The name Blaschka evokes an immediate sense of beauty and wonder, as their infamous “Glass Flowers” still spark a fascination with the natural world and the process of glassblowing. The Blaschkas were a family in what is now The Czech Republic and their movement towards scientific modeling occurred in the latter half of the nineteenth century. Leopold and Rudolph Blaschka were a father and son team that produced some of the most prolific and groundbreaking scientific modeling to date. Their most infamous work is the aforementioned “Glass Flowers” which are currently at Harvard University, but they are also world-renowned for their Marine Invertebrate models that they made prior to the “Glass Flower” exhibit. The discussion of sea creatures and lesser-known invertebrates is particularly relevant at this moment of time with climate change escalating and the biodiversity of our oceans fluctuating in a rapid fashion. The oceans are of particular interest to scientists because many of these invertebrates of interest are lesser known and harder to observe due to their inherently varied and often difficult-to-access habitats. Marine invertebrates and the ocean offer a wide range of potential artistic discussions as well and encourages a sense of humility and collaboration in facing climate challenges. The Blaschka’s Marine Invertebrate Collections are engrossing for their inherent beauty, yet they remain a precious scientific collection. These glass-modeled invertebrates are a marker of biodiversity at a time before the Industrial Revolution took hold and offer an opportunity to reflect on the effects of the Anthropocene and ways in which humans can adjust and become more cognizant of our oceans and our planet.

Explorations of gender and space in nineteenth century French art has been a nexus of flourishing art historical scholarship for decades. In recent discourse however, many scholars have urged a reworking as the binarism perpetuated by separate sphere ideology has led to a lack of nuanced and complex understanding of the relations between gender and space. My paper situates itself within this renewed framework, examining the work of Canadian Impressionist Helen McNicoll (1879-1915) to suggest that her images of rural working-class women complicate and break down the rigid, dichotomous nature of gendered spaces.

Scholars on McNicoll have begun exploring this strain of analysis, considering how the depiction of her working-class women unveils the indeterminate spaces they operate as a result of their labor. This paper builds upon ongoing research by examining McNicoll’s market scenes, where she illustrates women exercising social and economic agency in a space otherwise traditionally deemed as public and for men. I argue that these images begin to collapse the binarism’s of the public/private and urban/rural debates present in art historical discourse. I suggest further that McNicoll’s works necessitate a nuanced interrogation of gendered spaces, urging us to acknowledge that their boundaries and thresholds are more fluid than we may think.

American fashion designer Elizabeth Hawes established a successful fashion house amid the Great Depression that revolutionized twentieth-century fashion in the United States. Hawes grew up with a pervasive myth that all fashionable clothing came from French designers alone. Believing the myth accurate, Hawes moved to Paris to study technical clothing design after graduating from Vassar College in 1925. While abroad, she worked odd jobs in design copying, sketching, and fashion journalism. While her time in Paris helped to refine her design skills and develop an acute sense of the fashion industry, she failed to see any valid reason that fashionable clothing should only come from French designers. Identifying a need in the American fashion industry for clothing uniquely suited to the national identity, particularly amidst the economic boom of the 20s, Hawes returned to the States to start her own fashion house. This paper details Elizabeth Hawes’s career from humble beginnings in Paris to the peak of her success in the United States. The piece seeks to identify the elements integral to establishing a thriving twentieth-century fashion business to understand better how artists can profit from their work. I found that by curating a multi-dimensional understanding of the fashion industry, Hawes would sharply identify business opportunities that allowed her to diversify her pursuits. Combining that keen industry knowledge with an otherworldly ability for leveraging connections, particularly those formed through her education at Vassar College, led to Elizabeth’s success as an artist and fashion designer.

