Fred Wilson, Mining The Museum

17th Century Cabinet of Curiosity

"The Peale Museum was awunderkammer of the first order, and its famous mastodon skeleton can be seen looming in the shadows behind the curtain.  Peale financed scientific expeditions to collect natural history specimens for his marvelous museum, which was eventually sold to P.T. Barnum and fellow showman Moses Kimbell, who had previously collaborated to exploit "a curiosity supposed to be a mermaid" but which was in fact a clever fake."Charles Wilson Peale, 1822, self-portriat, The Artist in his Museum.  Source link here.

The Louvre Museum.  Website link here.

Link here to read an interview with Wilson at The Hood Museum.

"Beyond the institutional critique he offers, Wilson makes objects speak, in a post-Duchampian way, not so much by creating new thoughts for objects and images (which is what the great Marcel liked to say he was doing), but by revealing the meanings these objects and images already have. But it isn’t all analysis. Wilson now has a language through which truth pushes him beyond analysis." From the article How Objects Get Their Meaning by John Perreault.  Link here to read article.

From the exhibition Legacies: Contemporary Artists Reflect on Slavery.  Link here.

Is This Person An Artist?

The Sistine Chapel.  Painted between 1508 and 1512.  Michelangelo.

Vatican Museums. For more on Sistine Chapel link here.

Marcel Duchamp. Dada.  World War I.  Zurich.  Protest. Anarchists.  

1917.  Cover of first publication. International Dada Archive at The University of Iowa Libraries.  Link here.

Silhouette Narrative Presentations

Thursday, December 1.  Presentations 5:00 -6:30.  Food and drink 6:30 - 7:00.

Meet first floor Keenan at 5:00.  We will begin presentations here.  Each of you will stand next to your completed silhouette and discuss your topic.  The written information and research I am asking you to prepare (see below) will help you put together a verbal presentation.

At 6:30 we will walk over to the Student Center for food and drink.

Due the day of presentation.  All work typed (unless you already completed outline for the article, A Short History of The Shadow, with pencil and paper)
1.) Cover Sheet - Title of your silhouette narrative should appear in large type.  Smaller type, underneath title - Your Name, Silhouette Narrative, Fall 2011, LC ART 218 and HIS 205.  Feel free to include imagery on the cover sheet.
2.) Outline of article, A Short History of The Shadow.
3.) One page response to Kara Walker's work.
4.) Research for your chosen silhouette topic.  First, state your topic and describe what you are visually depicting with the silhouette forms.  Second, introduce events that occurred prior to your chosen topic and discuss how these events influenced the topic you have chosen.  Select at least two events - one event is from Visual Culture course content and the other is from American History course content.  Time Line that you made will help you here.

Silhouette Narrative Installation Schedule, Fall 2011

Russell Maycumber is the woodshop manager for the art department.  Russell will meet each group at the time and location indicated below.  Please arrive on time and help each other install so each group can finish in an hour.

IMPORTANT - Your Silhouette Narrative must be ready to install in the frame.  This means all images are glued/taped to white paper.  If you are not ready to install when meeting with Russell an automatic zero is assigned to you for this project.  No exceptions.

-Most of you will not have to trim the white paper to fit in frame - it should just fold over when installing in the frame.  If a trim is needed, do it when installing with Russell so you are sure not to cut too much off.
-Russell will come prepared with two power drills.
-Each of you are to come prepared with scissors, tape/glue - in case a paper trim is needed or a silhouette form has fallen off.


Friday, November 18, 10:00 to 10:30 - Second Floor (Mitch, Brendan, Jesse), Meet Russell on the second floor in Keenan at 10:00.

Monday, November 21, 1:00 - 2:00 - Third Floor (Danielle, Josh, Kiara, Nicholas, Meghan, Kelsey, Alyssa M., Mary and Sara (4th floor)), Meet Russell on the third floor in Keenan at 1:00.

Tuesday, November 22, 10:00 - 11:00 - Fourth Floor (Jared, Rachel M. Darlene, Maximo), Meet Russell on the fourth floor of Keenan at 10:00.

Tuesday, November 22, 1:00 - 2:00 - First Floor (Sequoia, Rachel C. Marco, Elizabeth, Brenda, Alyssa W. and Kristin (4th floor)), Meet Russell on the fourth floor of Keenan at 1:00.

Kingsley Plantation

Frieze

Parthenon, Greece, 438 B.C.,  marble, Greek Goddess Athena.

The Antiquities of Athens.  Link here. 

Society of Dilettanti, 1732, London, Greek and Roman art, expedition 1751.  

Thomas Jefferson, United States Capitol.

Greek Revival - Thomas Jefferson, late 18th and early 19th centuries, N. Europe and U.S.
Forks of Cypress, Alabama.  Construction complete 1830.

Kingsley Plantation, Visit Nov. 5, 2011

Homework:

Select an article from below.  Write a vocabulary list, an outline for your chosen article and a one page response paper. All work is to be typed.

The articles appear on Jerome S. Handler's website.  If for any reason the article link does not connect you, I have provided the main web page link below.

"This website brings together a selected list of my publications which have appeared since the early 1960’s in widely scattered sources. These publications treat a variety of topics dealing with slavery in Barbados and the Atlantic World as well as some aspects of production activities in modern rural Barbados."  Jerome. S. Handler. Link here.  

2009  (J.S. Handler and K. E. Hayes), Escrava Anastácia: The Iconographic History of a Brazilian Popular Saint.  African Diaspora: Journal of Transnational Africa in a Global World 2: 1-27.

This article describes the transformation of an image depicting an unnamed, enslaved African man wearing a metal facemask, a common form of punishment in colonial Brazil, into the iconic representation of the martyred slave Anastácia/Anastasia, the focus of a growing religious and political movement in Brazil. The authors trace the image to an early 19th century engraving based on a drawing by the Frenchman Jacques Arago. Well over a century later, Arago’s image increasingly became associated with a corpus of myths describing the virtuous suffering and painful death of a female slave named Anastácia. By the 1990s, Arago’s image (and variations of it), now identified as the martyred Anastácia/Anastasia, had proliferated throughout Brazil, an object of devotion for Catholics and practitioners of Umbanda, as well as a symbol of black pride.  Link here for article.

2009  The Middle Passage and the Material Culture of Captive Africans.  Slavery and Abolition 30: 1-26.

Scholars of the Atlantic slave trade have not systematically addressed the question of what material objects or personal belongings captive Africans took aboard the slave ships and what goods they may have acquired on the Middle Passage. This topic has implications for the archaeology of African descendant sites in the New World and the transmission of African material culture. This paper reviews the evidence for clothing, metal, bead, and other jewelry, amulets, tobacco pipes, musical instruments, and gaming materials. In so doing, the paper provides an empirical foundation for the severe limitations placed upon enslaved Africans in transporting their material culture to the New World.  Link here for article.

2009   (J. S. Handler and S. Bergman), Vernacular Houses and Domestic Material Culture on Barbados Sugar Plantations, 1650-1838.  Jl of Caribbean History 43: 1-36.

This paper describes the houses and household furnishings of the enslaved people on Barbadian sugar plantations, and traces the development and changes in architectural forms, including wattle-and-daub, stone, and wooden plank dwellings, over the several centuries of slavery on the island. We also treat the housing policies of plantation owners/managers, and explore possible Afncan and European cultural influences on the Barbadian vernacular housing tradition that emerged during the period of slavery.  Link here for article.