 Grant Woods, agrarian landscapes, myth, memory and control in an edited volume entitled Formations of Identity, Society, Politics and Landscapes. So welcome to our community of scholars Alison and we look forward to your presentation. So please take it away. Thank you so much Ulrika. So I'm going to start sharing my screen and please tell me if I've done that successfully. Yes, it looks great. Great. All right, we're going to get started. So good afternoon everyone and welcome to this virtual tour of Renolda House Museum of American Art and its collections. This tour is called a Walk and Learn event and I dearly wish that we could be walking through the museum. We hope to be able to do that soon. Today we're going to look at Renolda's fine art collection and preview our temporary exhibition of Tiffany Glass and I will focus on international cross currents, cultural exchange and immigration. So Renolda is the 1917 home of RJ and Catherine Reynolds in Winston Salem, North Carolina. In the mid 1960s their granddaughter Barbara Babcock Millhouse turned Renolda into a museum of American art. With family money she bought nine American paintings. This was a very unusual choice for her to make. In the 1960s almost no art collectors and very few museums collected American art. They bought French Impressionism or Modern Abstraction. So it was very daring and unexpected for Barbara to buy American paintings, many from the 18th or 19th centuries. This is an image of Barbara standing in front of Renolda's 1847 painting Home in the Woods by Thomas Cole. Today the fine art collection contains about 200 objects. We will start with earliest paintings in the collection, our 18th century portraits. And indeed the earliest painting in the collection is by an immigrant Jeremiah Theos who emigrated from Switzerland to Charleston in the mid 18th century. He advertised in Charleston papers that he would paint sitters in his studio or in town or could visit sitters homes out in the country. Elizabeth Alston Lynch was the wife of Thomas Lynch, owner of Hapsui Plantation in Georgetown, South Carolina. And interestingly Elizabeth probably did not own the dress that she is wearing in this portrait. He is based his painting on a mesotent of an English Duchess and Elizabeth Lynch likely would have been very flattered by the comparison. And incidentally Elizabeth was the mother of a signer of the Declaration of Independence. Joseph Blackburn was also an immigrant this time from England. He arrived in Bermuda in 1752 and then settled in New England. He likely painted this portrait of Elizabeth Brown Rogers on the occasion of her marriage to Major Robert Rogers, a dashing military hero in the King's army. Alas the couple's happiness was short-lived. Major Rogers was accused of treason to the British crown in 1767 and Betsy eventually divorced him, a very unusual step in the 18th century. American born John Singleton Copley was the most talented of the colonial era portrait painters. He probably learned the rudiments of drawing from his stepfather, a mesotent engraver, and he taught himself anatomy. Here his subject is John Spooner, a Boston merchant. One of the singular aspects of colonial portraiture in New England is that the colonists preferred that the artists represent them accurately rather than flatter them. Thus you can see the stubble on Spooner's cheek and a slight dimple that one scholar has called a mark of personhood. In other words, a mark of Spooner's identity. Unfortunately, both Copley the artist and Spooner the subject were on the wrong side of the revolution. In fact, it was Copley's father-in-law's tea that was dumped in the Boston harbor. Copley and Spooner both fled for England, never to return. Like Copley, Gilbert Stewart was born in America but spent several years in England studying with the court painter Benjamin West. Here the artist is American but the subjects are not. Stewart painted this portrait of two young cousins in Dublin. Anna Dorothea Foster on the right was the daughter of the Irish speaker of the house John Foster. She is depicted engaged in a form of needlework called tambour work while her younger cousin holds the pattern for her to follow. Although the girls are quite young teenagers, this demonstration of skill and refinement was meant to advertise their suitability for eventual marriage and motherhood. And this painting is the most recent addition to the collection, having been given to Renault the house just this year by Charlotte Haynes and we are thrilled to have it. Americans had a strong sense of the unique nature of their new land, its vastness and its exotic new species of flora and fauna. John James Audubon was one of the first American artists to document the country's native species. Born in what is now Haiti and raised in France, he immigrated to the United States in 1803. His most significant project was The Birds of America, a bound volume of 435 engraved plates, including this print, Bachman's Warbler. Bachman's Warbler was native to the southeastern United States. It is believed to be extinct now, making Audubon's meticulous rendering even more valuable. The best known American art movement of the 19th century was dubbed the Hudson River School. An English-born Thomas Cole was considered its unofficial founder. Cole established the practice of walking out into the wilderness, sketching studies directly from nature, and then using those studies to create large-scale paintings depicting vast vistas and dramatic views. Home in the Woods is one of his last paintings. Here a family has moved into the White Mountains of New Hampshire, cleared land for a cabin, and settled in the remote area. In the painting the father brings home to his family a fresh patch for supper. Cole believed in the value of white settlers expanding across the country but felt troubled about the loss of pristine places such as these mountains. In an essay he decried the