by Jon Lackman | 4 April 2008 | Theory
In the March 2008 issue of Cultural Politics, Johanna Drucker argues that image interpreters need to turn away from the
de-familiarizing effect that was a tenet of the historical avant-garde. The very identity of aesthetic images was in part linked to capacity for making strange (Shklovsky 1917). In our current, profoundly disturbed, cultural condition, no effect of documentation can register upon our numbed and brutalized sensibility … In this extreme condition, a critical shift could be redefined as a task of refamiliarization. Refamiliarization returns images and symbolic expressions to a system of cultural and symbolic production with which they are co-dependent … A radical constructivist systems theory underpins this belief, not a naive holism … Refamiliarization asks images to show the contingent relations of complex systems, to expose vectors and forces of interests, desires, and power. The task of refamiliarization is to show that what is is not entirely simulacral, but connected to the lived experience of persons and peoples, organic beings, within cultural, political, and vulnerable ecological spheres. This reconceptualizes the work that we imagine interpretation can do … As a critical approach, its insights are not limited to the study of contemporary works.
by Jon Lackman | 3 April 2008 | Baroque/Neoclassical, Books
In the February 2008 issue of The Burlington Magazine, Xander van Eck reviews Eric Jan Sluijter’s Rembrandt and the Female Nude:
… the scope of [Rembrandt's] genius was such that it still yields genuinely new research, providing that valid questions are asked. Eric Jan Sluijter has done just that in Rembrandt and the Female Nude, the first full-length study on the subject … [he makes a] convincing argument that Rembrandt’s radical realism must be seen in the context of the debate on disegno and colore (rather than the ephemeral categories of classicism and anti-classicism) … we realise that it was one of his main ambitions to surpass Titian as a colourist … just by reading about [Titian's art], studying prints and looking at a few, mostly second-rate paintings. One comes to think that it may have been the very remoteness from the source that allowed for such spectacular creativity … [this book] opens a whole new field of scholarly discussion, it augments our knowledge of the theme and it offers genuinely new insights in what was important for Rembrandt as an artist. One cannot ask for much more in a book.
by Jon Lackman | 2 April 2008 | Museums, Renaissance
The Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung reviews the “Baccio Bandinelli 1493-1560, Dessins et sculptures du Louvre” exhibition now on view at the Louvre. It notes that this is a rare opportunity to reassess the artist, who’s been in disrepute since the Renaissance. His contemporaries starting things off by leaving to posterity “ein Negativbild” of the artist, which is putting it mildly. In his autobiography, Cellini wrote:
… how many thousand ducats had recently been squandered upon ugly pieces of bad sculpture turned out by that beast … Baccio Bandinello is made up of everything bad, and thus has he ever been … Bandinello writhed and made the most ugly faces—his face itself being by nature hideous beyond measure—which could be imagined by the mind of man …
Of one Bandinelli sculpture, Cellini wrote:
… if one were to shave the hair of your Hercules, there would not be skull enough left to hold his brain; it says that it is impossible to distinguish whether his features are those of a man or of something between a lion and an ox; the face too is turned away from the action of the figure, and is so badly set upon the neck, with such poverty of art and so ill a grace, that nothing worse was ever seen; his sprawling shoulders are like the two pommels of an ass’ pack-saddle; his breasts and all the muscles of the body are not portrayed from a man, but from a big sack full of melons set upright against a wall. The loins seem to be modelled from a bag of lanky pumpkins; nobody can tell how his two legs are attached to that vile trunk; it is impossible to say on which leg he stands, or which he uses to exert his strength; nor does he seem to be resting upon both, as sculptors who know something of their art have occasionally set the figure. It is obvious that the body is leaning forward more than one-third of a cubit, which alone is the greatest and most insupportable fault committed by vulgar commonplace pretenders. Concerning the arms, they say that these are both stretched out without one touch of grace or one real spark of artistic talents, just as if you had never seen a naked model. Again, the right leg of Hercules and that of Cacus have got one mass of flesh between them, so that if they were to be separated, not only one of them, but both together, would be left without a calf at the point where they are touching. They say, too, that Hercules has one of his feet underground, while the other seems to be resting on hot coals.
