Tag: 2.1
In a way, the question we have asked of our five respondents: “Is American art history conservative?” is an odd one. Despite the troublingly combative obduracy that the psychic and physical boundaries of American-ness have assumed in the larger political discourse this election season, the field of American art history has never been more catholic in its interests or inclusive in its approaches.
Jules Prown’s approach to making and teaching art history is among the most well documented methodologies in the discipline. Look no further than his canonical “Style as Evidence” (1980) or “Mind in Matter” (1982). What he offers here will enter the historical record as a complement to these earlier pieces.
Martin Wong: Human Instamatic, the Bronx Museum’s ambitious exhibition of Martin Wong’s paintings, Cover of Martin Wong: Human Instamatic and the first museum retrospective of the artist since Sweet Oblivion: The Urban Landscape of Martin Wong at the New Museum in 1998, is accompanied by a no-less ambitious exhibition catalog.
For an art historian, two of the most rewarding moments of the research process are leafing through the dusty, faded ephemera of an archive and opening a crisp new volume of cutting-edge scholarship.