ravages of the axe and he placed an axe right in the middle of the painting. I'm going to point it out right there. It's hard to see but it's right there, plunged into that log. Cole's only student was Frederick Edwin Church. From Cole he learned and adapted the practice of making sketches directly from nature and turning the sketches into panoramic, idealized landscapes that were composites of different motifs he observed in nature. Inspired by the writings of the German naturalist Alexander von Humboldt, Church traveled to South America in 1853 and spent several months sketching there. He returned to New York and spent two years making large-scale paintings based on his sketches. Renoldus Andes of Ecuador is the largest and most ambitious of Church's first South American paintings. Created during the debate between science and religion that would lead to the publication of the origin of species in 1859, the painting is Church's testimonial that science and religion can coexist. Indeed he asserted that all of the diversity of flora and fauna present in the painting were just more evidence of the magnificence of God's creation. And it's difficult to see in the slide but right down here in the corner he has a stone cross wrapped in vines so it's religion literally wrapped in nature. If Cole claimed New England and Church South America and later the Middle East, Albert Bierstadt claimed California. Born in Germany, Bierstadt came to the United States as a child but he returned to Germany as an adult to study at the prestigious art academy in Düsseldorf. Returning to the United States, Bierstadt made his first trip west in 1859. He began capturing views of the west intended for an eastern audience who would likely never see them in person. The Sierra Nevada mountain range in California was the biggest impediment to the completion of the transcontinental railroad. The first time Bierstadt traveled to San Francisco he went over these mountains in a stagecoach. The second time the trip that inspired this painting he went through them on a train. In the view of 19th century Americans man's ingenuity had overcome nature's obstacles but here he still portrayed the setting as unspoiled and pristine. The Hudson River school artists took particular pride in the vibrant colors of an American autumn. Thomas Cole wrote there's one season when the American forest surpasses all the world in gorgeousness that is the autumnal. Then every hill and dale is riant in the luxury of color. Every hue is there from the liveliest green to deepest purple from the most golden yellow to the intense crimson. Jasper Francis Cropsey specialized in fall time scenes. In fact exhibiting abroad Cropsey was challenged about the brilliance of his autumn scenes. In response he sent to America for a vibrant tree branch and tacked it up in the gallery next to his paintings. If Americans were insecure about the youth of their country and their lack of ancient structures they took particular pride in their natural formations. The natural bridge in Virginia stood on land once owned by Thomas Jefferson and the formation itself was surveyed by George Washington. Painted just a year before the country would become embroiled in a bitter civil war this bucolic scene betrays no hint of turmoil. Incidentally the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts is planning an exhibition on the natural bridge and they have selected Reynolds's painting as the cover for the book. Severin Rosen immigrated from Germany to the United States sometime around 1847. It was long assumed that he was fleeing the political unrest that led to the revolutions of 1848 but in 2012 a fellow art historian uncovered the less than noble reason for his flight. Rosen had been accused of fraud. The artist settled in Pennsylvania and began specializing in large-scale still life paintings of flowers and fruit. Reynolds's Rosen is a fiction. It depicts a riot of flowers which never would have bloomed at the same time. Summer hollyhocks and spring tulips. The eggs may be a symbol of hope and the eggs are right down here, may be a symbol of hope and rebirth following the civil war. Martin Johnson Heed also specialized in flowers but specifically the interaction between flowers and hummingbirds. He wrote, a few years after my first appearance in this breathtaking world I was attacked by the all-absorbing hummingbird craze and it has never left me since. In 1863 he traveled to Brazil where he could observe dozens more species of the bird than he could in America. Captured in vivid color the hummingbirds flit about in a misty jungle. He'd emphasized their roles as pollinators by highlighting their long beaks and the deep trumpet-like shape of the orchids column. We will now turn our focus to works of art that tell stories that have some sort of narrative content often with a moralizing message. Pennsylvania native Edward Hicks was self-taught. He made over 60 paintings in what he called his peaceable kingdom series. Hicks was a Quaker and these paintings were created during a schizo in the Quaker church. The paintings are pleased for reconciliation. In them we see lions and lambs lying down together. This is also the only painting in Rinalda's collection that includes a depiction of Native Americans and it's hard to see but it's right down here. This is a group of people. In a tiny vignette in the distance Hicks included an image of William Penn offering a treaty to the Native Americans. The scene takes place under the arch of the natural bridge which we saw in David Johnson's landscape. So Hicks just moved the natural bridge from Virginia to Pennsylvania. William Sidney mounts the card players presents us with a puzzling sight. Two men playing cards in a dilapidated building. Certain details offer clues to the painting's meaning. There is a jug under the table. There are also coins on the table so they are both drinking and gambling. All around