by Jon Lackman | 31 March 2008 | Renaissance
In the most recent issue of Bibliothèque d’Humanisme et Renaissance (69, n3), Frank Lestringant writes on “The Atlas and the Abyss, or the Infernal Cosmography of Jean-Baptiste Trento and Pierre Eskrich: The Mappe-Monde Nouvelle Papistique of 1566″:
Despite the upheavals visited upon the 16th century by the great explorations and the concomitant rediscovery of ancient cosmography, the image of the earth remained astonishingly stable in certain branches of learning, for example in poetry, theology, and satire, that most conservative of genres. This study hopes to examine the space of the Mappe-Monde Nouvelle Papistique, an enormous print published in Geneva in 1566 that is surely the oddest visual expression of calvinist propaganda.
by Jon Lackman | 28 March 2008 | Museums
An anonymous correspondent has provided us with an oh-so-slightly satirized version of a week-long diary recently published by MoMA director Glenn Lowry:
Monday
To Williams College, which has a strong art history programme (I went there), to deliver a lecture about MoMA’s approach to collecting modern art. I love seeing the energy of students who don’t yet foresee the nearly guaranteed obscurity and penury of their careers. They took me out for meze: I had a beetroot salad and a plate of mushrooms.
Lots were art makers, not art historians, so they were eager to find out how museums work and how to get their work shown. I arrived back in New York after a three-hour drive, feeling unhealthy. (Young artists who expect MoMA to listen to them can be rather nauseating.)
Tuesday
A meeting with Abdullah Al Najjar, CEO of the Qatar Museums Authority, who asked if we’d give a press preview at MoMA for its new museum of Islamic Art: we will. (Qatar has A LOT of money.) When it opens this Fall, it’ll be one of the first museums of Islamic art in the Gulf region. The building, designed by IM Pei, is likely to be beautiful.
Then we had our own press preview for Colour Chart, a show that looks at how 20th-century artists have used ready-made colour. Nothing like giving the press their own day to see the show to help them forget the fact that the public will never get a quiet, unobstructed look at it. Then I met the new director of the Musée D’Orsay to check we’re ready to rip with loans to each other. We’re ready to rip, baby!
Wednesday
I explored Colour Chart. It begins with Marcel Duchamp’s last painting, with its colour swatches, and continues to artists like Andy Warhol and Dan Flavin. Richard Serra, usually a minimalist sculptor, has a video in this show of forceful beauty – he’s tearing coloured pages from a booklet and you realise it’s a critique of Joseph Albers’s colour theory. Forceful beauty worth paying $20 for.
I had lunch with our curators: a boisterous group. (Boisterous is a word you use for people whose meaningless shows of protest you will kindly indulge.) Then I went to an opening for an electronic fountain at Rockefeller Center by British artists Tim Noble and Sue Webster. At night it will look stunning. But it was cold so I dived home for a hot chocolate.
Thursday
My usual 7am gym workout, to U2 and the Rolling Stones. Then to a meeting about pop art. We have one of the world’s greatest collections (perhaps you were unaware), but need to reassess it, as only a small percentage of our works are on display, even though we spent $858 million on our expansion. A great pleasure of my job is to look at the thousands of works we have in storage. They’re not really going to waste, see.
I had beetroot risotto with my wife, Susan (did I mention I like beetroot?), and read a biography of Palestinian philosophy professor and political leader Sari Nusseibeh.
Friday
Woke up feeling human for the first time this week (not that MoMA makes you feel inhuman), then went to a screening of Isaac Julien’s film about Derek Jarman – I’m a huge admirer of both men.
Later I visited some galleries. It’s important I see if there’s anything I might pursue for the collection. A dramatic change in the art world is the huge explosion in the number of galleries, so I have to look everywhere. Art is BIG business, baby! In the evening I took my mother out to celebrate her 84th birthday. I love my mother.
by Jon Lackman | 26 March 2008 | Uncategorized
From New York Magazine:
“Our society now values a Warhol for three times as much money as a great Rembrandt,” [art dealer Larry Salander] thunders, referring to the latest auction reports. “That tells me that we’re fucked. It’s as if people would rather fuck than make love.” An aesthete with no formal art education (nor even a college degree), Salander built his art empire, Salander-O’Reilly Galleries, on native artistic empathy and an intensity of will … To Salander, many contemporary art collectors are philistines. But if he could use his gallery to create a new market for old-master and Renaissance art, perhaps he could shift the paradigms of the international art trade … Salander eventually came to believe that the very survival of great art was at stake … He saw his project as spiritual, even messianic. “We’re a soulless society,” he says, returning to a theme that surfaced many times in our conversation. “When I’m talking about the soul to people, they look at me like I’m nuts. But there has been a longtime manipulation of people who want to make money to dumb down the American society and rob us of the curiosity of our souls.”
