence of colonization and imperialism. Beginning in 1969, Ortiz overtly addressed how museums are directly implicated in systems of oppression, protesting with the Art Workers Coalition and founding El Museo to meet the needs of the …

Fifteenth-Century Sienese Art In Its International Setting: A Case Study Of Cross-Cultural Exchange In Italy And Beyond, Maria Lucca

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Scholars often frame the Republic of Siena as isolationist and inward-looking, yet from its beginning in 1262 the city-state was internationally vital, sending artists to work in foreign cities and calling upon foreign artists to do significant work in Siena. Although Siena temporarily retreated from this internationalism to a period of relative cultural autonomy in the mid-Trecento, in the early Quattrocento it re-opened the gates of its medieval walled city to artistic interchange between Sienese and Florentine sculptors, setting in motion the dramatic shift that occurred in the mid-Quattrocento. Sienese sculptors embraced the Renaissance artistic humanism flourishing in Florence and …

Flamboyant Abundance: Performing Queer Maximalism, 1960–1990, Jack Owen Crawford

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This dissertation theorizes “queer maximalism” as an aesthetic of unmitigated flamboyance and voracious drag that appears in a constellation of performance-based artistic practices in the postwar United States. Queer maximalism brings together a historically grounded group of performers primarily based in New York City who have been variously described as theatrical, baroque, and Ridiculous and repositions them within an art-historical frame. Identifying drag and pastiche as central to queer maximalism, I show how artists salvage, assemble, and re-signify pop-cultural imagery, inflecting it with camp in order to fashion intimate community and openly flout societal norms of gender, race, and sexuality. …

Death Becomes Her: Rejecting The Muse And Reclaiming The Female Body In Leonor Fini’S Skeleton Women, Janna Singer-Baefsky

Theses and Dissertations

This thesis is organized through the varied ways Fini incorporated death imagery, like the skeleton, into her art. I trace how she changed her interpretations of death from being a symbol in earlier works to then rendering death as the subject itself and concluding with depicting herself as death.

Remedios Varo: Inspirations And Creative Strategies, Margaret Colbert

Theses and Dissertations

Remedios Varo is best known for the narrative, if enigmatic and symbol-laden, paintings she produced while living in Mexico from 1941 to 1963. This thesis argues that Varo’s key creative strategy was to mine and mimic the subject matter and motifs of other artists—Hieronymus Bosch and Leonora Carrington – as well as the visual culture related to the occult and other esoteric practices that she found in published sources, specifically by Carl Jung and Kurt Seligmann.

Keeping Both History And Magic Alive: Judson Dance Theater: The Work Is Never Done (2018) At The Museum Of Modern Art, Beatrice M. Johnson

Theses and Dissertations

This thesis examines the exhibition, historical reconstruction, and museum acquisition and conservation of postmodern dance, with the 2018 MoMA exhibition Judson Dance Theater: The Work Is Never Done as a case study. This exhibition considered the history and legacy of 1960s postmodern dance through a presentation of artifacts and archives alongside a continuous program of live, in-gallery performances. The Work Is Never Done catalyzed questions in the three areas of dance exhibition, reconstruction, and conservation and, as this thesis argues, represents a unique example of preserving canonical dance history while creating a generative context for spontaneity, experimentation, and reinvention.

One. Two. Three. Four. Five. Six. Seven. Eight. Nine. Ten. Eleven. Twelve. Thirteen. Fourteen. Fifteen. Sixteen. Seventeen. Eighteen. Twenty. Twenty-One. Twenty-One. Twenty-Three. Twenty-Four. Twenty-Five. Twenty-Six., Liza Lacroix

Theses and Dissertations

"One. Two. Three. Four. Five. Six. Seven. Eight. Nine. Ten. Eleven. Twelve. Thirteen. Fourteen. Fifteen. Sixteen. Seventeen. Eighteen. Twenty. Twenty-one. Twenty-one. Twenty-three.Twenty-four. Twenty-five. Twenty-six." is a biographical fiction of violence toward the protagonist. Comprised of writing, audio, documentation and intervention. This text is the first iteration, and the thesis work is the second iteration of the same.