them the roof is caved in the window panes are shattered and the hearth the heart of the home is crumbling. Rather than making repairs to this structure the two are opting for a get-rich-quick scheme. This type of art called genre art often included examples of poorer behavior as cautionary tales. In Mexican news a group of people has gathered to hear news from the Mexican American war. Under the shelter of the American hotel's porch a group of white men listen to the news. One of the outcomes will be decisions about which of the new states and territories being added to the country will be free or slave states. All of the men gathered on the porch can participate in determining that outcome because they can vote. But deny the shelter of the porch are African Americans and a woman who's leaning out of a window. She's back here. They cannot participate because they cannot vote and therefore they do not receive the protection of the democratic process. In the county election we witness a messy and chaotic scene. Men have gathered to vote drawn in part by the large barrel of cider in the lower left. This is how you got people to the polls in the 19th century. A man on the right has been bandaged as if he has been in a fight. One man is slumped over clearly having had too much to drink but he is still being dragged up the steps to pledge his vote. Despite the chaos the artist George Caleb Bingham admired the democratic process and even held office himself. He may have been reacting to the European revolutions of 1848 and asserting that despite its messy nature democracy is the most perfect form of government. Maine native Eastman Johnson spent six years studying in Germany, the Netherlands and France, refining his painting style and becoming one of the best trained American artists before the Civil War. During the Civil War he returned to Maine every late winter to observe the community rituals around the sugaring off, the tapping of maple trees for sap, sugar and syrup. Johnson made several studies of the characters who attended the sugaring off parties. Here he focused on a diverse group including a bombastic storyteller, a little boy who humorously imitates him, a very old woman and two young women who ignore the others as they converse with each other. There may have been a political message in the sugaring off pictures as well as maple syrup was used as a sweetener in the north as a way of avoiding southern cane sugar during the war. One of Eastman Johnson's art instructors in Germany was Emmanuel Loitz, an artist who lived in both Germany and America. He is best known for the mammoth painting of Washington Crossing the Delaware. Here he is painting on a small scale creating a portrait of his friend and fellow artist Worthington Whitridge. Notice the way that the light falls on Whitridge's head, the source of his genius, in his hand the source of his talent. The setting is significant. The artists are in the 10th Street Studio building, the first building in America dedicated to artist studios. The building was a symbol of the growing professionalization of art in the United States. Elehu Vetter was a native New Yorker but he spent almost all of his career in Italy. Vetter created Dancing Girl during a period of time when artists of the West felt new influences from the Middle East. The woman in the painting is meant to be an entertainer. She wears an elaborate gown and embroidered slippers and holds a tambourine. At her feet are bowls and sticks for juggling. In the lower right corner a wheel of fortune adds a dark note to the painting. The arrow points to a skull, a reminder that youth and beauty are fleeting both for the Dancing Girl and for the viewer. William Merritt Chase once exclaimed, my God I'd rather go to Europe than go to heaven. The artist studied in Munich for six years and later in life took yearly summer tours of Europe. At home he practiced an American version of Impressionism. The sitter in this painting has variously been described as one of Chase's sisters-in-law but her identity is less important than her fashionable dress in the refined setting. She is seated in Chase's studio in the 10th Street Studio building. She is surrounded by exotic object art that Chase collected on his travels, a Buddha figurine, an Italian roundel, several vases and newers. Chase staged his studio to showcase his exquisite taste and the young woman's perusal of fine art prints emphasizes his message. Winslow Homer began his career painting images from the Civil War but soon turned to more picturesque subjects such as children sailing or young farm girls in sunny fields. But in 1881 some mysterious crisis seems to have afflicted him and his work turned darker. He traveled to color codes England and stayed for two years. In England he consistently depicted people who made their living by the sea, fishermen and their families. In watching from the cliffs a woman holding a baby, a young girl, look out over the ocean presumably waiting for the return of a ship with the man of the family. The elemental struggle of man against nature became the dominant theme of Homer's work for the rest of his life. Thomas Hovindan immigrated from Ireland as a young man, eventually settling in Pennsylvania. When he married the artist Helen Corson they settled at her family home in Plymouth meeting once a headquarters for the abolition movement. A local African-American handyman Samuel Jones became one of Hovindan's favorite models. Demo's good old days is a complex image. On one hand, Hovindan portrayed Jones with dignity and grace elevated above the viewer and with a kindly countness. On the other Jones wears tattered clothes and he's depicted with a banjo intimating that he is obligated to entertain. Finally, Hovindan's use of slang for the title makes it seem like it has been uttered in Jones' voice when it was most certainly invented by the artist. Entering the 20th century we encounter