Alas, “It was an intriguing idea, but it left him in ruin.”
by Jon Lackman | 24 March 2008 | Books
Should you happen to find it difficult staying awake at CAA one year, you might try gathering tips at the booth of art publisher Abbeville. At one recent conference, they passed the time writing “a story incorporating every single title on display.” Read it at their new blog, the Abbeville Manual of Style, which “discusses topics related to Abbeville, publishing, and the arts in a funnier, more informal fashion”:
Tales of the People: An Extraordinary Journey of Rediscovery
Long ago, I rode to China in a VW Bus with a Jew from Uganda and Norman Rockwell.
We sang Nothing But the Blues and played a lot of Chess. We finally arrived at a villa in the style of the immortal Palladio, where we were visited by Goddesses in Art, who handed us a tablet inscribed with Maya Script that instructed us to start a Civil Rights Movement.
We started the movement in the Fine West by planting a Bonsai tree. When our gospel we had to China Revealed, we pondered which of the Seven Trails West to take. I stopped In the Market, which had an aura of The Nixon Years. Hieronymus Bosch was there, practicing Chinese Calligraphy, and he asked us, “Have you seen any Women Artists?” …
by Jon Lackman | 21 March 2008 | Renaissance
Art historian Irma B. Jaffe, 91, is still publishing, which is fortunate, considering that her career, according to the Columbia University alumni newsletter,
didn’t begin until almost mid-life: she left the University of Illinois when she was eighteen years old, in her sophomore year, to get married. Twenty years later, the day after she sent her daughter off to Radcliffe College, she went “back to school,” entering Columbia University’s School of General Studies. She and her daughter received their undergraduate degrees one day apart because Radcliffe’s graduation was held the day after Columbia’s.
In her latest book, “Zelotti’s Epic Frescoes at Cataio: The Obizzi Saga” (Fordham University Press), she reconsiders a forgotten 16th-century painter. From the New York Times:
Giovanni Battista Zelotti was so well regarded that he was handpicked by Titian to work in the Ducal Palace in Venice alongside Paolo Veronese. But the cracks of history can be brutal, randomly consigning artists to posthumous indifference … “Janson’s History of Art” omits Zelotti altogether … It didn’t help that until recently one of Zelotti’s greatest achievements — a cycle of 40 frescoes here at the so-called Castle of Cataio, about nine miles from Padua — was off limits to visitors … [until heirs decided in] the mid-1990s … Fresco by fresco, Ms. Jaffe explains the genesis of the heroic gestures, gory battles and sumptuous ceremonies depicted in the cycle, which was commissioned to celebrate the long history of the noble Obizzi family, dating to 1004 … The fresco cycle, begun by Zelotti and assistants in 1572 in six rooms of the castle, was inspired by the account of Giuseppe Betussi, a poet who had been hired just before they were painted to record the Obizzi family history. Betussi used what Ms. Jaffe calls “poetic license,” depicting Obizzi family members as protagonists of historical events with no evidence that they actually witnessed them … The frescoes are in excellent condition and have not undergone any major restorations.
by Jon Lackman | 19 March 2008 | Contemporary
In the Winter 2007 Art Journal, Andrea D. Fitzpatrick writes on “The Movement of Vulnerability: Images of Falling and September 11″:
Are those who fell to their deaths on September 11, 2001, exploited or honored by the display of images representing their experiences? … images of falling are not new to photojournalism or contemporary art … my questions are as follows: What reinterpretations can be brought to art created prior to September 11 (by Yves Klein, Andy Warhol, and Sarah Charlesworth, for example) that takes falling as its subject matter? How do artworks made in response to September 11 (by Eric Fischl, Carolee Schneemann, and Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu, for example) hold up under critical scrutiny when the photojournalistic images of the actual event are already so aesthetically powerful?
