Office of Academic Appointments and Internships

2_1967.59.607R–V.jpg

Conserving Modern and Contemporary American Art

Research and conservation of paintings at the Lunder Conservation Center in Washington, DC.

Fig1_MGibbsposter_revised.jpg

MoMA’s first International Exhibition Three Centuries of American Art (1938)

With over 750 artworks on view in Paris ranging from seventeenth-century colonial portraits to Mickey Mouse in Steamboat Willie (1928) and spanning architecture, film, folk art, painting, prints, and sculpture, Three Centuries was the most comprehensive display of American art to date in Europe and a vital contributor to the internationalization of American art.

Amelia Joe-Chandler, Hogan Teapot, 2013. Hammered copper and cast silver. 7.5 x 11 x 9cm. National Museum of the American Indian, 26/9781. Photo courtesy of the artist, Amelia Joe-Chandler.

Steeped in Memory: Amelia Joe-Chandler’s Hogan Teapot at NMAI

Nestled in an archival box in the storage vaults of the National Museum of the American Indian, I encountered a small, copper sculpture that points to an entirely different sense of place. Hogan Teapot (2013) by Diné (Navajo) artist Amelia Joe-Chandler is a living homage to the idea of home—particularly her family’s home in Dinétah, the ancestral homelands of the Navajo Nation in the American Southwest. The brilliancy of the copper recalls the traditional form of the hogan, a dome-shaped structure with a log or stone framework that is traditionally covered with mud that hardens like rock. With a door outlined in silver on the side, the lid handle as a stove pipe, and a cast tree and two small sheep as the handle, Joe-Chandler’s sculpture changes the ubiquitous form of the teapot into a site of personal encounter through these allusions to her family’s home.

woman’s robes (munisak) - Arthur M. Sackler Gallery, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, DC: Gift of Guido Goldman, left: S2004.96; right: S2005.17.

The Power of Color: Using Synthetic Dyes as a Dating Tool for Museum Textiles

The desire to apply color to a surface is intrinsic to human nature and humans have searched for natural sources of color since prehistoric times. They found out that some minerals could be ground to obtain a fine powder, and this was the origin of the mineral pigments. But they also found out that some plants and animals (insects and mollusks) could yield color when mixed with hot water, and this was the origin of natural dyes. Pigments are suitable to be applied on surfaces by mixing them with a binding medium. Dyes can be applied to fibers in several ways in a water solution. This discovery led to one of the most spectacular forms of art and craftsmanship: dyed textiles.

Paul Lester Wiener and an unidentified advisor for the U.S. Pavilion murals

Reversing the Erasure of Native Contributions to Muralism

One document in particular has occupied my thoughts in the months since my visit: a newspaper clipping showing two men shaking hands. The men stand in front of Ulreich’s mural Indians Watching Stagecoach in the Distance (1940), which he painted for the post office in Columbia, MO. The man on the left is named in the caption as the 1937 U.S. pavilion’s architect, Paul Lester Wiener, while the one on the right, appearing in a feathered headdress, is identified simply as, “a Navajo Indian who gave his advice on the vast murals depicting Indian life and thought which are being painted by Buck [sic.] Ulreich for the outside of the skyscraper tower.” My goal, ultimately, is to identify this man. Yet even without this man’s identity, the photograph highlights an oft-overlooked aspect of twentieth-century American art: the essential contributions of Native Americans to the mural movement that overtook the United States in the years between World War I and World War II.

Dresden Star Medallion Quilt” by Emma Russell. Object no. 2007.5001.0002 Anacostia Community Museum, Smithsonian Institution.

These Quilts Are Richly Stitched with the Stories of the Women Who Made Them

When we think about art, what first comes to mind? Who is an artist? These questions guided my research as I gathered resources for a lesson exploring several quilts in the collection at the Anacostia Community Museum. Along the way, I uncovered some of the stories associated with the colorful designs, adding a layer of complexity to these pieces of art. What follows is just one example of the many ways we can explore how memory helps us engage with objects in museum collections.

Krystal Quiles, “Girlhood (It’s complicated).” Image courtesy of the National Museum of American History.

The Zine Teens Take on Girlhood

Each day, the National Museum of American History (NMAH) receives hundreds—sometimes thousands—of teenage visitors. Teens wearing bucket hats; groups in matching t-shirts; groups that are aggressively rude to staff in the elevators. But while the museum succeeds in many things, it does not necessarily engage well with youth

Categories
Archive