the work of John Sloan. Sloan was a member of the unofficial group called the Ashkan School. Ashkan School artists trained as newspaper illustrators and drew upon that history to make quick sketches of life on the streets of New York City. In Girl and Beggar a woman who contemporary viewers would recognize as a prostitute stands on a street at night. Next to her a man with a wooden leg sits on the sidewalk with a box for coins. It is cold and they both wear heavy coats. Their attention has been attracted by a sound at left perhaps someone approaching. Who will benefit from the person poised to walk into the frame? Sloan leaves the question unanswered. Thomas Hart Benton and other artists called regionalists saw cities as corrupting influences and the country's heartland as the best inspiration for artists. In his large-scale painting Bootleggers he portrayed the shady world of a legally trafficked liquor during prohibition. At left a wealthy man peels bills out of his wallet as a bootlegger lifts bottles out of a crate. Another man loads more crates onto a plane. In the center a robbery takes place before indifferent police. Planes and trains thought by many to usher in progress here are employed by malicious actors. To drive this point home the train at the top spews toxic red smoke into the air. Benton's fellow regionalist Grant Wood here reveals the benefits of living in the country. A verdant green landscape with man working in harmony with nature to produce the harvest. Despite the glowing green hills and sunny sky the context for this painting is complex and troubled. Painted in 1936 spring turning was produced in the midst of the Great Depression. Furthermore Iowa where the painting was created had suffered terrible droughts and storms for years. As a result farmers were often forced into foreclosure leading to political unrest throughout the state. Wood wiped all of that messiness away in favor of a rural utopia. He painted a memory from his youth and a myth divorced from reality. And he used the stylized geometric squares draped over the hills to control a landscape that was very much out of control. And finally we come to the work of American artists who embrace the trends of modernism and after more than 30 slides we finally have our first work by a woman. Mary Cassaud was the most successful American impressionist. She was born in Pennsylvania but lived most of her life in France. She was the only American to exhibit with the French impressionists. As a single woman she could not frequent the cafes that were the frequent subjects of her male colleagues. So she often painted tender domestic scenes such as this one. Madame Gaillard and her daughter Marie Therese are depicted close together on the same level and linked by their shiny black dresses and serious expressions. Interestingly these figures were once wrongly identified until an art historian at the Art Institute of Chicago corrected their names and identities. Living and working in France in the late 19th century, child has some fully embraced impressionism. Giant magnolias is composed of discrete individual dabs of paint that are not blended together to create a realistic image. The result is that the viewer perceives the painting as a work of art rather than a window onto reality. The dropped leaves on the table are a memento mori, a reminder to the viewer that even the luscious blossoms will ultimately perish. Russian born Abraham Walkowitz was a member of the group of American modernists who often exhibited at the gallery of photographer Alfred Stieglitz. In 1908, Walkowitz first witnessed a performance of the modern dancer Isadora Duncan. He became obsessed with her and it is believed that he created over 5,000 drawings of her. Each drawing is said to represent a unique pose or movement. Reynolds Walkowitz was executed in the fluid black lines laid over with orange and green pencil. Walkowitz said of Duncan, she was amused, she had no laws, she didn't dance according to rules, she created, her body was music. Like Walkowitz, Georgia O'Keefe was a member of the circle around modernist photographer Alfred Stieglitz. He was the first to exhibit her work in New York and the two eventually married. O'Keefe created Pool in the Woods Lake George near the Stieglitz family home in upstate New York. 1922 was a pivotal year for O'Keefe. It was the year that she converted an old shed near the Stieglitz home into a painting studio, giving her peace and solitude to paint. Pool in the Woods depicts a forest and mountains reflected in the lake. The radiating bands enclose a secret secluded and very private orb at the center of the painting. The Cubist artist Lionel Feininger was born in New York, but spent most of his life in Germany. Church at Heiligenhafen was created in northern Germany in a town on the Baltic Sea. Feininger was inspired by the simple old buildings and the clear northern light. Here he fragmented form and simplified planes to create a Cubist interpretation of the town church and its reflection in water. He bathed the sky in a glowing almost celestial light. Joseph Stella was born in Italy but immigrated to the United States at age 18. In New York, he created some of the most progressive and avant-garde paintings of the early 20th century, often inspired by the built environment, Coney Island or the Brooklyn Bridge. He painted tree cactus moon during a long return trip to his native Italy. Whether inspired by the dry dusty landscape of his hometown, Murilucano or by a period of time spent painting on the island of Capri, the painting conveys a sense of natural exoticism that sets it markedly apart from the futurist cityscapes he had produced in New York. The African-American artist Horace Pippin had a decidedly unusual technique for producing art. Pippin sustained an injury to his arm during combat in World War I. He adapted by clamping a fire poker under his injured arm, heating the poker in