By Richard J. Powell (NHC Fellow, 1995–96) The African diaspora — a direct result of the transatlantic slave trade and Western colonialism — has generated a wide array of artistic achievements in our century, from blues to reggae, from the paintings of Henry Ossawa Tanner to the video installations of Keith Piper. This brilliant new … Continued
By Jean H. Hagstrum (NHC Fellow, 1985–86; 1986–87) A magisterial book by one of our most distinguished literary historians, Esteem Enlivened by Desire illuminates (and celebrates) the ideal of lasting love from antiquity to the high Renaissance. Love that leads to marriage is a relatively recent "invention," or so critics and historians often say. But in this … Continued
By Jefferson Hunter (NHC Fellow, 1984–85) The complementarities and antipathies between photographs and literary texts allow the two arts to play off each other, denigrate or exalt each other, and sometimes reach a true collaboration that has more significance than either could achieve alone. Jefferson Hunter examines these symbiotic relationships in a highly original book that will … Continued
By B. N. Goswamy (NHC Fellow, 1986–87) and Eberhard Fischer Catalog of the donated paintings of Horst Metzger.
By Ewa Kuryluk (NHC Fellow, 1988–89)
By Carl Nordenfalk (NHC Fellow, 1978–79; 1979–80; 1980–81)
By Ellen Gruber Garvey (NHC Fellow, 2007–08) Men and women 150 years ago grappled with information overload by making scrapbooks-the ancestors of Google and blogging. From Abraham Lincoln to Susan B. Anthony, African American janitors to farmwomen, abolitionists to Confederates, people cut out and pasted down their reading. Writing with Scissors opens a new window into the … Continued
Ralph Waldo Emerson, Henry David Thoreau, and the Hudson River School helped shape an emerging national identity. Viewed collectively, their work articulated America’s “coming of age,” a nation in the process of discovering itself as distinct from Europe. The writings of Emerson and Thoreau with the landscape paintings of the Hudson River School offered nuanced … Continued
John White’s depictions of Virginia brought a striking naturalism to the visual representation of America even as they were shaped by European cultural habits and preconceptions.
The airplane offered a potent symbol of man’s innovative thrust into the future. In the 1920s, artists depicted the airplane in canvases that, while creating quite different visual impressions, reflected the shared drive to depict the modern.