Ray Johnson, a queer artist who studied at Black Mountain College and spent the latter half of the twentieth century working in New York, is widely considered to be the father of the Mail Art movement. Colloquially referred to as “New York’s most famous unknown artist,” Johnson was not widely acclaimed during his lifetime, but deep-dives into his Estate reveal that Johnson’s influence on the avant-garde art scene of the 1960s and 70s have been minimized in the art historical record, in part as a result of his queerness and long mental health battle that led to his premature death by suicide. A re-examination reveals Johnson as an integral contributor to Fluxus and traces an expansive international network that evolved out of his New York Correspondence School. My analytical and creative interrogation into Johnson’s life and work, culminates in what, at first glance, appears to pastiche one of Johnson’s Bob Boxes, but reveals itself as an interactive archive tracing his artistic development. The briefcase holds a number of replicas of his artwork, period-accurate art materials sourced from images of Johnson’s desk, and three hand-bound publications: a collection of Johnson’s mail art including a biography and glossary of key terms; a collection of the few nonsensical interviews Johnson gave throughout his life alongside a timeline of his life and practice; and finally, a collection of essays framed as an issue of the Black Mountain Review. This research-based interdisciplinary project encourages audiences to read about Johnson and learn about mail art in the words of contemporary artists, art historians, and Johnson himself. This project deals with themes of art education, accessibility, marginalization, queerness, community, and collaboration—challenging audiences to reconsider previously held notions through hands-on art making and learning experience.

The painted panorama medium was patented by Robert Barker in 1787 in England, where it was invented as an entrepreneurial entertainment venue. The panorama is defined as a large-scale painting on a curved canvas that encircles the viewer in 360 degrees, which resides inside a purpose-built rotunda, creating an illusionistic experience. Generally depicting a landscape, urban skyline, or a precise historical moment, the panorama claimed to transport visitors to a certain time and place. While the medium became obsolete and was replaced by other forms of mass spectacle in Western urban centers by the end of the nineteenth century, the panorama disseminated into Eastern Europe, where it dominated as a patriotic propaganda tool for the masses.

Political unrest in early twentieth-century Russia helped to expend the longevity of the panorama, as it was used to generate social solidarity through a victorious past. In Moscow, panorama painter Franz Roubaud was commissioned to paint the Battle of Borodino (1912) to celebrate the 100th anniversary of Russia’s victory over Napoleon, reinforcing Nicholas II’s authority as Tsar of Russia. Following the Russian Revolution of 1917 and the formation of the Soviet Union, the panorama medium continued to evolve in the German Democratic Republic (GDR) in East Germany. The GDR commissioned Leipzig artist Werner Tübke to paint the largest panorama, the Early Bourgeois Revolution in Germany (1976–1987) in Bad Frankenhausen, Germany. This panorama was meant to serve as a commemorative site for the 450th anniversary of the German Peasants’ War of 1525, inspired by the panorama painting from Roubaud’s Battle of Borodino. This research aims to contextualize and identify the panorama medium in Eastern Europe, focusing on the Battle of Borodino and the Early Bourgeois Revolution. It recognizes a novel artistic medium and its versatility beyond cultural boundaries, and will examine how Tübke’s novel approach in content, form, and style went beyond the conventions of the panorama medium.

By researching the GDR artist Werner Tübke and his self-commissioned approach to the panorama, this study contributes to the relatively limited body of research on this subject, offering new insights into the evolution of the panorama medium in twentieth-century Eastern Europe.

With its elegant 1:4:9 ratio and stark, black surface, the monolith in Stanley Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey is an enigmatic, authoritative, and inhuman entity—incomprehensible but awesome to the humans and machines that star alongside it. For Kubrick’s audience, too, the monolith is a necessary storyteller; equal parts mystifying and compelling, spectators must embrace its foreignness to grasp the complex narrative of 2001. Yet, when the film first appeared in 1967, monoliths were not unusual, bearing a striking resemblance to minimalist sculptures of the time by Tony Smith and Donald Judd. For some practitioners, minimalist works, in their simplicity, extended the reductive trends of Modernist art. For Michael Fried, however, minimalism was not “art” at all, but rather a form of theater, validated only through the experience of its viewing. In this degenerate state, the minimalist art object stands at odds with the autonomous, purified qualities of art. But what about Kubrick’s monolith? Within 2001, the monolith is portrayed as a pure, perfect, and autonomous form produced by an unknown, alien power; it seems to guide humanity through evolution, even as it remains aloof and beyond human concerns. Thus, like art as Fried perceives it, the monolith is a door to transcendence– walking humans from their world to a deeper, spiritual realm. Yet, the monolith is also theatrical; only through its perception does it achieve any spiritual power—both for those in the film and those encountering it in theaters. As this paper argues, it is this nesting of minimalism inside a film that may ultimately reconcile art and objecthood.

