2004 - 2005 Scholars

Elizabeth West Hutchinson
Assistant Professor
Department of Art History
Barnard College, Columbia University

Dates: November-June 2005

Ph.D.: Stanford University

Project: “The Indian Craze: Primitivism, Modernism, and Transculturation in America, 1890-1914”

Elizabeth Hutchinson’s project examines the "Indian Craze": a passion for collecting, displaying, and emulating Native American art that lasted from the late 19th century through the years of World War I. During this time, Native handicrafts were exhibited by museums, art societies, department stores, and International Expositions and used extensively in mainstream art schools and design manuals. Examining the contributions of both Anglo and Native artists, critics and theorists, Hutchinson argues that the "Indian Craze" was a transcultural phenomenon that allowed members of both groups to develop modern approaches to art and cultural identity; while Anglo artists saw Native art as the basis of a national school of modernism, Indian people used this interest to agitate for greater acceptance of their culture.

Carrie Lambert
Assistant Professor
Department of Art History
Northwestern University

Dates: July-August 2005

Ph.D.: Stanford University

Project: “The Seeing Difficulty”: Yvonne Rainer and American Art in the 1960’s

Carrie Lambert will be working on “The Seeing Difficulty”: Yvonne Rainer and American Art in the 1960s, which will be the first book on the performance career of the influential choreographer, artist, and filmmaker Yvonne Rainer. By tracing through the 1960s Rainer's use of the human body to revise conventions of spectatorship--from the early days of Judson Dance Theater, through Minimalism, to the political and feminist art of the early 1970s--the book will offer a new history of American art’s orientation toward the viewer in this watershed period.


Emily Ballew Neff
Curator American Painting and Sculpture
Museum of Fine Arts, Houston

Dates: November 1-19, July 5-August 12

Ph.D.: University of Texas at Austin

Project: “The Modern West: American Landscapes, 1890-1950”

Emily Ballew Neff is curator of American painting and sculpture at the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston. At the O'Keeffe Museum and Research Center, Neff will continue to develop, conduct research, and continue writing the catalogue for an exhibition project titled “The Modern West: American Landscapes, 1890-1950.” This exhibition will explore the role played by the West in the development of American modernism through 110 paintings, watercolors, photographs and, where thematically and aesthetically relevant, American Indian art.

Kristin Ann Schwain
Assistant Professor
Department of Art History and Archaeology
University of Missouri-Columbia

Dates: September 2004-July 2005

Ph.D.: Stanford University

Project: “Signs of Grace: Religious Experience, Visual Practice, and Modernist American Art”

" Signs of Grace: Religious Experience, Visual Practice, and Modernist American Art" examines the early history of modern art to excavate the central role religion played in its development. It shows the manifold ways four American artists - Henry Ossawa Tanner, F. Holland Day. Abbott Handerson Thayer, and Thomas Eakins - turned to religious beliefs and practices to construct modern aesthetic experience. Moreover, it explores the social implications of modernist ways of seeing on strategies of African-American uplift, new formulations of gender and sexuality, models of cultural authority, and on social relations in turn-of-the-century America more generally.

Isabelle Loring Wallace
Assistant Professor of Modern and Contemporary Art
Department of the History of Art
Bryn Mawr College

Dates: June-August 2005

Ph.D.: Bryn Mawr College

Project: “Signification and Subject: The Art of Jasper Johns”

This project will consider work produced by contemporary American painter Jasper Johns, linking his work to broader philosophical questions concerning the nature of authorship, signification and the relationship between representation and mortality. An attempt is also made to situate Johns' work within its proper historical and cultural context, bearing in mind that the artist’s career begins at a moment that witnesses the emergence of postmodernism, as well as the not unrelated discovery of DNA in 1953.