American Art and Architecture Commons^™

Sparks Under Ashes, Ani Sargsyan

School of Art, Art History, and Design: Theses and Student Creative Work

Rooted in hope, reflections on longing, family history, and the contemporary Armenian experience take precedence in Sparks Under Ashes. The title of the show itself derives from my great-grandfather’s notebook, which details his unjust exile during the Great Purge of the Soviet era and other life experiences. His handwriting becomes ingrained in my work as both our marks collide through painting, drawing, and transfer processes to bridge the time between us and celebrate generations of resilience.

Acts of endurance are crucial for Armenia’s survival because attempts of erasure have always been prominent, with the 1915 genocide being the darkest …

Birds Of A Feather: Peace And Conflict Founders Milton Schwebel And Luella Buros, Janet Carlson

Buros Center: Professional Staff Publications

Milton Schwebel, peace psychology pioneer, described Luella Buros as “a pillar of strength, her principles uneroded by age or economic well-being, her determination to struggle against social evils undiminished” (1992, p. 4). At age 90, Buros had just become the founding contributor to Peace and Conflict: Journal of Peace Psychology. Schwebel was its founding editor. In announcing the gift, he emphasized Buros’s steadfast commitment to pursuing peace, while recognizing her artistic accomplishments and her collaboration with her husband, Oscar, in establishing the renowned Mental Measurements Yearbook series (Buros, 1968; Buros, 1978; Carlson, 2023). She later provided funds to support …

In The Case Of Prince Ling Ching: Visualizing The Boxer Rebellion Through Puck Magazine, Mimi Yu

Honors Program: Senior Projects (Public)

Through the framework of orientalism, this paper examines the historicism behind satirical illustrations created by artists and editors in Puck Magazine which depict the Boxer Rebellion, spanning from 1899 to 1902. In doing so, I aim to explore the nuances in which mass-produced visual satire seeks to justify Western hegemony. Widely published and distributed in the United States, Puck was a satirical magazine from the late 19th and early 20th century, and one of the first satirical magazines to contain colored lithographic covers. Puck further contributed to discourse over the “Yellow Peril” by employing caricature art and passages of punchlines …

Or To Be Eaten Alive, Christopher Williams

School of Art, Art History, and Design: Theses and Student Creative Work

“or to be eaten alive'' is a multimedia exhibition in which I merge my own coming of age story with a mythological ecology. In this work I reclaim my queer identity by communing with my past selves in a fantasy world created through the lens of Queer Ecology and Queer Eco-Futurism. The visuals in this exhibition obscure reality. They are abstractions of the landscapes I occupy—particularly the Tallgrass prairie and Ozark ecoregions. Through a speculative, fantasy world the exhibition introduces moments of adoration, death, fracturing, growth, joy, and failure. I form, draw, color and arrange the work embracing mistakes and …

Currere As Contemporary Art: Weaving Creative Research, Purposeful Vulnerability, And Poetic Expression To Nurture Teacher Self-Knowledge, Kimberley D'Adamo

Kimberley D'Adamo: Art, Curriculum, Publications, and Other Scholarly Works

Statement, first paragraph:

Pinar’s currere process offers educators supports for engaging in honest self-reflection to develop liberatory practices and tools to facilitate purposeful vulnerability. Currere scaffolds a transformative journey, enabling educators to explore their educational past, interpret it in their current context, and use those personal and pedagogical insights to envision alternative educational futures. In many ways, currere is about identifying and developing one’s own authentic voice, which appeals to me as both an educator and artist.

Programa De La Conferencia Segundo Congreso Internacional De Iconografía Precolombina

Segundo congreso internacional de iconografía precolombina. Barcelona, 2023. Actas.

Barcelona, 2023.

Victòria Solanilla, organizador

17 al 20 de octubre de 2023.

En el Museu de Cultures del Món de Barcelona. Calle Montcada, nº12-14, 08003, Barcelona.

Y en el Institut d’Estudis Catalans. Calle del Carme, nº 47, 08001, Barcelona.

