ARTH 485/681: Visual Culture

ARTH 485/681: Graduate and Advanced Undergraduate Seminar in Art History: Topics in Contemporary Art: The Grand Exhibition.

This class meets Wednesday evenings, 6:30-9:15 p.m.
Professor: Dr. J. Susan Isaacs
Phone: 2794
Office: Room 365
Office Hours on Wednesday afternoons. Other times can be made as well as needed. If I am not in my office I may be found in Room 237A, the slide library.
E-mail: sisaacs@towson.edu

This is a seminar course centered on the theme of major exhibitions of contemporary art and the role of the museum and gallery in the art system. I will lecture for 4 sessions. The two field trips, one to NYC and one to Wilmington, DE and Philadelphia, PA will replace three of the lectures. Then each of you will give a seminar report based on your research. This course is going to look at various issues in contemporary art related to a number of recent exhibitions.

Readings: On reserve in Cook Library. There is also a notebook of articles that are on reserve in both Cook Library and in the Slide Library here in Fine Arts. All of the readings, exhibition catalogues, books, and articles are on reserve at Cook.

Class Requirements: Class attendance is mandatory each and every week. Any absence will affect your grade, especially when we get to student reports. Attendance and participation accounts for 10% of your grade. There will be one take-home essay exam based on the readings and lectures, 30%. Each of you will give a formal presentation with images (slide or powerpoint) 30%, and this report will then be refined, rewritten, and handed in as a research paper 30%. Do not hand in your rough draft as your final paper. Change must take place between the oral report and the final paper.

Undergraduate Students: Your seminar report should be about 25-30 minutes in length and result in a 10 -12 page paper.

Graduate Students: Your seminar report should be 45 minutes long and result in a 15 page paper. The writing and depth of thinking should reflect a graduate level.

These oral reports should be formal. Use the rough draft of your paper as your guideline. Do not shuffle note cards or torture us with any kind of unpreparedness or disorganization. Make sure that you have the appropriate visual imagery to support your presentation. If you mention an image, show a slide. You must use comparisons (split screen or two projectors). Do not depend on your audience to imagine what you are talking about. You can have access to the slide library. You can also shoot slides yourself. We have a camera and a copy stand for your use. The camera is in the slide library and the copy stand is in Media Services at Cook Library. You may have one roll of Tungsten film, but you pay for the processing. You can also create a powerpoint presentation. We have a PC computer with an LCD projector. The computer center in Cook Library will introduce you to powerpoint if you do not know it.

The written papers must be typed, 1" margins, 10-12 pitch type, double-spaced. You must follow the Chicago Manual of Style format which can be found on the Cook Library Web site or on my web site under Style Sheet. You may not use embedded or parenthetical notes. We use the full, old fashioned, numbered notes in art history. They may be end notes or footnotes. They do not count as part of your text length requirement. The final paper must have a cover page, images (photocopy, photo, computer print-out) numbered pages, notes, and bibliography. You should not quote art historians. Use quotes only from artists or critics or other primary sources. If you do not follow the proper format for the paper, especially for the notes and bibliography, the paper will not be read. You must use end or footnotes whenever you quote, paraphrase, or use information or an idea taken from a source. If you have any questions about format please come see me and I will go over it with you individually. Receiving a “0”on the paper is not a good idea.

Williamsburg and Tourist culture
The Holocaust Museum
Changing Content: Images of Native Americans in Art and Culture
Ownership and Exhibition of Native-American Art
Women Artists in Contemporary Art Museums: Where Are the Works?
Gender Segregation: The National Museum of Women in the Arts
Judy Chicago and “The Dinner Party”: Finding a Permanent Home
The Whitney Biennial Exhibition and Definitions of the Avant-Garde
Romanticism in African-American Art: Populism in Art
The Development of the Blockbuster Exhibition and Post-Modern Culture
The Growing Role of the Web as Art Gallery and Museum
The Development of “Chelsea” as an Art District
The 1980s Gallery Scene in New York City
Earthworks: Departing the Gallery
Installation: Do you Even Need a Museum?
The Mattress Factory in Pittsburgh as an Example of the Industrial Model
Artist and Community: Projects that depart from the Traditional Artist Centered Model.
Ethics and Museums: What are the Rules for Exhibitions?
Conservation Issues and Contemporary Art

All of the above topics need to be developed into more specific topics with a tighter focus, depending upon your discoveries through research and your interests.

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Back, Penny Balkin. New Land Marks: Public Art, Community and the Meaning of Place, Editons Ariel, 2000.
Barker, Emma. Ed. Contemporary Cultures of Display New Haven: Yale University Press, 1999.
Becker, Carol. Ed. The Subversive Imagination: Artists, Society, and Social Responsibility, New York: Routledge, 1994.
Bennett, Tony. The Birth of the Museum: History, Theory, Politics. New York: Routledge, 1995.
Berger, Arthur Asa. Cultural Criticism: A Primer of Key Concepts, 1995.
Binder, Lawrence. Whitney Biennial 2002, New York: Abrams, 2002.
Boime, Albert. The Art of Exclusion: Representing Blacks in the Nineteenth Century, Washington D.C: Smithsonian Press, 1990.
Broude, Norma and Mary De Garrard. eds. Feminism and Art History, New York: Harper and Row, 1982.
The Expanding Discourse: Feminism and Art History, New York: Icon,1992.
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Bryson, Norman, Michael Ann Holly and Keith Moxey, Eds. Visual Culture: Images and Interpretations Hanover, New Hampshire: University Press of New England, 1994.
Burnham, Linda Frye and Steven Durland, Eds. The Citizen Artist: 20 Years of Art in the Public Arena, Critical Press, Inc, 1998.
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