Art Archives | Page 3 of 16 | National Humanities Center

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The Culture of Property: The Crisis of Liberalism in Modern Britain

By Jordanna Bailkin (NHC Fellow, 2003–04) Drawing on court transcripts, gallery archives, exhibition reviews, private correspondence—and a striking series of cartoons and photographs—The Culture of Property traverses the history of gender, material culture, urban life, colonialism, Irish and Scottish nationalism, and British citizenship. This fascinating book challenges recent scholarship in museum studies in light of … Continued

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Art and Optics in the Hereford Map: An English Mappa Mundi, c. 1300

By Marcia Kupfer (NHC Fellow, 2012–13) A single, monumental mappa mundi (world map), made around 1300 for Hereford Cathedral, survives intact from the Middle Ages. As Marcia Kupfer reveals in her arresting new study, this celebrated testament to medieval learning has long been profoundly misunderstood. Features of the colored and gilded map that baffle modern expectations are … Continued

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Changing Perspectives in Literature and the Visual Arts, 1650-1820

By Murray Roston (NHC Fellow, 1985–86) Continuing with the theme of his work Renaissance Perspectives in Literature and the Visual Arts, Murray Roston applies to a later period the same critical principle: that for each generation there exists a central complex of inherited ideas and urgent contemporary concerns to which each creative artist and writer responds … Continued

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Flash!: Photography, Writing, and Surprising Illumination

By Kate Flint (NHC Fellow, 2007–08; 2015–16) Flash! presents a fascinating cultural history of flash photography, from its mid-nineteenth century beginnings to the present day. All photography requires light, but the light of flash photography is quite distinctive: artificial, sudden, shocking, intrusive, and extraordinarily bright. Associated with revelation and wonder, it has been linked to the … Continued

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Picture Titles: How and Why Western Paintings Acquired Their Names

By Ruth Bernard Yeazell (NHC Fellow, 2008–09) A picture’s title is often our first guide to understanding the image. Yet paintings didn’t always have titles, and many canvases acquired their names from curators, dealers, and printmakers—not the artists. Taking an original, historical look at how Western paintings were named, Picture Titles shows how the practice developed in … Continued

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Selling Jerusalem: Relics, Replicas, Theme Parks

By Annabel Jane Wharton (NHC Fellow, 1985–86; 2002–03; 2016–17) Jerusalem currently stands at the center of a violent controversy that threatens the stability of both the Middle East and the world. This volatility, observes Annabel Jane Wharton, is only the most recent manifestation of a centuries-old obsession with the control of the Holy City—military occupation and … Continued

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The Homoerotics of Orientalism

By Joseph Allen Boone (NHC Fellow, 2009–10) One of the largely untold stories of Orientalism is the degree to which the Middle East has been associated with "deviant" male homosexuality by scores of Western travelers, historians, writers, and artists for well over four hundred years. And this story stands to shatter our preconceptions of Orientalism. … Continued

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Art and Resistance in Germany

Edited by Elizabeth Otto (NHC Fellow, 2017–18) and Deborah Ascher Barnstone In light of the recent rise of right-wing populism in numerous political contexts and in the face of resurgent nationalism, racism, misogyny, homophobia, and demagoguery, this book investigates how historical and contemporary cultural producers have sought to resist, confront, confound, mock, or call out … Continued

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Contemporary Art: World Currents

By Terry Smith (NHC Fellow, 2007–08) Contemporary Art: World Currents is the first comprehensive worldwide survey of contemporary art from the 1980s to the present day. Author Terry Smith argues that, in recent decades, a global shift from modern to contemporary art has occurred: artists everywhere have embraced the contemporary world’s teeming multiplicity, its proliferating differences … Continued