Editor’s Note

Abstract

Previous articleNext article FreeEditor’s NotePDFPDF PLUSFull Text Add to favoritesDownload CitationTrack CitationsPermissionsReprints Share onFacebookTwitterLinked InRedditEmailQR Code SectionsMoreThis issue of the journal is dedicated to Richard J. Wattenmaker (1941–2017), who served as director of the Archives from 1990 to 2005. Described by colleagues as both intensely serious and wickedly funny, Richard’s scholarly interests were wide-ranging, encompassing American modernism, wrought iron, and the collections of Albert C. Barnes. It was under his direction that the Archives united under one roof its collections and administrative operations. He also initiated the ongoing efforts to digitize the Archives’ collections, a project supported by the Terra Foundation for American Art. That ambitious endeavor has given scholars around the world access to our vast holdings, and makes possible so much of the work featured in this journal.This fall our “New Research” showcases the Archives’ sweeping scope, with essays on sculptures of American Indians from the turn of the twentieth century, a traveling altarpiece painted during World War II, and a conceptual artwork that took the form of a 1969 black-tie giveaway. Each author attends to period criticism, reanimating it with questions about the politics of American art. Emily C. Burns, for example, asks what it would mean to read Cyrus Dallin’s sculptures as challenging dominant narratives about native subjectivity and Western expansion. Winner of the 2016 Graduate Research Essay Prize, funded by the Dedalus Foundation, Jeffrey Richmond-Moll examines how the religious art of pacifist Violet Oakley contributed to the politicized war effort. Finally, Joan Kee argues that, with his Giveaway, the Washington Color School’s Gene Davis and his collaborators returned to artists the power to determine the aesthetic and market value of their work.Following on our recent explorations of artists’ diaries and citizenship papers, “Archive Matters” features Catherine Zuromskis’s reading of snapshots and other archival photographs. We also present in this issue our second commission in the “Art Work” section: a richly layered exploration of artistic influence, gendered labor, the body, and so much more. Introduced by Smithsonian curator Karen Lemmey, the artwork by sculptor Lily Cox-Richard invokes numerous oral histories and collections at the Archives, among them the Art Foundry and Art Foundry Editions Records and the Hiram Powers Papers. Previous articleNext article DetailsFiguresReferencesCited by Archives of American Art Journal Volume 57, Number 1Spring 2018 Sponsored by the Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution Article DOIhttps://doi.org/10.1086/698332 © 2018 by The Smithsonian Institution. All rights reserved.PDF download Crossref reports no articles citing this article.