Caroline M. Riley | University of California, Davis (original) (raw)

Books by Caroline M. Riley

University of California Press, 2023

Three Centuries of American Art in 1938 was the Museum of Modern Art's first international exhibi... more Three Centuries of American Art in 1938 was the Museum of Modern Art's first international exhibition. With over 750 artworks on view in Paris, it was the most comprehensive display of American art to date in Europe and an important contributor to the internationalization of American art. MoMA Goes to Paris in 1938 explores how, at a time when the concept of artworks as "masterpieces" was very much up for debate, the exhibition expressed a vision of American art and culture that was not simply the rearticulation of prior surveys but an attempt at a new formulation. Caroline M. Riley demonstrates that the exhibition was not purely an art historical endeavor, but the work of nation building at the brink of international war in the politically turbulent 1930s, and the development of the idea that works of art can be diplomatic tools.

Anthology by Caroline M. Riley

What They Saw: Historical Photobooks by Women, 1843–1999, 2022

Presenting a diverse geographic and ethnic selection, the What They Saw anthology interprets hist... more Presenting a diverse geographic and ethnic selection, the What They Saw anthology interprets historical photobooks by women in the broadest sense possible: classic bound books, portfolios, personal albums, unpublished books, zines and scrapbooks. Some of the books documented are well-known publications such as Anna Atkins’ Photographs of British Algae: Cyanotype Impressions (1843-1853), Germaine Krull’s Métal (1928) and Diane Arbus: An Aperture Monograph (1972), while other books may be relatively unknown, such as Alice Seeley Harris’ The Camera and the Congo Crime (c. 1906), Varvara Stepanova’s Groznyi smekh. Okna Rosta (1932), Eslanda Cardozo Goode Robeson’s African Journey (1945), Fina Gómez Revenga’s Fotografías de Fina Gómez Revenga (1954), Eiko Yamazawa’s Far and Near (1962) and Gretta Alegre Sarfaty’s Auto-photos: Série transformações—1976: Diário de Uma Mulher—1977 (1978). Also addressed in the publication are the glaring gaps and omissions in current photobook history—in particular, the lack of access, support and funding for photobooks by non-Western women and women of color.

Articles by Caroline M. Riley

History of Photography, 2024

Photography by Thérèse Bonney (1894–1978) has appeared in exhibitions on women’s roles within mod... more Photography by Thérèse Bonney (1894–1978) has appeared in exhibitions on women’s roles within modernism and World War II, and research has been completed on aspects of her most famous publication: Europe’s Children (1943). Yet scholars have not grappled with the importance of her syndicated business, the Bonney Service, in the distribution of ideas around the globe, or how to reconcile her photographs of design with her later images of World War II. Her desire was to train the eye to feel the haptic qualities of her images and distinguish through careful looking her intertwining of materiality, identity and democratic values. She understood the need to share multiple images over a sustained time to convince people that her pictorial interpretation was accurate. As part of a larger book project rooted in a years-long investigation of Bonney’s archive, this article seeks to begin these complicated conversations about Bonney’s legacy in the USA and her artistic range, and to reinsert Bonney into the history of photography she helped canonise but in which she has since been minimised.

The Journal of Modern Craft,, 2015

Alice Austin (1862–1933) worked as a professional photographer in Boston from 1900 until 1933. ... more Alice Austin (1862–1933) worked as a professional photographer in Boston from 1900 until 1933. She joined Alfred Stieglitz’s Photo-Secessionists group in 1905 and worked as a committee member at the Boston Society of Arts and Crafts for approximately thirty years. This article considers how Austin’s professional persona reflects the larger intersection of craft, gender, and photography in Boston during the first quarter of the twentieth century.

In her capacity as artist and committee member, Austin emphasized craftsmanship—a concept that embodied both the handicraft tradition, in which it was permissible for women to take part, and Pictorialist fine art photography. The implication of this flexibility was profound for women such as Austin who were able to become professional photographers by aligning their artistic production with the larger handicraft tradition, thus placing photography within the domain of women’s work. Austin continued to argue for the intersection of craft and photography as a founding member of the Photography Guild at the Boston Society of Arts and Crafts after Pictorialist photography became outmoded with the rise of straight photography. Austin’s work was shown in at least thirteen exhibitions, including famed photographer Frances Benjamin Johnston’s show on women artists at the 1900 Parisian Exposition Universelle. Austin was also referenced in at least twenty-one different photographic journals and twenty-five newspaper articles and popular publications during her lifetime. Yet despite her successful career and her significant contributions to the development of photography and craft, Austin’s work has been overlooked by scholars.