She concludes:
The visualization of falling, after September 11, is an ethical concern because it comprises a paradigm of vulnerability. In this paradigm, three forms of vulnerability are revealed. First is the corporeal vulnerability of the subjects conveyed by the images of falling. Are the experiences endured by them recognized as having been fatal rather than merely serving as visual curiosities for the living? This is not the simple proposal (disputed by many) that aesthetic values in representations of human suffering preclude an ethical engagement with them. The goal is not to impose prohibitions on certain aesthetic or formal gestures but to identify what they do to embodied subjects in this unique genre at the limits of life, language, and the medium. Second is posthumous vulnerability to a subjectivity slandered by representations or names the dead can neither refuse nor negotiate. The fact that subjectivity is produced posthumously (and how) is not often enough considered in cultural theory, but even in death, subjects continue to be vulnerable to representations and to the names one calls them (e.g., “falling,” “jumper,” “suicides,” “unidentified”). Third, I am concerned with the extent to which the viewer’s relationship with the images is one in which an openness to the state of vulnerability is maintained–but not necessarily prescribed. After Butler’s insight that in mourning the living come “undone,” the experience of pain when viewing the Other’s mortality constitutes an ethics in which vulnerability can be conceived as a reciprocal possibility. Despite the obvious, radical imbalances inherent to the situation (in which the living view images of people about to die), a paradigm of vulnerability might offer an enabling point rather than a weakened state, a humbling manner of approach whose result is ultimately the dignification of the experiences of all the subjects involved.
by Jon Lackman | 17 March 2008 | Museums, Renaissance
Fancy a grand tour? This is also a good time to see Renaissance art, with Sebastiano del Piombo in Rome, late Titian in Venice (read more here), Arcimboldo in Paris, our oh-so scandalous man Cranach now arrived in London (read more here, here, here, here, and here), Nethlandish painting on view in Rotterdam, and Ghiberti’s “Gates of Paradise” on tour. An exhibition of Grünewald just closed in Colmar, reviewed thusly in Libération:
The research laboratory for France’s museums dove into Matthias Grünewald’s colors to attempt to decipher the fascination his Isenheim triptych has held for some five centuries … This rather uneven exhibition centered on the altarpiece presents its discoveries … Of this major artist we don’t know much … At most a dozen paintings can be attributed to him. Unfortunately, this exhibition and its catalogue alternate speculation with errors that are hard to excuse.
by Jon Lackman | 14 March 2008 | Modern, Museums
If you’re interested in late-nineteenth and early-twentieth-century European painting, you’re in luck. Current exhibitions tackle Courbet, Vlaminck, Vallotton (read here and here), women Impressionists (here and here), and the Barbizon School. Also read here about a lost Cézanne (rough English translation here).
by Jon Lackman | 12 March 2008 | Uncategorized
From the Daily Mail (London):
Thanks to the bestselling Da Vinci Code, Sotheby’s auctioneer Matthew Festing has his work cut out as the new Grand Master of the Knights of Malta.
Ampleforth and Cambridge-educated Festing, 59, finds himself thrust into the limelight as the new leader of the secretive Catholic organisation after a ballot in which the election papers were later burnt.
Like the Pope, the Grand Master is elected for life. Festing, whose portraitist brother Andrew is a Royal Family favourite, is tasked with combating the clandestine image of the KoM, which has been accused of using its humanitarian missions in Iraq as a cover for mercenaries.
by Jon Lackman | 10 March 2008 | Books, Teaching
Phaidon is not the only book publisher with a new mega-survey out. Thames & Hudson has recently published Mirror of the World: A New History of Art by Julian Bell:
I see art history as a frame within which world history, in all its breadth, is continually reflected back at us — rather than as a window which opens onto some independent aesthetic realm.