My paper is about what there is and how vociferating off the inaudible constructs is an exhilarating force through which clashing chromatic vibrations rouse for everybody to pay attention, listen and wake up! Deaf View/Image Art (De’VIA) opens the aperture to the patterns of a global minority once contrived to obscurity. At a workshop in 1989, a coalition of nine spent four days locked in a studio to define “What is Deaf Art?”—drawing clearly between what art done by a deaf-artist was and what De’VIA is. By using one sense to describe the absence of another sense, De’VIA breaks the woven patterns created by the “shields” of social control within the strains of resistance and affirmation art styles. By utilizing strong/vibrant contrasting colors, and applying a focal emphasis on areas that are essentially inherent with Deaf existence (facial features, hands, mouths, ears, eyes), and centers around Deaf themes (eugenics, oralism, audism, cochlear implants, hand signs), De’VIA confronts and protests arduous and crucial topics about one’s identity colonized by a society that purposely offered a degree of abuse to a desultory education praxis for deaf youths resulting with trauma, and a fractured human/sociocultural perception of a collective group which inadvertently generated an uneven hand in occupational opportunities, economic prospects, and persecution within governmental, medical, religious, family and private institutions. This assertiveness was imposed upon them by an imitative power of unnatural form with malevolent goals to establish a fully workable blueprint to the standards for human complacency and masked it for ninety-years under the guise of oralism within the structure of the American education system. These people’s accounts are authentic/unmediated primary sources that can lead to self-affirmation, and through resistance art, put in the forefront past events that the Deaf community are determined never to go back to.

While female characters in contemporary horror films have evolved from the damsel in distress to heroines, women’s bodily autonomy remains an unsettling theme in the horror genre. Beyond its popularity as a successful box-office hit, Rosemary’s Baby (1968) terrorized audiences because of its theme of forced impregnation, mirroring the battle for reproductive rights during the second wave of feminism. Since then, horror films continue to articulate deep social anxieties and conflicts regarding women’s bodily autonomy. Recent horror films like Apartment 7A (2024), The First Omen (2024), Immaculate (2024) and Cuckoo (2024) extend the theme of forced impregnation in different ways that traverse contemporary social anxieties and shifts. Exploring mesmerizing yet violent sequences, these films echo a similar motif- women’s bodily autonomy as a discussion, as opposed to a basic civil right. This paper aims to analyze contemporary horror films and their impact on the perception of women’s bodily autonomy. By analyzing film characters, plots, and narrative tropes, the aim is to uncover contemporary social and political concerns of this very topic.

Women have long been the backbone of museum work, yet leadership roles have historically been dominated by men. This disparity is one of the many systemic challenges women have faced in museum leadership, especially in the twentieth century when such inequities were rarely acknowledged. Marcia Tucker, the first female curator at the Whitney Museum of American Art and founder of the New Museum in New York, utilized bold and incisive rhetorical strategies to navigate this gender-based inequality from within the museum. Tucker’s rhetoric—in her writings, lectures, and her exhibitions—brought attention to systemic sexism and racism in museums while envisioning what equitable institutions could look like.

My research explores how Marcia Tucker used her position to advocate for marginalized artists, redefine curatorial practices, and challenge institutional norms. By analyzing her memoir A Short Life of Trouble, her 1972 lecture “Women in Museums,” and various exhibition texts, I examine how Tucker’s linguistic and verbal strategies reimagined the museum as a space for equity and transformation. Tucker’s curatorial choices not only elevated underrepresented artists but also shifted museums’ engagement with the public. Exhibitions like Lee Krasner: Large Paintings (1972) and Bad Girls (1994) actively challenged art world hierarchies by foregrounding women and artists of color. By doing so, she built a space where new audiences felt connected to the work they saw on the walls.