Tate Gallery, 2018

Presented at the Tate Gallery in 1946, American Painting: From the Eighteenth Century to the Pres... more Presented at the Tate Gallery in 1946, American Painting: From the Eighteenth Century to the Present Day was the first international touring exhibition organised by the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C. It positioned American painting as a form of mutual cultural recovery for the two nations, while also subtly promoting the United States’ growing cultural authority in relation to war-shattered Britain.

Jonas Holman (1805–1873) was an itinerant portrait painter, who also worked as a Freewill Baptist... more Jonas Holman (1805–1873) was an itinerant portrait painter, who also worked as a Freewill Baptist pastor, a writer, an illustrator, and a doctor. He lived in southern Maine, Philadelphia, Boston, New York City, and North Stonington, Connecticut. This essay finds seeming contradictions in Holman’s artistic life, particularly in his relationship with his patrons, and in his painting style. From a review of Holman’s work emerges a more nuanced understanding of how an American itinerant portrait painter worked during the mid-nineteenth century. This article elaborates on the motivations behind Holman’s multiple occupations by examining in depth his work as a painter and his role as a pastor. Drawing from original research, including my investigations in Connecticut, Maine, Massachusetts, New York, Pennsylvania, and Virginia and my location of thirty-four signed or attributed works, the essay comments on Holman’s relationship with his patrons, whose occupations ranged from sea captain, to a farmer, to tin peddler, to wagon maker, to printer and at least three sitters who were members of his Freewill Baptist congregation. His patrons thus came from disparate occupations and were not necessarily followers of the same religious practices as Holman. Further, his diverse clientele led Holman to paint in both “folk” and “realistic” styles. This finding is striking because the prevailing academic literature would suggest that painting styles are determined by regions (i.e. rural or urban environments) or artistic ability. Instead, Holman reveals that painting style can be a function of patrons’ needs and preferences, particularly for itinerant artists. When establishing himself in each new city, Holman worked as a portrait painter before finding work as a doctor, or more often, as a pastor. Though he worked as a painter, Holman chose more often to list himself as a pastor or physician. Once he found permanent work as a pastor, it appears that he stopped painting portraits.

Book Reviews by Caroline M. Riley

Thesis/Dissertation by Caroline M. Riley

This dissertation examines the powerful role that museums played in constructing national art-his... more This dissertation examines the powerful role that museums played in constructing national art-historical narratives during the 1930s. By concentrating on Three Centuries of American Art—the 1938 exhibition organized by the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) for viewing in Paris—I argue that the intertwining of art, political diplomacy, and canon formation uncovered by an analysis of the exhibition reveals American art's unique role in supporting shared 1930s cultural ideologies. MoMA's curators created the most comprehensive exhibition to date of the history of American art with works from 1590 through 1938, and with over five hundred architectural models, drawings, films, paintings, photographs, prints, sculptures, and vernacular artworks. With World War II on the horizon, these artworks took on new meaning as the embodiment of the United States. Adding complexity to notions of display, five chapters trace in chronological order how curators, politicians, journalists and art critics reimagined American art in the display, canonization, and reception of Three Centuries of American Art.

Jonas Holman (1805–1873) was an itinerant portrait painter, who also worked as a Freewill Baptist... more Jonas Holman (1805–1873) was an itinerant portrait painter, who also worked as a Freewill Baptist pastor, a writer, an illustrator, and a doctor. He lived in southern Maine, Philadelphia, Boston, New York City, and North Stonington, Connecticut. This essay finds seeming contradictions in Holman’s artistic life, particularly in his relationship with his patrons, and in his painting style. From a review of Holman’s work emerges a more nuanced understanding of how an American itinerant portrait painter worked during the mid-nineteenth century. This essay elaborates on the motivations behind Holman’s multiple occupations by examining in depth his work as a painter and his role as a pastor. Drawing from original research, including my investigations in Connecticut, Maine, Massachusetts, New York, Pennsylvania, and Virginia and my location of thirty-four signed or attributed works, the essay comments on Holman’s relationship with his patrons, whose occupations ranged from sea captain, to a farmer, to tin peddler, to wagon maker, to printer and at least three sitters who were members of his Freewill Baptist congregation. His patrons thus came from disparate occupations and were not necessarily followers of the same religious practices as Holman. Further, his diverse clientele led Holman to paint in both “folk” and “realistic” styles. This finding is striking because the prevailing academic literature would suggest that painting styles are determined by regions (i.e. rural or urban environments) or artistic ability. Instead, Holman reveals that painting style can be a function of patrons’ needs and preferences, particularly for itinerant artists.