Organizado por el GRUP d'ESTUDIS PRECOLOMBINS· con el apoyo del MUSEU ETNOLÒGIC I DE CULTURES DEL MÓN· INSTITUT D'ESTUDIS CATALANS· SOCIETAT CATALANA D'ESTUDIS HISTÒRICS

The Midwestern Aristocracy: Anders Zorn's Portraits In Gilded Age St. Louis, Rebekah Hoke Brown

School of Art, Art History, and Design: Theses and Student Creative Work

To the American aristocracy of the Gilded Age, painted portraits functioned as pictorial symbols of one’s taste, power, and status. This thesis evaluates the motivations of a provincial elite in St. Louis, Missouri, and sees their taste for portraits by Swedish artist, Anders Zorn, as the result of the intersection of myriad cultural and ethnic allegiances. Situating Zorn as a trans-Atlantic artist, this thesis functions as a patronage study, evaluating the portraits and goals of specific St. Louis patrons and analyzes Zorn’s role as an active agent in the art market, leveraging his public persona to establish aesthetic authority over …

Póster De La Conferencia Segundo Congreso Internacional De Iconografía Precolombina

Segundo congreso internacional de iconografía precolombina. Barcelona, 2023. Actas.

Victòria Solanilla, organizadora

17 al 20 de octubre de 2023.

En el Museu de Cultures del Món de Barcelona. Calle Montcada, nº12-14, 08003, Barcelona.

Y en el Institut d’Estudis Catalans. Calle del Carme, nº 47, 08001, Barcelona.

Proyectar El Diseño Precolombino: Experiencias Didácticas, Luz Helena Ballestas Rincón

Segundo congreso internacional de iconografía precolombina. Barcelona, 2023. Actas.

Se presenta el resultado de un Modelo Pedagógico basado en el Diseño Precolombino, el cual ha sido aplicado en diversos escenarios y ambientes de aprendizaje. Mediante la sistematización de la teoría con la práctica del diseño se muestran ejemplos de los métodos de diseño que han resultado eficaces, ya sea en el ámbito universitario o en grupos interesados en el conocimiento de estos bienes patrimoniales, entre los que se encuentran estudiantes y profesores del área artística así como personas convocadas por algunos museos que poseen colecciones precolombinas.

Al experimentar y proponer activando los mecanismos que liberan la creatividad y, a …

Los Bordados Mayas Que Protegen De Enfermedades En El Estado De Yucatán, México, Roberto Campos-Navarro, Leydi Dorantes, Danielle Dupiech Cavaleri

Segundo congreso internacional de iconografía precolombina. Barcelona, 2023. Actas.

Conocemos el rol de los textiles en los rituales y el significado de numerosos símbolos que bordan las artesanas mayas de la Península de Yucatán, no obstante, existen varios motivos de plantas medicinales bordados en los textiles que no fueron analizados. En el mes de septiembre de 2022 dio comienzo una investigación en cooperación con la joven curandera x-meno’ob de Yaxcabá, Leydi Dorantes, que cultiva más de doscientas plantas medicinales mayas en el jardín botánico que creó su abuelo, mismas que usa en rituales y también para curar. Ella nos da a conocer la relación existente entre los elementos de …

Identificación De La División Del Trabajo Entre Los Géneros A Través Del Análisis Iconográfico, Sarah Kauffmann

Segundo congreso internacional de iconografía precolombina. Barcelona, 2023. Actas.

El presente trabajo se enfoca en la metodología para identificar los roles y actividades realizadas por determinado género en la sociedad maya prehispánica. Códigos especiales en la iconografía son utilizados para representar y diferenciar los dos géneros. Varios medios se explorarán como las estelas, dinteles, cerámicas y figurillas. A través de la iconografía se identificará las actividades, vestimenta y postura para interpretar la división del trabajo.

This present study focuses on the methodology for identifying the roles and activities realized by both genders in the pre-Hispanic Mayan society. Special iconographical codes are used to represent and differentiate men and women. …

El Refugio De La Imagen Chamánica En El Mundo Malagana, Sonia Blanco, Catalina Simmonds Caldas

Segundo congreso internacional de iconografía precolombina. Barcelona, 2023. Actas.

