I'm pleased to announce the publication of the fall 2012 issue of the Smithsonian American Art Museum's scholarly journal American Art (volume 26, no. 3).
John S. Moulton, House at "Hillside," American Views, 1871. Stereo photograph, 3 1/2 x 7 in. Collection of Sarah Burns
Since its founding in 1987, American Art has been an indispensable resource for scholars, collectors, and museum-goers who want to enrich their understanding of the nation's art and culture. American Art encompasses all aspects of the country's visual heritage from colonial to contemporary times.
The fall 2012 issue of the journal includes essays on the following topics:
the origins of the popular association of the haunted house with Victorian architectural styles
the colonial painter John Singleton Copley's iconic 1768 likeness of the silversmith and statesman Paul Revere as a promotional tool for both the struggling craftsman and his upstart portraitist
Civil War-era photographs and postbellum memorial sculptures in which wounded trees serve as stand-ins for human casualties and express the war's long-term damage to both humans and nature
You'll also find an article that brings new archival research to bear on our understanding of the work of late nineteenth-century genre and still-life painter Victor Dubreuil, and an essay on the twentieth-century figure painter Paul Cadmus's use of the grotesque as a form of cultural critique in his images of modern-day life in New York.
Finally, the issue includes appreciations of two recently deceased American art pioneers: Helen Frankenthaler (1928-2011), who is best known for the abstract canvases that propelled her to the forefront of the New York School in the 1950s and Color Field painting in the 1960s; and the socially minded sculptor and printmaker Elizabeth Catlett (1915-2012), who is lauded for her strong and sympathetic depictions of African Americans, women, and laborers.
For more information on the journal American Art, including how to subscribe or submit a manuscript for publication consideration, please see www.journals.uchicago.edu/amart. Queries may be sent to AmericanArtJournal@si.edu.
