History of Art, Architecture, and Archaeology Commons^™

Uncovering The Story Of Sally Maria Johnson: Revealing The History Of The Portrait Of A Painting, Yuanzhen Song

Art Conservation Master's Projects

Portrait of Sally Maria Johnson by the artist James Johnson is a 19^th century oval shaped portrait in the collection of the Buffalo History Museum.  It suffered from structural damages and paint loss resulting from surface alterations and previous restoration campaigns.  This study combines art historical research with scientific analysis to explore both the biography of the subject and the materiality of the painting.  Through local research including historical newspaper articles in Buffalo, the story of Sally Maria Johnson (the wife of Buffalo’s first mayor) was uncovered.  High-resolution imaging techniques were used to document the surface condition and identify …

Art Inquiries, Vol. 21, Oct. 15, 2026 - Full Issue, Kris K. Belden-Adams

Art Inquiries

No abstract provided.

Larimore House Correspondence To Al Cultural Resources Preservation Trust Fund, 5.7.2000, William L. Mcdonald

Correspondence

Correspondence from William Lindsey McDonald to the director of the Alabama Cultural Resources and Preservation Trust Fund concerning support for a grant to renovate, restore and repair the historic Larimore House in Florence, Alabama.

The historical marker for the Larimore Home, which is listed on the National Register of Historic Places, can be accessed here.

Forks Of Cypress Archaeological Excavation To James Jackson, 7.16.1993, William L. Mcdonald

Correspondence

Correspondence from William L. McDonald to James Jackson concerning archaeological excavation near a cabin at the Forks of Cypress.

Edward O'Neal Home Cistern Correspondence To Steve Blevins, 11.12.1993, William L. Mcdonald

Correspondence

Correspondence from William Lindsey McDonald to Steve Blevins concerning an archaeological project to cover the cistern at the Edward O'Neal home in Florence, Alabama. The historical marker for the site can be accessed here.

Ornamental Letters In J.R.R. Tolkien's Manuscripts, Eduardo Boheme Kumamoto

Journal of Tolkien Research

The purpose of this article is to examine ornamental letters and decoration that in some way interacts with letterforms in J.R.R. Tolkien’s manuscripts. I explore Tolkien’s use of elements such as double strokes, color, dots, and flourishes to add prominence and beauty to the letterforms; where possible I also try to establish a relation between these ornaments and medieval manuscripts.

On Stage: Startling Visibility, Operatic Drama, And George Tooker’S Un Ballo In Maschera, Alex Del Dago

Art Inquiries

As a part of its centennial advertising campaign, the Metropolitan Opera in New York commissioned the American figurative painter George Tooker (1920-2011) to create a fine art image inspired after Giuseppe Verdi’s 1859 opera, Un Ballo in Maschera. Within the artist's composition, themes around masquerading, skepticism, and surveillance arise, all of which are common threads within both Tooker’s and Verdi’s work. Primary questions that can be asked from looking at this type of subject matter include: who is truthfully themselves, who may be someone other than they initially say they are, and most importantly, how does the ambiguity of gendered …

On Canvas: The Origins And Implications Of A Common Phrase, Kerr Houston

Art Inquiries

Why do modern art historians and conservators describe paintings executed on cloth in Europe in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries as works on canvas, when late medieval and early Renaissance sources never do the same? This article answers that question by tracing and analyzing the evolution of canvas as a term in the history of painting. Until the late 1400s, it will be argued, the term canvas and its regional variants connoted coarse woven fabrics made of hemp that were associated with rugged, utilitarian needs and rural poverty—but not with painting. By contrast, artists and related texts relied on …

Front Matter, Art Inquiries, Kris K. Belden-Adams

Art Inquiries

No abstract provided.

Here Come The Brides: Sylvia Sleigh, Lawrence Alloway, And Hetty Remington, Andrew D. Hottle

Art Inquiries

Sylvia Sleigh (1916–2010), a Welsh-born artist who lived and worked in England before settling in the United States, is known primarily for her uninhibited portraits of nude men, many of which were painted in New York City during the feminist art movement of the 1970s. Over the last half-century, Sleigh’s male nudes have been both admired and derided for disrupting the conventional paradigm of the male artist and unclothed female model. Among them are Philip Golub Reclining (1971; private collection) and The Turkish Bath (1973; David and Alfred Smart Museum of Art, University of Chicago), which were inspired by canonical …

Adrienne L. Childs, Ornamental Blackness: The Black Figure In European Decorative Arts, Brigid M. Boyle

Art Inquiries

Ornamental Blackness by Adrienne L. Childs offers the first comprehensive survey of European luxury and utilitarian objects that treat Black Africans as decorative motifs. Proceeding chronologically from the middle Baroque period to the late nineteenth century, Childs charts the initial production of racialized objects for royal courts and aristocratic households and their later dissemination to middle-class homes. Items such as furniture, light fixtures, clocks, tableware, porcelain figurines, and treasury objects became an apparatus for controlling and fetishizing Black bodies, reinforcing the idea of Black servitude as normal. Many of these objects were crafted from precious natural materials whose extraction and …

Alison Place, Ed., Feminist Designer: On The Personal And The Political In Design, Anmol Shrivastava

Art Inquiries

No abstract provided.

Robert Indiana, Love, Biblical Authority, And American Art In The 1960s, David Mccarthy

Art Inquiries

Years before Robert Indiana suggested that his canonical LOVE paintings and sculptures carried erotic connotations, he was explicit in indicating that the series was to be understood as spiritual. In 1973, as the United States Postal Service issued some three hundred and thirty million stamps with his design, he specifically explained that the genesis of LOVE should be traced to his childhood training in Christian Science. Although scholars have certainly acknowledged this background, none, so far, have sufficiently addressed the actual foundational text of the faith, nor have they adequately addressed the evidence of Christian references found in the artist’s …

Memory In Fragments: The Lives Of Ancient Maya Sculptures By Megan E. O’Neil, Jeanette Nicewinter

Art Inquiries

No abstract provided.

Harry Boone: From Entropy To Renewal, Gertrude Herbert Institute Of Art, Augusta, Ga, Mysoon Rizk

Art Inquiries

No abstract provided.

Book Review: The Art Of Anna Dorothea Therbusch (1721-1782) By Christina K. Lindeman, Amanda Strasik

Art Inquiries

No abstract provided.

Encoded, The Metropolitan Museum, New York, Ny, Tamara Smithers

Art Inquiries

No abstract provided.

On Loss And Absence: Textiles Of Mourning And Survival, Art Institute Of Chicago, Chicago, Il, Elizabeth S. Hawley

Art Inquiries

No abstract provided.

Floating World: A.A. Murakami, Museum Of Fine Arts, Houston, Tx, Yumi Park

Art Inquiries

No abstract provided.

Marie Taylor Barton And Southern Modernism, Cynthia Fowler

Art Inquiries

This paper examines the efforts by Southern artist Marie Taylor Barton (1904-1992) of Nashville, Tennessee to spread the principles of modern art to her community through her art practice and her advocacy for modern art. Barton emerged as an artist in the first half of the twentieth century. She studied with New York modern artist Ralph Pearson (1883-1958), an underrecognized but highly influential art teacher, at his summer school in Gloucester, Massachusetts. While in Gloucester, she also heard lectures by artist Hans Hofmann and visited Dartmouth College to see José Clemente Orozco’s mural The Epic of American Civilization (1932-34) that …