Bell is himself a painter, and in his conclusion he writes:
What is beautiful in a work of art, what changes the life of the viewer, lies far beyond the range of such a description. Go in closer, to finer-grained art histories. Better, get closer to the work itself. Best, make things. What happens next in art is up to you.
by Jon Lackman | 7 March 2008 | Books
Frick curator Colin B. Bailey writes in the February 2008 issue of The Art Newspaper:
The publication–some 25 years in the making–of the two-volume catalogue raisonné of over 1,100 French ornament and architectural drawings at Waddesdon Manor is a publishing event of the first order … In keeping with Waddesdon’s admirable commitment to publishing its various collections in the most scholarly and elegant manner possible, these beautifully designed volumes take their place as the 12th in a series launched in 1967 … One should not underestimate the colossal scholarship involved in cataloguing these architectural and ornamental sheets, in many ways the poor relations of drawings cabinets and print rooms in museums on both sides of the Atlantic … there are dozens of designs by less-well studied makers whose attribution and purpose have to be established ex nihilo.
by Jon Lackman | 5 March 2008 | Americas, Photography
The Fall 2007 issue of American Art contains five commentaries on photography. Anthony W. Lee writes:
More than most fields, the history of photography is mercurial and eclectic in its interests and methods. This is partly because its subject has continually proved to be a moving target (even the earliest inventors could not agree what constituted a photograph) and partly because the contours of photography’s multiple histories have touched on so many areas of inquiry—aesthetic, scientific, industrial, and more. For these and other reasons, the American history of photography is and always was a hybrid affair, pillaging its questions and attitudes from many sources in an effort to get hold of its subject.
Take, for example, the earliest U.S. histories. While the first European histories were mostly preoccupied with supporting their individual claims about photography’s birth—what photography historian Martin Gasser calls “histories as priority debates”—the American versions, with no claims of priority to carry or defend, developed differently, with both the fine arts and unabashed commercial self-promotion more squarely in view at first …
If the earliest American histories were shaky as scholarly inquiries and driven by the commercial needs of the moment, they did rehearse the contradictions that would soon characterize a distinctly art-historical inquiry of photography: the awkward fit between photography’s dominant commercial character and the obsessive interest in genius-biographies and attentiveness to pictorial values; the myriad tensions between a history of photography as one of scientific and technological ingenuity and one of aesthetic awareness; and the underlying belief that a written history was inseparable from the promotion of photographs as objects worthy of serious contemplation. Paintings were assumed to be worthwhile materials for study, but photographs were not—at least not among a wider American audience until the 1930s. All kinds of strategies, many derived from art criticism, were enlisted to make readers look at photographs with the kind of intensity normally reserved for paintings …
In such a context, the hybrid character of historical writing on photography not only persists but is accentuated and accelerated. In the case of art history, the inquiries are as often peppered with questions about “the fortunes and failures of a democratic society,” as [Michael] Kammen writes here, or marked by a “historicist construction,” as Joshua Brown puts it, as they are about a photographer’s style or singular talent or the pictures’ aesthetic innovations. Just as often, those various kinds of interests are merged—sometimes seamlessly, other times awkwardly. What are the ghosts lurking around the resulting mesh? What concerns, such as those included and suppressed by [early historians] Root, Rodgers, and Newhall, create its shape?
As a way to begin to answer these and other questions, American Art asked the following writers, all eminent in their fields, to convey their experiences and insights about the development of photography as an object of study in their respective practices: in American history, American studies, the fine art studio, and the museum. Together, the essays are offered in the belief that the development of an art history of photography, however it is presently construed, bears a fundamental relation to the study of photography in cognate fields.
by Jon Lackman | 3 March 2008 | Africa, Conferences
The Spring 2008 issue of African Arts contains a review of the recent symposium Global Africa: Through the Lens of Visual Culture, a triennial event that was held concurrently with the University of Florida’s annual Gwendolen M. Carter Lectures on Africa:
… we attempt to highlight several of the panels that we believe are indicative of the overall interdisciplinary tone of this Triennial … [which] was able to take advantage of the excellent multidisciplinary African studies program at UF through the incorporation of UF’s own annual conference as well as the breadth of student, faculty, and staff involvement in organizing so many and such varied exhibitions of painting, sculpture, everyday objects, photography, video, maps, and others. The Gwendolen M. Carter Conference lent an important contribution to the field of African art history by not only by hosting and featuring the research and work of numerous African artists, but also expanding the conception of visual culture studies as a multidisciplinary practice that relies on anthropology, literature, linguistics, choreography, economics, politics, geography, and many other fields. Interdisciplinary studies have never been so important to a field that is constantly broadening and redefining itself.
by Jon Lackman | 29 February 2008 | Conferences
We’ve extracted a few choice bits from the collected abstracts of the recent CAA meeting in Dallas:
Yvonne Scott: “The paradox of the island is that it is at once an entity and a fragment and consequently functions synecdochically.”