the fire, and then using his other hand to guide the poker to incise lines on wooden panels. He then filled in the shapes with paint. The whipping is one of Pippin's grimest subjects. A white man whips a faceless African-American figure who is tied to a post, while another ghoulish white man looks on. The painting may reflect Pippin's bitterness that having served his country, he still faced discrimination in 1940s America. American artists had begun experimenting with abstraction as early as the nineteen teens, but the 1940s really saw the movement take off. Stuart Davis took inspiration from the visual onslaught all around him in New York City and abstracted elements of the urban environment and brightly colored dynamic paintings. For internal use only was Davis' tribute to his friend Pete Mondrian, the Dutch modernist famous for his paintings of black and white grids filled with primary colors. Mondrian had died the year before. Davis and Mondrian had often visited jazz clubs together, and the artist included piano keys and other symbolic objects in the painting, but he tweaked Mondrian's iconic style by adding secondary colors and skewing his angles and lines. Following World War II, the focus of the art world shifted from Europe to America. In New York, a group of artists called the abstract expressionists began experimenting with completely non-representational art. They believed that the gesture to create the paint stroke was as important as the stroke itself. Lee Krasner was one of only a few women who embraced the movement. Krasner painted birth during the volatile period following the death of her husband, the artist Jackson Pollock. Krasner's violent slashes of paint reflect her rage. The palette of pinks and reds as well as the title may express her grief over never having had a child, but the title may also lead to her own rebirth following the death of her dominant husband. Born in Russia, Louise Nevelson emigrated to America and became a rarity in the art world, a female sculptor. The artist's reflections on her own work were often mystical in tone. Speaking to her friend, the playwright Edward Albee, she mused, when you square the circle, you are in a place of wisdom. Although this enigmatic statement reveals little of the artist's meaning, it clearly conveys her belief in the power of form. Full moon is a circle in a square. Within the circle, three-dimensional geometrical elements are juxtaposed with grooves and curves. The surface is matte and black, characteristic of her sculptural work. Here we have an example of abstract art in sculptural form. In recent years, Rinalda has made it a priority to diversify the collection, and for this reason, the last five works of art that we will examine are either bi-African-American artists or depict African-Americans. For builders number two, the artist Jacob Lawrence drew on a memory from his youth. He wrote, When I was 15 or 16, I was exposed to the workshop of these three brothers in Harlem, cabinet makers. I got to know them, and they got to know me. For me, tools became extensions of hands and movement. In builders number two, the visual play between hands and tools energizes the composition. Three hands are silhouetted against the bright yellow plank, and a freeze of tools runs across the top while another set trails down the central axis. The result is a lively and dynamic representation of African-American life and labor in the 1960s. Puerto Rican born Rinaldo Rocher-Rebel mined personal tragedies for his expressive paintings. When he was a teenager, he witnessed his brother shoot their sister. And the black man always hides his left hand. A tormented figure occupies a compressed space. He has cut off his left hand, left being the sinister hand, and hidden it away in a nest deep within his torso. The figure may represent the artist's brother who committed a sinister act, or it may represent the artist himself tortured by the memory. The self-taught artist, Thornton Dial, worked for years in blue collar jobs in Bessemer, Alabama, but he always felt compelled to create. Dial used everyday objects to compose his work. Crying in the jungle crying for jobs is composed of found objects including roots and rope bonded to canvas mounted on board with areas of painted faces and figures. Dial's use of rope is particularly poignant given the tragic association of ropes flinching in the south. The artist used his work to call attention to economic inequality and racial injustice. Martin Perrier was best known as a sculptor, but in 2000 he was commissioned to create a series of prints for a new edition of the Harlem Renaissance novel, Cain. Cain by Gene Tumer tells the stories of several African American female characters, mostly in the south. In AV's story, AV and the narrator stroll the streets of Washington DC all night, ending their walk in a park. As the sun comes up, the narrator sees that AV has fallen asleep. Perrier abstracted AV's face, eye, nose and lips, lying motionless against the hillside as dawn breaks over the horizon. Photographer Julie Moose creates photographic series featuring pairs of people. For the Hat Ladies series, Moose was invited by a member of the new pilgrim Baptist church in Birmingham, Alabama to photograph women in the predominantly African American congregation who were celebrated for their elaborate hats. The pairing in Mrs. Rose and Mrs. Pleasant implies that there is a relationship between the two sitters that may or may not actually exist. Here are the hats demand attention, particularly the feathered creation worn by Mrs. Pleasant on the right. In fact, Mrs. Pleasant is known for arriving late for church services, creating a dramatic entrance that ensures that the full congregation will focus on her elegant attire. And finally, just a sneak peek at our fall exhibition, and you all are the first people to get to see these shots because it has actually been installed. This