This anthology of essays on different critical approaches and methodologies for the analysis and interpretation of American art and artists is designed for students and teachers in American art history and American studies programs. It contains twenty selections from academic journals on American art from colonial times to 1940. Mary Ann Calo provides an introduction to the anthology, explaining its purpose and organization, and each selection has a brief introduction about its main focus and scholarly approach. These case studies show the diversity of scholarly thinking about interpreting American works of art, which should be useful for teachers and comprehensible and interesting for students.This anthology contains twenty articles on American art from colonial times to 1940. The selections are mainly from academic journals and aim to provide the student and teacher with different critical approaches and methodologies for the analysis and interpretation of American art and artists. Mary Ann Calo's preface to the anthology explains its purpose and organization, and each article will have a brief introduction about its main focus and scholarly approach.This text meets the need in American art history studies for an anthology of essays on critical approaches and methodologies.

"Distinction" "and Denial "challenges conventional theories of race and art by examining the role early twentieth-century art critics played in marginalizing African American artists. Mary Ann Calo dispels the myth of a unified African American artistic tradition through an engaging study of the germinal writing of Alain Locke and other significant critics of the era, who argued that African American artists were both a diverse group and a constituent element of America's cultural center. By documenting the effects of the "Negro aesthetic" on African American artists working in the interwar years, "Distinction" "and Denial "shows that black artistic production existed between the claims of a distinctly African American tradition and full inclusion into American modernist culture--never fully inside or outside the mainstream. "A major contribution to the scholarship of African American artists in the inter-war period. With scrupulous research and probing analyses, Calo's study enables scholars, students, and those interested in the Harlem Renaissance to grasp the intellectual debates, institutional support, and art world promotion that advanced an emerging cohort of African American artists." --Patricia Hills, Boston University "A careful, thorough, historically grounded study that builds a new and significant argument challenging conventional histories of African American art. Sure to become indispensable to any scholarly discussion of American art or African American cultural studies."--Helen Langa, American University Mary Ann Calo is Professor of Art History and Director of the Institute for the Creative and Performing Arts at Colgate University. She is author of "Bernard Berensonand the Twentieth Century" and editor of "Critical Issues in American Art: A Book of Readings,"

This anthology of essays on different critical approaches and methodologies for the analysis and interpretation of American art and artists is designed for students and teachers in American art history and American studies programs. It contains twenty selections from academic journals on American art from colonial times to 1940. Mary Ann Calo provides an introduction to the anthology, explaining its purpose and organization, and each selection has a brief introduction about its main focus and scholarly approach. These case studies show the diversity of scholarly thinking about interpreting American works of art, which should be useful for teachers and comprehensible and interesting for students.This anthology contains twenty articles on American art from colonial times to 1940. The selections are mainly from academic journals and aim to provide the student and teacher with different critical approaches and methodologies for the analysis and interpretation of American art and artists. Mary Ann Calo's preface to the anthology explains its purpose and organization, and each article will have a brief introduction about its main focus and scholarly approach.This text meets the need in American art history studies for an anthology of essays on critical approaches and methodologies.

This book examines the involvement of African American artists in the New Deal art programs of the 1930s. Emphasizing broader issues informed by the uniqueness of Black experience rather than individual artists’ works, Mary Ann Calo makes the case that the revolutionary vision of these federal art projects is best understood in the context of access to opportunity, mediated by the reality of racial segregation. Focusing primarily on the Federal Art Project (FAP) of the Works Progress Administration (WPA), Calo documents African American artists’ participation in community art centers in Harlem, in St. Louis, and throughout the South. She examines the internal workings of the Harlem Artists’ Guild, the Guild’s activities during the 1930s, and its alliances with other groups, such as the Artists’ Union and the National Negro Congress. Calo also explores African American artists’ representation in the exhibitions sponsored by WPA administrators and the critical reception of their work. In doing so, she elucidates the evolving meanings of the terms race, culture, and community in the interwar era. The book concludes with an essay by Jacqueline Francis on Black artists in the early 1940s, after the end of the FAP program. Presenting essential new archival information and important insights into the experiences of Black New Deal artists, this study expands the factual record and positions the cumulative evidence within the landscape of critical race studies. It will be welcomed by art historians and American studies scholars specializing in early twentieth-century race relations.