Building A Pedagogy Of Idea Generation And Embodied Inquiry, Kate Joranson

Art History Pedagogy & Practice

What futures become possible when we center questions, inquiry, and affective responses in research processes? What does it mean to support encounters with new ideas? In this article, I explore non-extractive models of teaching and learning, sharing ways of making space for idea generation, an under-described part of research and creative practice. The coming-up-with-ideas part of creative and scholarly work can be challenging to articulate, share, and teach. What if we paused and stretched this part out, making it more visible? By browsing physical collections of books in community with one another, during “curated browsing” experiences, we give ourselves — …

Creative Figures: Portraiture And The Making Of The Modern American Artist, 1918-1930, Sasha Nicholas

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Between 1918 and 1930, American artists began depicting themselves and their intertwined circles of creative collaborators with unprecedented intensity. Creative Figures: Portraiture and the Making of the Modern American Artist argues that American artists turned to their own images during this formative period of American modernity to vie for cultural authority and to navigate pressing questions of creative, social, and national identity. The dissertation studies a kaleidoscope of portraits that exemplify this phenomenon, focusing on paintings and photographs by Berenice Abbott, James Latimer Allen, Thomas Hart Benton, Florestine Perrault Bertrand Collins, Imogen Cunningham, John Stuart Curry, Aaron Douglas, Yun Gee, …

Fluidity Of Ptolemaic Tomb Architecture: Third To Second Centuries Bce, Caroline Gerkis

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

The concept of the final resting place, such as the architecture of the tomb, was an important belief that resonated across all ancient cultures. Upon Alexander the Great’s death his successors competed to possess his body, to use it as a symbol of legitimacy to control Alexander's Empire. The one who successfully accomplished this was Ptolemy Lagides (c.367-282BCE). He seized Egypt in 323 BCE by hijacking Alexander’s body, bringing him first to the ancient Egyptian capital of Memphis and afterwards interred him in a royal mausoleum in Alexandria. By claiming Alexander's corpse, Ptolemy had set the stage for his eventual …

Becoming George Lucas: From Avant-Garde, Auteur, Independent Artist To Studio Executive, Ryan Thompson

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Because of the unprecedented popularity of Star Wars, George Lucas, the creator of the multi-media franchise, is one of the most well-known filmmakers in history. What makes Lucas’s relationship with Star Wars unique is that because the franchise has continually been exploited rather than left as a single unchanging, static text, its artistic value, along with Lucas’s legacy, is in constant flux and is often misunderstood. In other words, depending on Star Wars’s position in the public zeitgeist at a given time, Lucas is either revered, detested, or considered incompetent as a filmmaker. While there is no denying …

The Gilded Tropics: Winslow Homer And John Singer Sargent In Florida, 1886-1917, Theodore W. Barrow

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This dissertation examines the Floridian works of Winslow Homer and John Singer Sargent in the context of tourism, race, and the environment as perceptions of the tropics in an Anglo-American context. Both artists sojourned in Florida and produced a number of watercolors and related oils that not only testify to a rapidly-expanding tourist industry to the Sunshine State, but also update the Romantic myths of the tropics with a more sober, ironic Realist take. While Homer and Sargent continue to be popular subjects for studies and exhibitions on their own, this dissertation is the first to consider how their shared …

The Chicana Mural Movement: A Reclamation Of Mesoamerican Iconography, Jennifer Vander Els

Theses and Dissertations

An examination of the deployment of indigenous Mexica iconography by Chicana artists during the Chicano Mural Movement. The ethno-national concept of Aztlan, corn and Corn Women, and the deities Coatlicue and Coyolxauhqui were restructured in Chicana murals to uplift and recognize the achievements of the women of the Chicano community.

Dulce Sueños De Tierra, Sweet Dreams Of Earth, Jordany Genao

Theses and Dissertations

Jordany's paper congregates their archival research into an art practice that examines the decolonial impulse to excavate the self and produce autonomy. Using ceramics to reference and re-animate Taino ritual objects found in museums, resulting in alternative museology, their work seeks to honor Caribbean ancestors by subverting colonial history.

Skin Echoes, Andreia Santana

Theses and Dissertations

Santana’s explores the intersection of biology and identity, incorporating living matter and performative gestures into installations to reflect on social constructs of history and gender. By observing water and its qualities of defying Western dichotomies, Skin Echoes focuses on the material interchanges across bodies and the wider material world.