exhibition will open on October 6. Tiffany Glass painting with color and light features lamps and windows designed by Tiffany Studios. The lamps are brilliantly illuminated in a dark gallery so that they glow. Created in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, the lamps and windows have a particular resonance with the Reynolds era and Reynolds House. Louis Comfort Tiffany began his career as a painter, traveling in the Middle East and painting the exotic scenes he saw there. Although he eventually turned primarily to glass, catering to growing upper and middle classes, classes eager for luxury goods to decorate their houses, the architectural designs he saw in North Africa continued to resonate in his work. The exhibition also highlights the significant role that women played in designs for the lamps and windows and includes an intriguing section on spotting Tiffany forgeries. So if you are in Winston Salem, please visit Reynolds' website and get your time tickets to visit the museum. We are so happy that we will be open again. Thank you. Many of these paintings are like old friends and it's just so wonderful to meet my friends again. Thank you on a very personal note for this delightful tour and congratulations on your new exhibit and congratulations on reopening. We are all starving to get out and have a real life again, it feels. Alison, this was a much needed context. It helped us clarify our categories of analysis, our hermeneutics if you wish. You moved us through three big domains starting with the colonial period and the dominance of colonial portraits, searching for individuality. Then you moved us to a unique take by immigrants on landscapes, on nature as it experienced colonial settler activities, the railroad being built in California, the timber harvestings and seeing really native peoples disappearing into the distant or in the corners. I think of the peaceable kingdom painting and I think it's no accident that they're so small in the back and then you move us to powerful storytelling in the arts and first women artists make an appearance and the unique language of African American art, reconceptualizing African American experiences through this medium. This is a some segue into our questions and we have quite a bit of time and so I invite all my fellow viewers to ask us any questions and we already got wonderful feedback. Paul, thank you so much Paul for sharing that it was a great presentation and beautiful art and we all wish we could be with you Alison in the museum. Martha said that too. Caroline has three questions and one posting so let me read them to you Alison. Love your painting selections but what about American primitive art especially depicting the colonial area? Does Reynolds House have any of these paintings and any purchases from Native American artists? We do not and you know that is mostly based on Barbara Millhouse's collecting taste because she is the one who began the collection. That doesn't mean that we wouldn't consider works in those categories in the future. It just means that when Barbara began the collection in the 1960s these were the areas that she was interested in. Thank you so I'm waiting for more questions. Hope people type them up you're all welcome. Anything that evolves a question is fair game for us so please feel free to ask those. Grant do you have a question for us? You were the one who raised the question about the imaginary in the morning. We had a morning colloquium that we will share with you tomorrow during our panel discussion in terms of its results and Grant asked the question whether the imaginary and let me just loosely translate it into imagination there is more to that term but can the imagination help us understand more deeply social realities I think Grant would you be fair to say that that was what you were kind of searching for? Yeah a little bit so it had to do with gaps and holes in the archive when you're doing archival research and you're trying to find out some histories that have not been explored or that people have not focused on sometimes you encounter a gap and you wonder well what do I do with it I know there is a history here I know that there is a narrative here but how do we translate that that missing information to the public so that we can still say something about it it's visually absent like many histories of African descendants here in Salem and their stories the enslaved population in Salem and so how do we present those stories that are not whole and some theorists have argued that you know the the imaginary can help us do that and I think one of the paintings I can't remember the painter's name but I really enjoyed it was about the the Mexican-American war and the the way that that depicted the racial reality of United States one dominant culture was that the dominant narrative was that we get to celebrate how we continue to get to write the narrative of this country and it's very clear who sits on the periphery who sits on the outside but that painting was really powerful and that's somewhat of what I meant I mean if I show what that painter did is show the lack of agency the lack of the ability to contribute to a national narrative and that's that's kind of what we need to do in academia in our research in our scholarly studies when we encounter a hole like that we we can't just say nothing that's when I'm not saying fiction I'm not saying we create fiction but we have to somehow encounter the the imagination the imaginary and it is possible that that happens best in art and that is our that's one one of you know million ways that art can enrich our society yeah um I'm going to mention the name of a contemporary artist um Rinaldo does not have any work by him in our collection but I encourage you to google the name Titus Caffar the last name is K-A-P-H-A-R and he takes traditional 18th and 19th century portraits and kind of copies them but then imposes half of