Scholarly Programming by Caroline M. Riley

In recent years, artists and museums have repeatedly grappled with the ethical and ideological di... more In recent years, artists and museums have repeatedly grappled with the ethical and ideological dilemmas posed by sponsorship from oil companies, pharmaceutical manufacturers and other multinational corporations. But even before the rise of museum sponsorship in the 1970s, the intersections between cultural, political and corporate power represented sites of persistent volatility. This panel seeks papers that provide a historical perspective on these issues, exploring how artists and museums navigated the challenges posed by earlier forms of corporate art collecting and patronage. How did the investment of prominent prewar companies such as Abbott Laboratories and Standard Oil engage the public relations challenges of their business practices? How did such businesses shape the meanings of artworks they supported? To what extent did artists understand these imperatives, and incorporate varied degrees of critique and/ or compliance within the works they contributed to commercial settings? Such questions illustrate the complex entanglements of artistic aspiration, business strategy, and the construction of the public good. These histories reveal the contributions of agents beyond the artist to the making and meaning of corporate art, including art directors, advertising creatives, and public relations advisors. This panel will endeavor to reconstruct how the ideological and ethical dilemmas of corporate art projects are manifest both in the artworks themselves, and in the advertisements and exhibitions into which they were so often incorporated. We therefore seek papers on works of art, exhibitions, or material and visual culture that will illuminate the rich and contested histories of corporate collecting and patronage before 1970. Include the following in your paper proposal: 1. Full name 2. Affiliation 3. Email (use email listed on your CAA membership account) 4. CAA member ID# 5. Presentation Title 6. Presentation Abstract (250-word maximum) 7. Why your proposal is a good fit for the session (100-word maximum)

In recent years, scholars have begun to grapple with the profound social, aesthetic, and politica... more In recent years, scholars have begun to grapple with the profound social, aesthetic, and political implications of photographs documenting the horrors of war. During World War II, female photojournalists--including Thérèse Bonney, Margaret Bourke-White, Marie Hansen, Germaine Krull, Lee Miller, and Galina Sanko--faced an additional burden of being professional novelties in the hyper-masculine spaces of war. This panel seeks papers that provide a historical perspective on these women photojournalists, exploring how artists, institutions, and viewers navigated the challenges posed by earlier forms of war photography and the gravity of World War II. How did the investment in war photography impact people’s perceptions of the conflict? How did subsequent displays in periodicals and exhibitions alter or reaffirm the photographs’ purpose as persuasive documents? To what extent did photographers incorporate varying degrees of critique and/or compliance in their work? How did coded gender norms come into play within these discussions? Such questions illustrate the complex entanglements and networks of artistic aspiration, publishing, and the construction of the public good. These histories reveal the contributions of agents beyond photographers in the making and meaning of journalism, including art directors, editors, and public relations advisors. This panel will endeavor to reconstruct how the ideological and ethical dilemmas of wartime photojournalism, and its gendered ramifications, manifest in both their photographs and in the newspapers and exhibitions into which they were so often incorporated. We therefore seek papers on artworks and their circulation that will illuminate the rich and contested histories of war photojournalism.