Personal experiences of exclusion shaped Tucker’s sensitivity to marginalization, from growing up as the only Jewish child in her neighborhood to being sidelined in academia and the art world because of her gender.  Her lived experiences informed her belief in the power of art and museums as spaces for transformation. By understanding Tucker’s rhetorical strategies and the ways she reshaped museum practices, my research demonstrates how curatorial work can function as a powerful tool for advocacy, inclusivity, and systemic change.

This paper connects artist Fred Wilson–and the ideological framework of his installations–with the modern museum labor movement. More specifically, it examines his 1991 work Guarded View, a striking social commentary on the racialized invisibility of museum security guards. With a focus on the decolonizing and anti-racist texts which inform Wilson’s many installations, Guarded View is assessed in terms of the colonial frameworks of the museum institution and in terms of the museum’s propensity to construct conceptions of the racialized “other.” For Wilson, the way African artifacts and African diasporic culture were fetishized and displayed in museums could not be separated from the reality that Black laborers in those same institutions were being ignored and underpaid. This commentary generated by Wilson is extended to the current situation of museum guards in this country, a role which continues to be both the lowest paid and most diverse role in the museum field. The thesis culminates in a case study of the Baltimore Museum of Art (BMA) located in the city in which Wilson created his influential 1992 exhibit Mining the Museum. Interviews were conducted with guards who had recently participated in a guard-curated exhibit titled Guarding the Art, an exhibit which paid homage to Wilson’s Guarded View. While this exhibit was a good step in the right direction, guards ultimately concluded that there is much work needed to make them and their co-workers feel seen and for museums to disengage from the racialized labor and invisibility as explained by Wilson. Ultimately, this thesis seeks to advocate to museum professionals and art historians that they recognize Wilson’s art for the political discourse it helped begin and apply this discourse by standing in solidarity with all museum workers and their unionization efforts.

At the 2022 General Assembly, the International Council of Museums redefined museums as not-for-profit institutions dedicated to serving society by researching, collecting, conserving, interpreting, and exhibiting cultural heritage. This redefinition represents a crucial shift toward establishing global standards that prioritize community engagement and inclusivity, sparking a reassessment of museums’ colonial origins, which were sometimes entwined with acquiring artifacts from Indigenous communities through oppressive methods.

This paper explores the lasting effects of colonialism that have historically cast the art and artifacts of Indigenous peoples as instruments for framing their makers as “Others.” It highlights current trustees, museum professionals, and scholars’ influential roles in reshaping collection policies and promoting social accountability. Through a case study of gallery transformations at the Te Papa Museum in New Zealand, alongside analysis of restrictive legal measures such as the Canadian Potlatch Ban and the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act, this paper argues that museums have the potential to become agents of social transformation. By addressing the legacies of colonial violence and marginalization, museums can lead efforts toward reparative justice. After exploring the effects of various sociopolitical systems on museum practices, this paper proposes a framework for reimagined museology that emphasizes ethical responsibility, positioning museums as platforms for reconciliation and equity in contemporary society.

Frederic Remington is a prolific late nineteenth-century artist who is well known for his portrayal of Western America in his illustrations, paintings and articles. In 1991, his work was a part of an exhibition entitled The West as America: Reinterpreting Images of the Frontier, 1820 – 1920, which challenged audiences’ preconceived notions of Western American art and received major criticism from the public, press, and the US government. This paper argues that fear of this critical response has caused contemporary museum curators to downplay Frederic Remington’s cultural importance in favor of falsely upselling his artistic endeavors. Remington’s work highlights cultural attitudes of American idealism and westward expansionism and prejudices towards Natives, immigrants, African Americans, and women that were popularized during his time, and remain relevant in the study of American attitudes towards these groups today. Despite scholarly and visual evidence, contemporary exhibitions continue to portray Remington as an accurate source on the West, and a great artist, which will eventually lead to his irrelevancy in the realm of art history as his cultural importance is forgotten.