La voluntad de elaborar una pieza antropomorfa, es incidir sobre el objeto, haciéndolo actuante. Tratándose del mundo Malagana – sociedad prehispánica colombiana –, que consideró el papel primordial de la mujer, esta imagen femenina y robusta, en cerámica, de pie, portadora de una máscara, como pieza – soporte simbólica contendría en su epidermis y gesto, una narrativa ritual. Desarrollada en un espacio funerario, como ajuar, personificaría los atributos del mono aullador y convocante de los “espíritus (auxiliares) alter-ego”, de los monos ardilla, intervendría de forma ritualista sobre los humedales del pueblo Malagana, aportándoles el equilibrio para la inflorescencia de la …

El Sobredimensionamiento Y Otros Recursos Plásticos Como Representación De La Capacidad Extática–Visionaria En El Arte Chamánico Americano, Ana María Llamazares

Segundo congreso internacional de iconografía precolombina. Barcelona, 2023. Actas.

Este artículo explora uno de los principales rasgos del arte chamánico visionario: el sobredimensionamiento de las figuras o de algunas de sus partes significativas. A través de diversos registros arqueológicos y contemporáneos, se brindan elementos valiosos para interpretar como representaciones explícitas de la capacidad extática o visionaria, ciertas imágenes de arte prehispánico o etnográfico ligadas a tradiciones de prácticas chamánicas americanas, en las que se ha expresado la percepción de la magnificación energética a través de rayos, aureolas o apéndices diversos que expanden el tamaño de las cabezas, manos, pies u otras partes del cuerpo en forma desproporcionada respecto del …

The Woman Behind The Whitney, Breanna Epp

Honors Program: Senior Projects (Public)

Gertrude Vanderbilt Whitney was the founder of the Whitney Museum of American Art, as well as a prominent sculptor and patron to artists in the early 1900s. Her art collection was the largest of American art at the time, and she led the nation into an appreciation of its own native art. Native in this context specifically means any art that was made in America, not strictly art made by the indigenous people of the Americas. Tackling her entire life, from growing up in the Vanderbilt family to her death, I provide an overview of her interactions with the art …

Take Your Time, Terry A. Ratzlaff

School of Art, Art History, and Design: Theses and Student Creative Work

I see the world not as one seamless world but as a world composed of other worlds, built on top and within one another. They exist harmoniously, bound not by space but by time. In an instant I can move from one world into another where I can exist in two worlds simultaneously—in space, I am here. In time, I am there.

Worldmaking is a conceptual process of seeing connections and making distinctions within our lived reality.1 It is a process of dividing and organizing parts into collections that represent different narratives. Only through suitable arrangements can we handle vast …

These Are My People: An Ethnography Of Quiltcon, Kristin Barrus

Department of Textiles, Merchandising and Fashion Design: Dissertations, Theses, and Student Research

This thesis presents the first ethnography of QuiltCon, the annual fan and artist convention for quiltmakers who identify with and participate in a social phenomenon called the Modern Quilt Movement (MQM) within the 21st century quilt world. QuiltCon (QC) is one product of this movement. This study considers the following questions: What kinds of people attend QC, and what types of experiences and encounters do they expect at the convention? What needs are met at QC for this subset of quiltmakers who attend and for the greater community of Modern quiltmakers? What role does QC play in cementing the identity …

Thresholds Of Curating: Literary Space And Material Culture In The Works Of Harriet Prescott Spofford, Edith Wharton, Isabella Stewart Gardner, And Willa Cather 1870–1920, Lindsay N. Andrews

Department of English: Dissertations, Theses, and Student Research

This dissertation explores the polycentric intersections between material and literary culture in four case studies spanning 1870-1920. Harriet Prescott Spofford, Edith Wharton, Isabella Stewart Gardner, and Willa Cather are four women whose work reflects a capacity to defy the genre-specific boundaries for which they are canonically renown. Harriet Prescott Spofford was an important contributor to the interior design movement in the early Gilded Age following challenges to finding publication resources for her fiction within a male-dominated publishing community. Edith Wharton’s ties to material culture are well known, but less attention is granted to the ways in which her own expertise …

Artistic Syncretism In Latin America: From Olmec To Spanish Colonialism, Nicole Timm

Honors Program: Senior Projects (Public)

The purpose of this paper is to provide a historic and systematic review of colonial Latin American art. The first half will focus on the ancient arts created by the ancient civilizations that sculpted culture in Latin America centuries before the Spanish were aware another continent existed. The latter portion of the paper will look to the post-colonial period. It will begin by delving into the influence of European artistic styles blending with Latin American culture and style of painting and vice versa. The final goal of this paper is to uncover the syncretism that took place across Latin America …

Defining Authentic: The Relationship Between Native Art And Federal Indian Policy, 1879-1961, Aurora Kenworthy

Honors Program: Senior Projects (Public)

Between 1879 and 1961, non-Native perceptions of what constituted authentic Native art shifted. These changing perceptions were influenced by, and then in turn influenced, federal policy and legislation. While non-Native individuals and groups worked to improve conditions for Native communities and to protect “authentic” Native art forms, Native reformers also attempted to enact change to help Native communities and Native artists exercised control over their own art and identity.