Photography Network’s third annual symposium will be held virtually and hosted jointly with the U... more Photography Network’s third annual symposium will be held virtually and hosted jointly with the University of the Western Cape in South Africa. In honor of the UWC’s New Archival Visions Programme—an initiative to activate the university’s archival holdings through research, fellowships, and curatorial projects—this symposium considers the subject of frameworks in the study of photography. In recent years, “framing” and “reframing” have become buzzwords for describing new approaches to the study of
photography, including the 2018 volume Photography Reframed: New Visions in Photographic Culture, the ReFrame project at the Harvard Art Museums launched in 2021, and the ongoing archival initiative, “Framing the Field: Photography's Histories in American Institutions.” Projects like the Art Institute of Chicago’s 2023 Field Guide to Photography and Media exhibition and catalogue and the recent Vision & Justice initiative encourage reflection on how histories of photography have been constructed and how certain interventions can be made to create a more equitable field moving forward. Such interventions might also draw on “reframing” projects from the global south that interrogate colonial and metropolitan categories and temporal schemas in the history of global photography, such as the 2020 Kronos special issue on “Other Lives of the Image” and the 2019 publication Ambivalent: Photography and Visibility in African History. This symposium aims to gather these types of initiatives into one space for shared reflection and future collaboration. Using the construction of a “framework” in reference to both conceptual schema and physical structures, we ask how
larger patterns of social, ideological, material, economic, and environmental forces have shaped and continue to shape photographs as objects in circulation and in archival repositories. How have past theoretical, methodological, and institutional frameworks structured, and in many instances limited, the field? What work have these frames performed in
the creation and interpretation of photographs and their histories? Which frameworks have been overlooked, and what types of interventions can make the most impactful changes? While papers should seek to address these questions, our definition of “framework” is capacious and inclusive.
Proposals might therefore consider critical approaches to frameworks that include:
● Archival: private art collections, public collections (schools, universities, museums, government agencies),
informal private holdings, artist collectives, and activist archives (including national liberation, anti-colonial and
anti-apartheid collections)
● Colonial, postcolonial and decolonial: state-sponsored photography, anthropological studies, tourist photography,
humanitarian photography, documentary discourses
● Cultural: linguistic, religious, or ethnic practices and beliefs
● Dysfunctional: decay or erasure of contexts, allowing for slippage, appropriation, and reinterpretation of
photography
● Ethical: displaying, discussing, and teaching certain images; scientific, anthropological, and legal rationales
Submission Information
Photography Network invites proposals across disciplines and a broad range of subjects that reflect the geographic and
thematic diversity of the field. Practitioners and scholars at any stage of their careers are welcome to submit their
research. We also welcome international scholars but note that the conference will be in English.
The symposium organizers encourage a variety of presentational styles. In addition to proposals for individual, 20-minute
papers, we also seek alternative-format presentations (e.g., workshops and roundtables). We will also host a Lightning
Round for new research on any topic from students, curators, academics, and practitioners. Applicants may submit up to 2
proposals, provided that one is in an alternative format; you are welcome to apply only to the Lightning Round. Sessions
will be organized around accepted submissions, rather than prescribed themes.
To be considered for a panel or alternative-format presentation, please prepare:
(1) a 250-word abstract with a clear indication of format, and
(2) a three-page resume or CV.
To be considered only for the Lightning Round, please prepare:
(1) a 100-word abstract clearly labeled as a Lightning Round proposal and
(2) a three-page resume or CV.
All files should be named “[LAST NAME]–CV” or “[LAST NAME]–ABSTRACT.”
Email completed materials by June 15 to the Photography Network Symposium organizing committee: Katherine Bussard,
Patricia Hayes, Josie Johnson, Caroline Riley, and Jessica Stark at photographynetworksymposium@gmail.com.
Notifications of accepted proposals will be emailed by July 19. The schedule will be announced by August 1 and the
symposium will be held October 12–14, 2023.
Note: All are welcome to apply. Accepted presenters must be Photography Network members in good standing at the time
of the symposium. We have a sliding scale membership: 20(student/unaffiliated),20 (student/unaffiliated), 20(student/unaffiliated),40 (Affiliated), or $100 (Senior). We
also have free need-based memberships. Please visit the Photography Network’s membership page
(https://www.photographynetwork.net/memberregistration) for more information on how to join.

The 2022 symposium theme is “Intersecting Photographies.” Scholarship in the history of photograp... more The 2022 symposium theme is “Intersecting Photographies.” Scholarship in the history of photography has until recently focused predominantly on its technical capabilities, patronage, and modes of representation. This focus elides the longer histories of colonialism and imperialism that the medium fosters¬—and in which it can potentially intervene. Recent scholarship—including Ariella Azoulay’s “Unlearning the Origins of Photography” (2018), Mark Sealy’s Decolonising the Camera: Photography in Racial Time (2019), and Hulleah J. Tsinhnahjinnie's (Seminole, Muscogee, Diné) “When is a Photograph Worth a Thousand Words?” (1998)—are among many projects reconceptualizing photography as a site of encounter and exchange, fraught with historical inequities brought by colonizing desires.