Daniel Savoy: “The architects of early modern Venice created an ‘aquatic aesthetic’ that responded to the visual and perceptual effects of their aquatic geography.”
Alison Mairi Syme: “A garden metaphorics, imagining artists as pollinators and plants, and artistic creation as cross-fertilization, pervaded progressive literary and painterly production.”
Susan Sidlauskas: “Sargent didn’t so much reveal what was beneath the glittering surfaces of the Gilded Age as exploit their revelatory instability.”
Hsuan Tsen: “Historians typically argue that such perceptions [of Japan as a land of aesthetics where everyone had at least a small garden and even children appreciated beauty] are evidence of an Orientalist gaze of internalized Orientalism. I argue instead that [Japan’s display at the Louisiana Purchase Exposition] was managed by Japanese businessmen exploiting new marketing strategies located within what Kinoshita Naoyuki calls ‘urban tourism’ in an appeal to what they hoped was a cross-cultural experience of desire.”
Kathleen Chapman: “In its reduction of informational elements to only consumer product and producer name, the Sachplakat functioned as a type of modern ‘hieroglyph’—a pictographic means of creating brand identity and a cipher of the unity of commerce and modernity.”
Rhonda Taube: “The Guatemalans refer to these dances as convites, ‘masquerades’ or invitation dances, and disfraces, ‘disguises.’ They feature nonindigenous, untraditional and current characters from North American mass media, horror-film creatures, Mexican movie stars, and children’s cartoon characters.”
Esther Brummer: “As a document of noble identity, Venetian nuptial allegories served as a statement of justification for an oligarchy that had all but faded from political prominence with respect to the currents of Enlightenment thought and reform found in certain Venetian aristocratic circles.”
Diane Wolfthal: “Northern Renaissance images suggest that the rise of the monetary economy produced a new ideal of masculinity, that this ideal engendered anxiety concerning men’s proper relationship to money, and that women played a role in easing this anxiety.”
Annetta Alexandridis: “Representations of Zeus and Ganymede and Leda and the Swan from the fifth to second century BCE offer examples of heterosexual and homosexual transspecies relationships.”
Jessica Priebe: “At his death François Boucher had more than fifteen hundred shells in his collection. Yet it was not the sheer number of assembled objects that his conchological colleagues admired.”
by Jon Lackman | 29 February 2008 | Africa, Architecture
The Winter 2007 issue of Africa Today is devoted to “Visual Experience in Urban Africa.” Guest editor Joanna Grabski writes:
Cities in Africa, like their counterparts elsewhere in the world, are intensely visual environments … Rather than positioning the city as a backdrop or stage, the articles [here] explore the relationships and processes connecting visual experience to urban life … How do visual forms operate as individual expressions and collective urban resources? How is belonging—whether to community, city, or nation—articulated and engendered through urban visual experience? How do visual projects entangle and interface with political agendas, social practices, and expressive forms inflecting urban life? How do urban residents engage the world of images to make images? … the specific theme of visual experience in urban Africa remains relatively underdeveloped. To some extent, its underdevelopment reflects what Holston describes as the long-standing primacy of “the rural paradigm” in Africanist scholarship. Until the 1990s, research in Africanist art history consisted primarily of studies about objects associated with specific ethnic groups, predominantly in West and Central Africa. Attention to the rural environment and concomitant assumptions about the locus of authenticity precluded the focus on visual expression associated with urban centers.
by Jon Lackman | 28 February 2008 | Americas, Ancient, Architecture
From the AP:
A team of German and Peruvian archaeologists say they have discovered the oldest known monument in Peru: a 5,500-year-old ceremonial plaza near Peru’s north-central coast … The discovery is further evidence that civilization thrived in Peru at the same time as it did in what is now the Middle East and South Asia, said Ruth Shady, a prominent Peruvian archaeologist … The find also raises questions about what prompted “civilizations to form throughout the planet at more or less the same time,” Shady said … The plaza served as a social and ritual space where ancient peoples celebrated their “thoughts about the world, their place within it, and images of their world and themselves,” [excavation director Peter] Fuchs said … Walter Alva, the Peruvian archaeologist who uncovered the Lords of Sipan tombs, said the plaza found in Fuchs’ dig was probably utilized by an advanced civilization with economic stability, a necessary condition to construct such a ceremonial site … The find “shows the world that in America too, human beings of the New World had the same capacity to create civilization as those in the Old World,” Shady said.