an African-American figure on the historical figure so he's telling us you know this person whose portrait has been passed down to us was standing on the backs of enslaved people so his work is really really interesting yeah thank you so much for for contributing that information and I have a message for one of our attendees and by accident I erased your question so Professor Lineback could you send it again please and um so we can answer it and in the meanwhile more questions came in and so here's one from Suzanne so let me read it so some of the landscapes church Bierstadt the elements seem overwhelming perhaps too fantastic what do you think and what does it say and you are an expert you just published published a study on society politics and landscapes so you are really so we are in in the right place for an answer yes um so when it comes to the church what's important to understand about that painting is that he didn't look out his hotel window one day when he was in Columbia or Ecuador and see that scene what he did was this process that I described of walking through the landscape and making sketches and then he goes back to New York and he spends two years taking those sketches and turning those sketches into the ideal composite landscape so he's going to have the palm trees from one sketch united with the mountain peaks from another sketch so that is not a scene that he could have seen so she's absolutely right it is completely fantastic when it comes to Bierstadt I think he had the Alps on his mind a little bit and because they're very those are very kind of pokey mountains so yes so the artists definitely you know it's it's it's not even I can't even say they took license they weren't even trying to create the scenes that they saw in front of them they were trying to do something else they had a different goal well I grew up in the foothills of the Alps and so whatever reminds me of the Alps I take it you know even if it shows up in American art but but so there is really an interesting way of in in this landscape painting of trying to reintegrate your immigrant identity perhaps I mean so so you bring something with you and you superimpose it on what you see around you and I think that's a really interesting cognitive move to make that we maybe want to think about you know as we discuss who is American and what is becoming American right okay so we have a few more questions coming in so let me pivot back to that so here's a question from Larry could you tell us more about how and when your advertex fits into his changing moods in his many peaceable kingdom genre paintings each version version seems to tell a different story yeah so as I said he did over 60 and so in some the child is smaller in some the child is bigger in some it's a you know kind of blasted landscape in some that you know it's a more flowering landscape so yeah they're very very complex images I don't know the series as well as I know our own painting but it is it is wonderful to have the other paintings because the other paintings in the series tell us something about our painting and I can't call it up again but one thing that I will tell you that I learned from studying the series as opposed to just studying our painting is that do you remember the lines of text that were on the border there are supposed to be two lines of text on each edge instead of one and at some point Reynolds painting was cut down and so when you look at other paintings in the series use you get the full verse and it makes a lot more sense so that's interesting suddenly there is a lot more we could talk about right I mean this Quaker aspect is also very interesting and you know did did did his changing spirituality spirituality is always something very dynamic maybe a change this interpretation of the peaceable kingdom maybe some external events that disturbed him so that's a really good question for you know for pursuing further yeah so thank you Alison so let's kind of see here um so here we have a question so by professor lineback that let me see okay it's a supposition okay let's kind of see what this is a supposition regarding the lack of American primitive art perhaps Barbara millhouse realized that American primitive had already been discovered and collected the Hudson landscapes however had not yet been rediscovered and she was at the forefront of those collectors what are your thoughts on that yeah I think that's exactly right um you know she Barbara you know she she she went to Smith and she took art history and she said that they had always been told that American art wasn't any good and it wasn't until she saw a portrait by Copley that she realized that it could be really wonderful and so she was living in New York and she had really really good advisors including one of the curators at the Met and so if there was a painting in a gallery that the Met wasn't interested in he would call Barbara and say you should really go down to Kennedy galleries and look at this beer stock or look at this Frederick Edwin church and that was how she began developing the collection so I think that's a really astute observation that American primitism primitism had already been discovered okay thank you Alison here's an interesting one I mean you spent some time on Thomas Cole's cabin in the woods and um there is a viewer by the name of Olivia welcome Olivia and Olivia teaches this painting in her classes and it surprised her that um some some kids thought it was this painting created a very safe and peaceful environment and and and that's how it affected them but then urban as she says urban kids reacted very differently so feeling very unsafe I assume um with that painting and so the question to you is Alison what was the 19th century reaction to that story being told in Thomas Cole's cabin in the woods um well Cole really kind of straddled um two different worlds there was the world where he was concerned about um these