Exhibitions by Caroline M. Riley

Exhibition Review by Caroline M. Riley

Surface Design Journal, 2019

University of California Press, 2023

What They Saw: Historical Photobooks by Women, 1843–1999, 2022

History of Photography, 2024

The Journal of Modern Craft,, 2015

Tate Gallery, 2018

Jonas Holman (1805–1873) was an itinerant portrait painter, who also worked as a Freewill Baptist... more Jonas Holman (1805–1873) was an itinerant portrait painter, who also worked as a Freewill Baptist pastor, a writer, an illustrator, and a doctor. He lived in southern Maine, Philadelphia, Boston, New York City, and North Stonington, Connecticut. This essay finds seeming contradictions in Holman’s artistic life, particularly in his relationship with his patrons, and in his painting style. From a review of Holman’s work emerges a more nuanced understanding of how an American itinerant portrait painter worked during the mid-nineteenth century. This essay elaborates on the motivations behind Holman’s multiple occupations by examining in depth his work as a painter and his role as a pastor. Drawing from original research, including my investigations in Connecticut, Maine, Massachusetts, New York, Pennsylvania, and Virginia and my location of thirty-four signed or attributed works, the essay comments on Holman’s relationship with his patrons, whose occupations ranged from sea captain, to a farmer, to tin peddler, to wagon maker, to printer and at least three sitters who were members of his Freewill Baptist congregation. His patrons thus came from disparate occupations and were not necessarily followers of the same religious practices as Holman. Further, his diverse clientele led Holman to paint in both “folk” and “realistic” styles. This finding is striking because the prevailing academic literature would suggest that painting styles are determined by regions (i.e. rural or urban environments) or artistic ability. Instead, Holman reveals that painting style can be a function of patrons’ needs and preferences, particularly for itinerant artists.

Surface Design Journal, 2019

Three Centuries of American Art in 1938 was the Museum of Modern Art’s first international exhibi... more Three Centuries of American Art in 1938 was the Museum of Modern Art’s first international exhibition. With over 750 artworks on view in Paris ranging from seventeenth-century colonial portraits to Mickey Mouse and spanning architecture, film, folk art, painting, prints, and sculpture, it was the most comprehensive display of American art to date in Europe and an important contributor to the internationalization of American art. MoMA Goes to Paris in 1938 explores how, at a time when the concept of artworks as “masterpieces” was very much up for debate, the exhibition expressed a vision of American art and culture that was not only an art historical endeavor but also a formulation of national identity. Caroline M. Riley demonstrates in what ways, at the brink of international war in the politically turbulent 1930s, MoMA collaborated with the US Department of State for the first time to deploy works of art as diplomatic agents.

College Art Association, 2021

Thérèse Bonney (1894–1978) photographed Nazi-looted artworks at the Buxheim Monastery, Königsee C... more Thérèse Bonney (1894–1978) photographed Nazi-looted artworks at the Buxheim Monastery, Königsee Chateau, and Neuschwanstein Castle, soon after the Allies raided these Nazi holding sites. Her approximately 100 photographs have never received scholarly attention. Several of these photographs capture over 30 hard-to-identify antiquities, including Roman earrings and Raqqa ware. Just as remarkable, US troops turned this trove of looted art into an impromptu exhibition, proudly inviting government officials to tour. Within the seeming order of the decorative arts, paintings, and sculptures on display, antiquities were positioned together without clear categorization, suggesting the challenges of understanding them. Bonney’s images complicate scholars’ research by focusing on antique artworks’ intermediality as souvenirs and survivors, locked within each photograph’s frame. For example, how do these photographs materialize the lives of owners? How do they contextualize scholarship on looted archeological finds? Bonney also worked as a curator, filmmaker, humanitarian, writer, US spy and founded the Bonney Service. She was herself an avid collector, including her purchase of decorative arts objects. Her understanding of the power of owning a collection informed her photographs of Nazi-looted artworks. But even she struggled to contextualize antiquities within the parameters of a “masterpiece,” a term popularized in the press. Instead, antiquities slipped from easy categorizing, relying on their physical difference and suggestions of age to connote meaning as powerful political pawns. Addressing painful interpretative questions, Bonney’s photographs of antiquities explore the labels applied to them as “looted” to consider their theoretical worth as cultural objects.

"Art Historiography as Creative Nonfiction" Session, SECAC, 2020

With her career as a photographer, journalist, business owner, collector, and curator, Thérèse Bo... more With her career as a photographer, journalist, business owner, collector, and curator, Thérèse Bonney (1894–1978) challenges how we structure biographical writing within art histography. Her images of artists’ studios, war-ravaged towns, Nazi-looted art, and concentration camps emphasize both the objective and subjective nature of “documentary” photographs as a mythmaking exercise for professional photographers. Scholars often assume that the biography of an artist is a stable and self-evident framework to chronologically organize art-historical questions. But my writing on Bonney exposes the layered invention of self in which Bonney would slowly reimagine her life, often writing about an event the day it happened, then a year later, and again 5 or 10 years later. Further, it considers how the eighty portraits by and of Bonney, her name change to “M. T. Bonney” to appear more masculine, and her employment of male clothing all contributed to the image-making of the modern female artist. In each instance, Bonney situated herself in different frameworks that slowly panned out and turned the personal experience into a mythmaking exercise. Writing about her life requires creatively blurring the edges of real and imagined to consider how Bonney fashioned herself at times as male in order to appear modern.