Representations Of Mainstream And Marginalized Subjects In The Work Of Diane Arbus, Grace Short

School of Art, Art History, and Design: Theses and Student Creative Work

This thesis considers the photographs of the twentieth-century photographer, Diane Arbus. In America during the 1950s and 60s, Arbus photographed both marginalized and mainstream subjects including dwarfs, giants, transvestites, nudists, debutants, socialites, and celebrities. At one point in her career, she expressed an interest in family portraiture and, indeed, a number of her images depict families.

Scholars who have written about Arbus, such as Susan Sontag, Carol Armstrong, Anthony W. Lee, and John Pultz, have formulated theories about Arbus’s motivations, although their findings focus on individual features of her work. Sontag argued that Arbus exploited her unorthodox sitters whereas Armstrong …

An Engineer Cantonment Bestiary: The Art Of Titian Ramsay Peale, Hugh H. Genoways, Thomas E. Labedz

University of Nebraska State Museum: Mammalogy Papers

Includes an overview of the work of American nature artist Titian Ramsay Peale as part of the Stephen H. Long Expedition, 1819-1820, at Engineer Cantonment in eastern Nebraska, USA.

Includes textual descriptions and/or reproductions of watercolors and lined drawings by Peale of banded killifish (Fundulus diaphanous), American White Pelican (Pelecanus erythrothynchos), Wood Duck (Aix sponsa), Rough-legged Hawk (Buteo lagopus/Falco lagopus), Sandhill Crane (Grus canadensis tabida), Pectoral Sandpiper (Calidris melanotos), Scarlet Tanager (Piranga olivacea), American Tree Sparrow (Spizella arborea), Yellow-headed Blackbird (Xanthocephalus …

Review Of John James Audubon: The Nature Of The American Woodsman, By Gregory Nobles, Matthew Guzman

Department of English: Dissertations, Theses, and Student Research

When we think about American ornithology, John James Audubon is often the first name that comes to mind. As evidence to Audubon’s lasting ability to enrapture readers, it bears repeating that an original Double Elephant Folio of Birds of America sold for an astounding $11.5 million in 2010 (2). Yet, for a man who produced such stunning and memorable visual and literary work on the avifauna of North America, some of the important details of his life and origins have remained highly contested. Even though Gregory Nobles’s new biography is not explicitly tied to the study of the Great Plains, …

Precolumbian Textile Conference Vii / Jornadas De Textiles Precolombinos Vii, Lena Bjerregaard, Ann H. Peters

Zea E-Books Collection

Contents:

Introduction — Lena Bjerregaard and Ann Peters

Mexico

1. Mesoamerican Archaeological Textiles: An Overview of Materials, Techniques, and Contexts — Laura Filloy Nadal

2. Urdimbres enlazadas de Mesoamérica. Textil de la Cueva del Gallo, Morelos, México — Patricia Ochoa Castillo & Rosa Lorena Román Torres •

3. Los textiles procedentes del actual estado de Guerrero, México: una revisión a su estudio desde la perspectiva arqueológica y etnohistórica — Elizabeth Jiménez García

4. Classic Textiles from Cueva del Lazo (Chiapas, Mexico). Archaeological context and conservation issues — Davide Domenici & Gloria Martha Sánchez Valenzuela

5. Textiles y otros materiales arqueológicos …

Constructing Helen Frankenthaler: Redefining A 'Woman' Artist Since 1960, Alexandra P. Alberda

School of Art, Art History, and Design: Theses and Student Creative Work

This thesis addresses how academics, curators, and art writers in the popular press reviewed Helen Frankenthaler during her major retrospectives of 1960 (The Jewish Museum), 1969 (The Whitney Museum of American Art), and 1989 (The Museum of Modern Art). Included is an examination of how she has been written about after her death in 2012, with analysis of the changes in the language used to critique the artist and her work as influenced by the advent of feminist theory, social history, and gender theory. I examine recent exhibitions on Frankenthaler at the Gagosian Gallery, New York City, and the Albright-Knox …