Other articles call it the “oldest known urban settlement in the Americas.”
by Jon Lackman | 27 February 2008 | Teaching
The White House recently announced an initiative called “Picturing America,” which will “provide K-12 schools and public libraries with 40 images of American art, an illustrated teachers resource book, and a web site containing additional information including lesson plans.” The press conference included the president and the first lady as well as NEH head Bruce Cole (who is also an historian of Italian Renaissance art). The first lady also tried to discuss it on CBS’s The Early Show, which hardly concealed its lack of interest:
Q I’m at the White House with First Lady Laura Bush, who is very passionate about an initiative called “Picturing America.” She wants to bring American historical and iconic art to classrooms around the country, and we thank you for inviting us into your home to talk about that this morning.
MRS. BUSH: Thanks so much.
Q As you get ready to wrap up your time here at the White House, you are having to deal with attacks on your husband and his legacy and his presidency. We saw it last night during the Democratic debate. There were attacks coming left and right — or I guess left and left. (Laughter.) But we do even see Senator McCain campaigning on change and the need for change. How are those attacks received here in this house, in this family?
MRS. BUSH: Well, I’ll have to say they’re received with a grain of salt. I mean, we’ve been in many, many debates, as you know. I’ve been on the front row for lots of debates, from the time when George ran for governor the first time, and I know what these debates are like. I know they’re sound bites. I know that people try to get in a quick jab of something to say that makes news — in a good way for them, of course. And I also know that it’s a lot easier to tear something down than it is to really say what you’re for. And I think that’s what we see.
And that’s partly what the candidates are doing, to try to get a quick sound bite. But it’s also, I think, the way it’s covered and the questions that are asked, that aren’t long and thoughtful questions, but rather quick, looking for a quick, interesting answer.
Q Do you worry that all of this talk will tarnish your husband’s legacy?
MRS. BUSH: No, I really don’t. I really don’t. I think that over the long term, as historians look at his presidency, there are so many, many accomplishments. And I think that that’s what will — when the partisan rancor is gone, that that’s what will show up.
Q You have great accomplishments yourself. You are passionate about a lot of issues, most recently this “Picturing America” initiative.
MRS. BUSH: That’s right.
Q You’re trying to bring 40 iconic photographs or paintings to classrooms around America. What did you get involved with this project?
MRS. BUSH: Well, this is a National Endowment for the Humanities project. It’s part of their “We the People,” a whole study of American history that the National Endowment for the Humanities has been supporting with grants to history teachers, for instance, for the last five years.
And this is a collection of 40 reproductions of American art, iconic American art — paintings, sculpture, photography, architecture — that schools can ask for. Schools and community libraries, between now and April 15, can apply to get these 40 big reproductions of American art, and the teachers’ guides that go with it. And they’re a great teaching tool for teaching American history, obviously for teaching for fine arts. Also for teaching American culture — there are so many things that teachers can use them for. And that’s what the teachers’ guides show. They can be used from kindergarten through high school.
So I want to urge schools and community libraries to apply to the National Endowment for the Arts for this set, to have for their schools. And if anybody is interested in looking to see what these 40 iconic pictures are, you can get on their website, which is www.PicturingAmerica.NEH.gov — that’s g-o-v.
Q And we’ll put that on our website as well.
MRS. BUSH: Good. So I hope people will look at it, because I think they’ll find it very, very interesting. They’re classic pictures that people recognize, like “Washington Crossing the Delaware,” for instance.
Q Right. We don’t have a lot of time left, but I’m curious, because we’re only 10 weeks away now from a big moment in your daughter’s life. Jenna and Henry are going to get married. How are the wedding plans coming?