Fellows Presentations, Smithsonian American Art Museum, 2020

This presentation explores a portion of chapter 2 of my book, MoMA Goes to Paris in 1938. The cha... more This presentation explores a portion of chapter 2 of my book, MoMA Goes to Paris in 1938. The chapter entitled "Loaning Across Oceans: Symbolism, Risk, and Value" considers the importance of distance for evaluating American art as a cultural commodity. The chapter examines the significance of movement in a period defined by technology on the materiality of American art. The artworks in Three Centuries reflected this tension of time and distance between Europe and the United States. It charts the first systematic study of 1930s evaluations of American art’s worth by analyzing over 4,000 loan letters, forms, and appraisals from Three Centuries. Little scholarly work has been produced on the use of loans as a form of reciprocity to cultivate relationships among groups with different motivations. While anthropologists and sociologists have generated theories on the exchange of gifts, which provide the framework on which this chapter builds, loans have received less attention. Developed as objects of cultural and monetary currency, the artworks served as agents in elaborate networks of exchange among artists, patrons, dealers, and museums. This chapter asks: how does an artwork’s value change amidst a web of transactions among institutions with different objectives?

Feminist Art History Conference, 2020

My paper considers how the eighty portraits by and of Bonney contributed to the mythmaking of the... more My paper considers how the eighty portraits by and of Bonney contributed to the mythmaking of the modern female artist. Much more scholarship has been devoted to male mythology than to how women actively fashioned their professional identities. With the Bonney Service, the first woman-owned illustrated press service in Europe, Bonney wielded extraordinary power, handpicking fashion photos for the pages of major news outlets like The New York Times and, consequently, shaping the public’s perception of professional women. Her decision to change her name from Mabel T. Bonney to M. Thérèse Bonney or “M. T. Bonney,” confused by some to mean “Monsieur T. Bonney,” reflects how she reformulated her identity during her lifetime, including to appear either more French or more masculine. Her clothing reflected this same transformation, from a feminine fashion model in the 1920s to photojournalist cloaked in masculinity by the 1940s. Further, photographs of Bonney’s offices serve as material culture portraits of how she fashioned herself for clients. I argue that, in a new age of rapid worldwide distribution of images, Bonney’s photographs shaped viewers’ perceptions of women’s roles. Bonney’s business practices also open new opportunities to study photojournalism’s transnational networks as forms of visual culture. The ontological boundaries of Thérèse Bonney’s work reveal the globalization of feminist art and her invention of long-lasting cultural categories around gender and social justice. Her career challenges the myth of the heroic male combat photographer and aligns her with well-known peers, such as Margaret Bourke-White and Germaine Krull.

Association of American Studies, 2020

Thérèse Bonney (1894–1978) was a prolific photographer and writer whose images, publications, and... more Thérèse Bonney (1894–1978) was a prolific photographer and writer whose images, publications, and exhibitions changed Americans’ understanding of Europe and themselves. From 1920 to 1970, she photographed soldiers, war-ravaged towns, starving children, concentration camp detainees, fashion spreads, rural farm life, architectural interiors, and artists in their studios. Bonney published eight photo-books, hundreds of articles, and mounted at least fourteen exhibitions in Europe and the United States, including the Museum of Modern Art’s exhibition of her work in 1940, the first dedicated to a woman. To study the formation of American culture during the 1940s, my paper examines the intermediality of one publication, Europe’s Children (1943), Bonney’s most influential photography book of children suffering from war. I explore how she employed the book to provoke Americans into fighting the Nazis and caring for the broader global community. Slides, posters, exhibitions, and lectures of Europe’s Children confirm that Bonney envisioned war not just on the battlefield but also on the faces of the displaced and persecuted. Her portraits of children proved particularly powerful tools to deepen American engagement in World War II. My work on Europe’s Children considers how Bonney, out of a personal sense of indignation, stoked among wary Americans revolt against totalitarianism by framing what was happening to European civilians as an affront to Americans’ conceptions of life, liberty, and happiness. She did so by photographing for Americans the familiar material objects Europeans carried, wore, and carted with them as they fled the Nazis and Spanish Nationalists. I consider Bonney’s lectures, for example, her talk for the Temporary Committee on Food for Europe’s Children in Baltimore (1943); exhibitions in thirty-seven cities, including the Library of Congress (1940); and eventually the book’s adaptation into the film The Search (1948), starring Montgomery Clift. More broadly, Bonney’s work also speaks to the advent of press photography as a modern tool to spread across continents poignant narratives. As forms of intermediality, I ask how each presentation layered Europe’s Children with multifarious interpretations in light of the host institution’s commercial, modernist, or nationalist mission.