Previously Undocumented Art Criticism By Walt Whitman, Wendy J. Katz

School of Art, Art History, and Design: Faculty Publications and Creative Activity

Whitman’s “Letters from a Travelllling Bachelor,” written for the New York Sunday Dispatch (October 14, 1849, through January 6, 1850) are well known, as is his practice of contributing news about Brooklyn and Brooklyn artists to the Dispatch as well as to other newspapers like the Evening Post.1 But his extended description of a painting by Jesse Talbot, Encampment of the Caravan, in the Evening Post (“Encampment of the Caravan,” April 29, 1851; p. 1), and his critique of the National Academy of Design annual exhibition in the Dispatch of the following year (“An Hour at the Academy of Design,” …

Finding Addison Mizner: His Scrapbook Testimony, Suzanne B. Kane

Architecture Masters of Science Program: Theses

Through historic archival research, this study focuses on the works of Florida architect Addison Mizner (1872-1933), credited with bringing Spanish/Mediterranean Revival architecture to Palm Beach, Florida in the early 20^th century. This thesis is the first to study the works of Mizner through the perspective of his personal scrapbooks. In a state of advanced deterioration, Mizner’s scrapbooks are currently housed in Society of the Four Arts, King Library in Palm Beach, Florida. While a rare and treasured source of their own accord, the importance of the scrapbooks is elevated by the fact that many of Mizner’s buildings have been …

Today’S Curation: News Of The Art Museum And The Crowd, Amanda M. Guenther

College of Journalism and Mass Communications: Professional Projects

Crowd-sourcing and crowd-curating—when the public plays a role in determining content—has become an exhibition trend within American art museums. An interactive Web presence has allowed members of the public to submit amateur artworks and select from among museum collections to create exhibitions that become about popular taste. Personal interviews and documentary research revealed six major commonalities about how and why museums are choosing to relinquish traditional models of authority in exhibition creation and engage audiences in a new technological way, after surveying 10 exhibitions that have taken place since 2008. Part I of this report presents the summary findings and …

Constructions Of Black Identity In The Work Of Glenn Ligon And Kara Walker, Shadé R. Ayorinde

School of Art, Art History, and Design: Theses and Student Creative Work

In this thesis I reference artworks and installations by Glenn Ligon and Kara Walker, as well as contemporary mass media images, to offer a reading of various constructions of black identity in the 1990s and into the 21^st century. I specifically note the continuation of social biases against black bodies, which in large part stems from historical conditions of 19^th century America and the lingering legacy of slavery. I also address how the absence or implied absence of the black male body, as referenced in works by both Ligon and Walker, relates to contemporary social conditions in which …

Serpentine Imagery In Nineteenth-Century Prints, Paula A. Rotschafer

School of Art, Art History, and Design: Theses and Student Creative Work

This thesis explores images of sea serpents in nineteenth-century print culture that reflect an ongoing effort throughout the century to locate, capture, catalogue, and eventually poeticize the sea serpent. My research centers primarily on the sea serpent craze that occurred within the New England and Mid-Atlantic states between 1845 and 1880 and examines the following three prints: Albert Koch’s Hydrarchos, a fossil skeleton hoax, printed in an 1845 advertisement by Benjamin Owen, a book and job printer; an 1868 Harper’s Weekly illustration titled The Wonderful Fish; and Stephen Alonzo Schoff’s etching, The Sea Serpent from 1880, based on …

Science Fictional Transcendentalism In The Work Of Robert Smithson, Eric Saxon

School of Art, Art History, and Design: Theses and Student Creative Work

In studies of American artist Robert Smithson (1938-1973), scholars often set the artist’s early abstract expressionist and Christian iconographical paintings apart from the rest of his body of work, characterizing this early phase as a youthful encounter with the enduring legacy of abstract expressionism in the late 1950s to early 1960s as well as a temporary preoccupation with ritualized Catholic imagery. This thesis argues for the inclusion of this early phase into Smithson’s career as a foundational period in which he established the set of problems that artistically engaged him throughout his life: issues of temporality, materiality, and universal entropy. …