unspoiled places being settled but then there was the world that he had to make a living and that painting is really remarkable because you can really draw a diagonal line from the bottom left corner all the way up to the top right corner and divide it into settled and unsettled and so when 19th century businessmen who were the ones who were buying Cole's paintings when they looked at that painting they saw the country's limitless resources you know look at all of these pristine waterways look at all of that lumber that can be harvested to to you know build our factories and so he really kind of straddled both worlds and was able to express really you know complex and ambivalent feelings in that painting yeah thank you so one more question that I see here in our box and um there's really unusual landscape from about 1936 with these squares in these almost toxic you know this very intense green it seemed totally like plastic turf but this very very intense green field and as you said it was like this almost nostalgic sense of the good old times in this case truly you know and so the question is there is there any significance in the shapes that were superimposed on the green grass so that was how plowing was actually done they did those and Grant would recall his father plowing that way he said I would stand on the bluff of a hill and watch father or our farmhand carve great concentric squares into the ground unfortunately it's a very destructive way of plowing so what he's doing is he's turning over the earth for spring planting but those corners of the squares water would run right down them and cause you know erosion of of that land so it was not a beneficial way of farming but it was how they farmed when Grant Wood was a child and do you think he knew that he knew how harmful it was I don't think he did he just he saw he saw that time period and you know that that mode of life as as perfect utopia so again the tension between reality and her geography if you wish right and noel nostalgia and suffering in a way so we have one more question he kind of emphasized that oh the notice the clouds are square okay very good thank you Grant so what about the square clouds oh that's just you know it's interesting because when I was creating these categories Grant Wood is very much a storyteller so I wanted to include him in this storyteller section but I could have easily have included Thomas Hart Benton and Grant Wood in this section on the moderns because they are both as interested in form as they are in narrative so that would put them in the category of American moderns versus American storytellers so you know he just has this very stylized way of painting and you see it you know really throughout his work especially in the landscapes I mean his trees look like lollipops you know they're not supposed to look like actual trees he just has this very complex stylized way of painting and I think that's what explains the the weird oblong clouds thank you so I think that answered the question there's one more coming in yeah this this should really be okay just a comment excellent presentation and I'm looking at my my clock here so in closing Allison I would like you to have the last word well maybe okay another thank you from Tom so the last word what is your answer what is American about American art it's a really complex question and I tried to point out a couple of different ways that American art is American my point about the coply and the mark of personhood and the you know the person's identity being more important than having a flattering portrait that's very American especially in New England my point about 19th century Americans and their sense of the vastness of their land just how much they had that's very American about American art the fact that abstract expressionism was invented in America and caused the the focus of the art world to shift from Paris to New York that's very American about American art and you know the influence of jazz and that's not something that I really talked about but you know Stuart Davis was influenced by jazz in his painting another African-American artist Ramair Bearden was North Carolina native was influenced by jazz and his work so you know you know jazz was invented here and affected American art so you know it's not an easy answer it's a multi-faceted answer as we find with every topic in this conference and the longer we talk the more facets reveal themselves so Alison this closes our presentation with you thank you very very much we will be back with our colleagues at the Renolderhaus Museum of American Art tomorrow morning so we'll hear more about that we will also hear a little bit more from our colleague Phil Archer about the connection between the Moravians and Renolderhaus so we look forward to hearing about that we haven't talked about this yet and then I wish you a good break please do join us for tonight's keynote by Dr. W. Nell Curtin Roberts strengthening the connection between the Moravians and the Caribbean in all its complexity and we already had the Caribbean in the background a little bit in your presentation today Alison and some of the art and among some of the artists so we go much deeper with that tonight and please do join us for a wrap-up tomorrow morning where you hear what our scholars have cooped up in the mornings yesterday and this morning and with a summary by Professor John Sandsbach and then our concluding keynote which we all are looking forward to by Professor Catherine Fahl who will join us from the UK talking about the the 18th century spiritual memoirs so thank you so much everybody again thank you so much Alison has been a joy being with you and it gave us lots to lots to think about and so we thank you for that thank you Alison really thank you everybody come visit when you can for sure for sure so okay so goodbye I'm closing out the session see you tonight and take care and be safe bye bye