The Newberry Seminar in American Art and Visual Culture Co-sponsored by the School of Fine and Performing Arts at Columbia College Chicago, the Department of Art History at Indiana University, and the Karla Scherer Center for the Study of American Culture at the University of Chicago Seminar sessions are held on Fridays from 2:00 PM–5:00 PM at the Newberry Library, 60 West Walton Street, Chicago, Illinois.   2009-2010

Elbridge Burbank, Edward Everett Ayer, 1897, oil on canvas 25 x 32 in. The Newberry Library.

October 16, 2009
Performing Progress as Art and History at the Pageant of Illinois (1909)
Annelise K. Madsen, Stanford University

At Northwestern University in 1909, hundreds of area residents staged a theatrical performance called a pageant, enacting a history of the state through episodes that combined fine art, drama, dancing, and costuming.  This paper examines the Pageant of Illinois to show how civic artists became Progressive reformers.  Pageant leaders shaped contemporary debates on citizenship, Americanism, and education through monumental pictures of a local, shared past.  While pageant participants vitalized a narrative of white male triumph, they also disrupted this official vision through their playacting.  Focusing on the pageant’s visual culture, I recover how Evanston’s communities negotiated Progressivism in aesthetic terms.

"Founder's Statues, Indian Wars, and Contested Public Spaces: Augustus Saint-Gaudens's The Puritan and Anger's Memory in Springfield, Massachusetts."
Erika Doss, University of Notre Dame

Dedicated in 1887 in Springfield, Massachusetts, The Puritan is an oversized bronze statue of a stern and even menacing figure clutching a huge Bible.  Commissioned as a memorial to Deacon Samuel Chapin (1595-1675), one of Springfield's founding fathers, The Puritan was designed by Augustus Saint-Gaudens and erected in a small urban park.  In 1899, however, after repeated instances of vandalism, the statue was moved "uphill" to Springfield's cultural quadrangle.  Contextualizing The Puritan's public reception, this paper further examines Saint-Gaudens's sense of the moralizing contradictions and devastating consequences of American historical memory, and the similarly conflicted circumstances of his personal life.

Commentator: Sarah Burns, Indiana University

December 4, 2009
Disentanglement: Baroque Furniture and the Self
Ethan W. Lasser, The Chipstone Foundation

An unusual group of small-scale side chairs rose to the height of fashion in Boston and London around 1700. Feather-light, with stick-like turned or sawn legs that appear to be placed under rather anchored into the seat, the chairs were notoriously weak, and prone to rock and wobble under the sitter.

Past scholars have considered the connections between the chairs and the broader histories of labor and consumerism.  My essay proposes that the objects are closely connected to a set of broader philosophical debates about the relationship between people and things.  The chairs show that objects could cultivate a sense of differentiation—a sense that the self was set apart from things—as effectively as any text.

Reconsidering a Familiar Face: John Singeton Copley's Portrait of Paul Revere
Rebecca Zurier, University of Michigan

Commentator: Jennifer Way, University of North Texas

February 26, 2010
Adolphus Busch's Lager Landscape
Paula Lupkin, Washington University St. Louis

Burlesquing the Beast: William Holbrook Beard and the Museum Movement
Jennifer Greenhill, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

Commentator: Sarah Dreller, University of Illinois at Chicago

March 26, 2010
Matters of Style: Art and Fidelity in Wood Engraving in Postbellum America
Stephen P. Rice, Ramapo College of New Jersey

Equipment in the Picture: Looking at Political Image-Making
Elisabeth Ross, Northwestern University

Commentator: Peter John Brownlee, Terra Foundation For American Art

For more information about this seminar, please contact one of the coordinators:  Sarah Burns (burnss@indiana.edu), Diane Dillon (dillond@newberry.org), and Gregory Foster-Rice (gfoster-rice@colum.edu).

We will pre-circulate papers to those planning to attend. If you cannot attend and want to read a paper, please contact the author directly. E-mail scholl[at]newberry.org,or call (312) 255-3524 to receive a copy of the paper. Papers are available for request two weeks prior to the seminar date. Please include your e-mail address in all correspondence.

The seminar format assumes that all participants have read the essays in advance, and that all those requesting the paper will attend the seminar. Please do not request a paper unless you plan to attend. We encourage faculty members to call the seminar to the attention of graduate students.

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