Tuesday Colloquium, National Museum of American History, 2020

My work argues that Thérèse Bonney (1894-1978), a prolific yet overlooked American photographer a... more My work argues that Thérèse Bonney (1894-1978), a prolific yet overlooked American photographer and writer, created portraits, publications, and exhibitions that changed Americans’ understanding of the world and themselves between 1920 and 1970. Her portraits—4,300 of which reside at the Smithsonian—depict famous artists, war-ravaged towns, starving children, concentration camp internees, fashion spreads, rural farm life, architectural interiors, and families fleeing Nazi persecution. Together, they speak to the role of press photography in a new American culture embracing modernity. Bonney’s business practices also open new opportunities to study transnational networks of photojournalism as forms of visual culture. I argue that the ontological boundaries of her work reveal the globalization of politicized art and her invention of long-lasting cultural categories around gender and social justice. Bonney’s trail-blazing life had a dramatic impact on the progress of women in the male-dominated professions of photographer, journalist, business owner, and curator. Further, she inspired women’s increased autonomy in the United States, Africa, Asia, Europe, and the Middle East. Her writings and exhibitions contributed to the canons of design, gender, modernism, photography, and war history. Her publications also manifest the entanglement of cultures precipitated by a new global information economy.

Lunchbag Seminar, Archives of American Art, 2020

Half-Century of Fellowship Symposium, 2020

This essay considers how the Smithsonian American Art Museum (SAAM) Fellowship Program simultaneo... more This essay considers how the Smithsonian American Art Museum (SAAM) Fellowship Program simultaneously solidified and broadened the category of American art during its first fifty years. It does so by exploring the 683 research titles of the Program’s fellows. American art history is a recent phenomenon, only growing in earnest during the 1920s, and the Fellowship Program has supported American art’s canonization for nearly half of its history. This essay traces by decade the shifts in fellowship topics from surveys to monographs to, most recently, theoretical approaches. Central to the research is the longevity of the landscape and portraiture in the history of American art. The essay shows the slow incorporation of race, gender, and sexuality into the canon as well as the current preference for contemporary and transnational themes. The flourishing of topics by fellows has strengthened SAAM’s intellectual authority over American art history.

College Art Association, 2019

This paper considers the 1949 totem pole carved by Squamish Chief Mathias Joe Capilano in San Fra... more This paper considers the 1949 totem pole carved by Squamish Chief Mathias Joe Capilano in San Francisco. The paper examines this artwork within the contested post-World War II vision of the Americas as a "contact zone"-one that conflated people and geographies to find meaning in culture. Created for Playland amusement park owner George Whitney, the totem pole originally stood at 58 feet, towering over the adjacent Cliff House, a popular tourist destination located beside the Pacific Ocean. Unlike those commissioned as memorials, this totem pole, by standing tall on land that once belonged to the Muwekma Ohlone tribe, embodies a form of Native American cultural resistance. My reading complicates Whitney's own belief that the totem pole celebrated the successful conclusion of Manifest Destiny at the continent's edge after colonists killed, sequestered, or assimilated native populations. Hence, the totem pole represents both colonist victory and native stronghold, at once commemorating and resisting this painful history. In 1949, the totem pole was raised here on the edge of the continent to tourists and locals' war whoops, thus setting the stage for its knotty biography as a mediator and token of Native American cultures. If left unimpeded in accordance with nativist tradition of not conserving totem poles, this artwork will continue to stand until, in approximately thirty years, its wood fibers give way against the wind and it falls into the busy street. The sculpture's performance of standing as a form of cultural resistance becomes more powerful when framed within the notion of time. Once painted brightly and even taller in stature, the pole's weathered surface both mutes its stark difference in the urban landscape, making it visually akin to nearby streetlamps and, with age, reminds viewers of how old the cultures of the Muwekma Ohlone and Squamish are. The slow aging of the totem pole sets the pace from which to measure the different rates of change between culture and ecology, and within culture, between American and native beliefs. In an act of metonymic flexibility, the sixty-nine year old totem pole bestrides multiple identities as a powerful object of memory for Whitney, Capilano, native populations, 1940s culture, and Playland (the 10-acre site razed in 1972). While totem poles populate Western Canada and Alaska, few exist in the Continental United States, and even fewer are given such prominence on the ocean's edge. Despite its cultural complexity, this totem pole has remained unaddressed by art historians. That this totem pole simultaneously represented the fruition of Manifest Destiny to Whitney, the conflation of the Muwekma Ohlone and Squamish tribes, the skill of Capilano, and the materiality of memory to knowledgeable viewers underscores the impact of standing as a powerful performance of resistance.

