Reading class outline - please add and change and improve!
We'll meet roughly every other week, probably in the morning, for perhaps 2 hours. The course will cover the way artists "do" history, or use history in their work. Focus is American, from roughly 1800 to the present, with about half the class focused on contemporary art. We'll try to work chronologically.
What's useful about artists looking at history

Short presentations, every other time, 10 minutes... each student does 3 over the course of the emester
Over the course of the semester we'll invite 3-4 speakers to lunch - some artists, some historians...

Possible topics, by class meeting:
1. History paintings; the use of art to build the nation's history. Possible reading: Picturing history : American painting, 1770-1930 / edited by William Ayres ; chief contributor, Barbara J. Mitnick ; foreword by Michael Kammen ; essays by Ann Uhry Abrams ... et al. Published New York: Rizzoli in association with Fraunces Tavern Museum, 1993

2. WPA; constructing American history. Propaganda, patriotism, official vs. unofficial history in art. Possible topics: New Dance Company, posters, Possible reading: Hoover exhibition, http://revolutionarytides.stanford.edu/withflash.html. Possible visit to ASKB collection for military images?

2a. Art in display (maybe??) book: Shivers Down Your Spine: Cinema, Museums and the Immersive View. By Alison Griffiths. New York: Columbia University Press 2008. Pp. xv+372. $45

3. Monuments and counter monuments
possible reading: Public Monuments: Art in Political Bondage 1870-1997 (Reaktion Books - Essays in Art and Culture) (Paperback) by Sergiusz Michalski
4. Photography. Ask Doug Nickel? documentary photography? does this really fit?
5. Site-specific art and performance. Guests: Molly Rice? Mark Tribe? Lisa D'Amour? all at Brown
6. Artists in museums. - Possible reading: Mark Godfrey, "The artist as historian." Possible visitor: Sam DUrant
7. documentaries?

Issues:

-artists that act like historians -illustration vs. art -art in social studies curriculum -art photography

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Other bits of my notes: Yinka Shonibare. An artist who explores race class, colonialism/post-colonialism through his art.

art collecting in history museums? art in social studies curriculum?

Students interested so far:
Aliza Rosie Gosia Leah Elizabeth Elena Meg Nara Clarissa Montana Sarah

Posted at Oct 22/2008 09:32AM:
Rosie: Some artists to think about:

Monuments: William Kentridge (Monument, 1990), Oscar Palacio, Sam Durant, Matthew Buckingham, Deimantas Narkevicius

History/Cultural Heritage: Yinka Shonibare (thanks Steve), Azra Aksamija

History of place: Kianga Ford

Political Reenactment: John Malpede, Sharon Hayes, Mark Tribe

Documenting War/Creating archive/Artist: Steve Mumford (embedded artist), Coco Fusco

Let's keep adding to the list!

Possible visitors from close-by: John Malpede - fellow at CAVS, MIT Kianga Ford - artist with Art+History Azra Aksamija (tentatively) - PhD at MIT, but abroad now. Mark Tribe - professor at Brown Oscar Palacio - photogapher in Boston

Artist's books - library has a large collection
New York Historical Society exhibit of artists looking at slavery - they did a catalog - jnbc has copies
Military images - both contemporary paintings sold to collectors and buffs, and panoramas, cycloramas, etc. - ASKB collection, Garibaldi panorama

Posted at Jan 11/2009 09:26AM:
rbranson: There is an exhibition at the DeCordova that seems pertinent: maybe we can go as a class? http://www.decordova.org/decordova/exhibit/2009/CarlsonStrom.htm We could even go to the opening . . . it is free! Or to the artist talk, which is probably more informative.

Posted at Jan 12/2009 12:16PM:
clarissa: Agree that the DeCordova exhibit looks relevant and provocative.

We might want to look at Ken Gonzales-Day’s work: Ken Gonzales-Day web site/. He deals with archival material and the erasure and recapture of histories of racial violence. In addition to the artwork, he’s written a book, Lynching in the West, 1850-1935 (Duke Univ. Press, 2006) based on his research. The current issue of American Quarterly describes it thus:

“Combining an art project with historical analysis, the practice of Ken Gonzalez-Day makes an invaluable contribution to understanding how interdisciplinary methods should be applied in art exhibits. Several of his recent art series have emerged from his research into the visual history of the lynching of Mexican and Mexican American men in California. This epic project started when the artist began looking for percentages and statistics to support an art project, and found a history under erasure. Proceeding to rigorously investigate and cross-reference primary materials such as local newspapers, images, and the odd phenomenon of postcards featuring lynching, Gonzalez-Day developed his research into an original scholarly work titled Lynching in the West: 1850–1935, published by Duke University Press in 2006, an accomplishment for which he was nominated for a Pulitzer Prize. Beyond presenting original scholarship, the book does an exceptional job of articulating the relationship between art-making, visual analysis, and the research and writing of history.”page 1065 (This is from a review of the group exhibition "Phantom Sightings: Art after the Chicano Movement" in which his work appeared.)

Posted at Jan 12/2009 12:50PM:
clarissa: To follow on the previous post and my interest in artwork that grapples with the histories of racism, these two catalogues/books related to past exhibitions are worth considering:

Stallings, Tyler. Whiteness, a Wayward Construction. Laguna Beach, CA: Laguna Art Museum, 2003. http://www.kunstaspekte.de/index.php?tid=30066&action=termin

Kleeblatt, Norman L., and Museum Jewish, eds. Mirroring Evil: Nazi Imagery/Recent Art. New Brunswick, NJ: Jewish Museum; Rutgers University Press, 2001. http://www.jewishmuseum.org/home/content/exhibitions/special/mirroring_evil/mirroring.html

It would be interesting, too, to examine the reviews/responses related to each exhibit, particularly the latter as it was quite controversial. In the "whiteness" exhibit, some artists deal with the issue of history more explicitly than others.

Posted at Jan 14/2009 04:04PM:
clarissa: These two books might be relevant. Haven't had a chance to check them out; so am only going by the descriptions. First one sounds more interesting.

Saltzman, Lisa. Making Memory Matter: Strategies of Remembrance in Contemporary Art. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2006. http://www.powells.com/biblio/72-9780226734088-0

Gibbons, Joan. Contemporary Art and Memory: Images of Recollection and Remembrance. London; New York: I.B. Tauris, 2007. http://www.powells.com/biblio/72-9781845116194-0

Posted at Jan 19/2009 06:57PM:
rosie: Hi - here are some interviews on Creative Time with Matthew Buckingham, Sharon Hayes, and Mark Tribe (prof at Brown): http://creativetime.org/programs/archive/newwine/

From Meg: What is Research in the Visual Arts? Obsession Archive Encounter Edited by Michael Ann Holley and Marquard Smith Yale University Press, 2008