In a seemingly impersonal act, museum curators, private owners, and appraisers evaluated the near... more In a seemingly impersonal act, museum curators, private owners, and appraisers evaluated the nearly 500 artworks in the Museum of Modern Art’s Three Centuries of American Art (1938) exhibition. All sought to determine the works’ monetary worth before shipping them to Paris for the exhibition. Their value needed to be determined for three reasons. First, in case of loss or damage; second, to comply with French customs procedures; and third, because the artworks’ owners feared the eruption a Second World War. These valuations reveal striking insights. For example, similar portraits were given radically different values, which highlight the transitive relationship between art and money during the 1930s. Both painted by the same 1670s artist, Margaret Gibbs and Robert Gibbs were valued at 5,000and5,000 and 5,000and25,000 respectively. The insurance company balked at the high evaluation before MoMA pressured the insurer to cover the full sum. By agreeing, the insurer set a precedent for future appraisals, not because of the artwork’s perceived inherent value but to appease a client. In sum, this paper uses the loaning procedures for Three Centuries of American Art to illustrate the emerging art insurance practice, the lasting impact of war on an artwork’s value, and the monetary and market implications of transnational exhibitions.

Journal of Modern Craft, Sep 2, 2015

Abstract Alice Austin (1862–1933) worked as a professional photographer in Boston from 1900 until... more Abstract Alice Austin (1862–1933) worked as a professional photographer in Boston from 1900 until 1933. She joined Alfred Stieglitz’s Photo-Secessionists group in 1905 and worked as a committee member at the Boston Society of Arts and Crafts for approximately thirty years. This article considers how Austin’s professional persona reflects the larger intersection of craft, gender, and photography in Boston during the first quarter of the twentieth century. In her capacity as artist and committee member, Austin emphasized craftsmanship—a concept that embodied both the handicraft tradition, in which it was permissible for women to take part, and Pictorialist fine art photography. The implication of this flexibility was profound for women such as Austin who were able to become professional photographers by aligning their artistic production with the larger handicraft tradition, thus placing photography within the domain of women’s work. Austin continued to argue for the intersection of craft and photography as a founding member of the Photography Guild at the Boston Society of Arts and Crafts after Pictorialist photography became outmoded with the rise of straight photography. Austin’s work was shown in at least thirteen exhibitions, including famed-photographer Frances Benjamin Johnston’s show on women artists at the 1900 Parisian Exposition Universelle. Austin was also referenced in at least twenty-one different photographic journals and twenty-five newspaper articles and popular publications during her lifetime. Yet despite her successful career and her significant contributions to the development of photography and craft, Austin’s work has been overlooked by scholars.

Athanor, 2015

Given the complexity embedded in the process of categorizing artworks, the period terms of "folk"... more Given the complexity embedded in the process of categorizing artworks, the period terms of "folk" and "popular" as well as the current use of "vernacular" must be defined before inserting the artworks into these categories with the artistic and political motivations of the American and French curators, critics, and diplomats. To differentiate period references from current discussion the all-encompassing "ver-nacular" applies to all forty-three works of art and incorporates both period categories. To Barr, American vernacular art could represent the cultural values of small communities or constitute a national ethos. Fundamentally, vernacular art, as an aesthetic style, did not align with a specific period; rather, it extended throughout the history of the United States. Despite the slippage of these terms, Barr's "popular" underscored the object's perceived ubiquitous quality and suffused it with rhetoric that promoted the emerging middle class art market as worthy of study. For instance, the widely distributed Currier & Ives prints, including American Forest Scene, Maple Sugaring (Figure 2), functioned as examples of this category. In contrast, Barr aligned "folk" with assumed idiosyncratic, isolated artists whose names had often been lost to the art historical record thus permitting a type of cultural recovery as evidenced by Barr's choice of Portrait of Henry Ward Beecher (Figure 3) for the show. Even within his own designations, Barr demonstrated the flexibility of his categories, for example, choosing to capstone the entrance to the vernacular art section with the label "Art Populaire" at the Musée du Jeu de Paume (Figure 1) thereby sublimating the folk category and connoting a decidedly political subtext to the French given the widespread circulation of the weekly politically left-leaning publication, Populaire. Alfred Barr, Jr., "Painting and Sculpture in the United States," in Trois Siecles d'Art

Journal of Transnational American Studies, 2017