“Saints and Syncretism in Global Christian Art” explores the cult of saints and its impact on visual culture through a phenomenon called syncretism, a process by which artists integrate diverse cultural forms, subjects, and materials in creating meaningful works of art. This research project—and subsequent exhibition—was specifically focused on how the cult of saints interacted with innumerable local visual cultures around the world. Since its origins in Late Antiquity, images of saints have always incorporated local visual traditions and customs as the cult of saints spread across the former Roman Empire, and then around the world. Reflecting the Church’s global reach, works selected for this special exhibition celebrating the museum’s tenth anniversary represent the many nationalities of canonized saints and their cultural traditions.

For this exhibition we stretch the definition of syncretism further still, to capture not only the material result of artistic interaction between cultures in terms of artistic materials, formal properties, and techniques but also to present images that bear witness to the intersection of the saints with contemporary art and society. Saints and Syncretism in Global Christian Art explores the complexities between Christianity and syncretism, which encourages viewers to see how the cult of saints has been adopted and changed over time and space and is still relevant in the present day. The cult of saints is both a deeply personal religious practice and a source of post-colonial reflection, both of which are important to recognize and paramount to understanding its significance. By exhibiting artworks representative of the cult of saints from across the globe, it is our goal that understanding this ever-relevant practice becomes more tangible and within reach.

While working with curators Dr. Jess Ziegnfuss and Courtney Uldrich on the New Mexico State University Art Museum exhibition Warhol and Friends, I was tasked to think about the relevance of this exhibition to NMSU students. That research and prompt culminated in an exhibition guide zine that included outside resources and an introductory text from myself. In this presentation, I will focus closely on my text from that guide, as well as Pink Panthers by Kenneth McGowan, a key photograph from the show that sparked this line of thought. With the introduction of the Factory in the 1960s, Andy Warhol began to destabilize the traditional role of the artist. In creating a social and collaborative space for artists, Warhol incorporated aspects of his work as a freelance artist to commercialize his art-making process through the Factory. This model calls to mind certain art production practices of today like outsourcing printing or fabrication projects. Warhol’s approach to making reshapes ideas of artistic collaboration and ownership in art. The artists featured in the Warhol and Friends exhibition are all engaged in some form of unconventional collaboration. Here, I define collaboration as appropriation, borrowing, and explicitly engaging with others’ artwork. In Pop Art, this conversation wasn’t just among the artists, it also actively engaged with the public. These practices draw parallels with today’s heightened state of mass production, overconsumption, and oversaturation. In an era where the originality of ideas feels uncertain, where everything seems to be a copy of a copy, how do we, like the artists in Warhol and Friends, respond? There is more material than ever to appropriate, to borrow from, to reference, to take, and to critique. More than ever, there is the accessibility for collaboration. This text prompts working artists and art historians to investigate these connections.

Exhibitions, much like runway presentations, strategically immerse attendees into a creative vision for a limited time. Distanced by spatial and temporal limitations, nonattenders can often be left wondering what it must have been like to experience the thoughtful curatorial choices involved in constructing an effective and immersive exhibition. In 2011, The Costume Institute at The Metropolitan Museum of Art hosted Alexander McQueen: Savage Beauty, a retrospective of fashion designs by Alexander McQueen. Occurring about one year after McQueen’s tragic death and acting as the theme for the annual Met Gala, Savage Beauty certainly struck a chord with the public, shattering forty-year attendance records and garnering itself an eighth-place spot among the most attended exhibitions at The Met. Having later been pushed off the top ten list by four exhibitions, three of which were fashion-based, Savage Beauty still rests in the memory of both art and fashion lovers. In this study, I will explore existing information and documentation surrounding Alexander McQueen and Savage Beauty to mimic the experience of physically seeing the exhibition despite never having seen it in person.

Appealing to the sensory elements in Savage Beauty, a written walkthrough of the exhibition will orient the reader and establish a level of experience regardless of prior attendance. It is through this walkthrough that the issue of experience comes into view. Through the incorporation of biographical, archival, and viewer experience information, I will discuss how one could lessen the gap between physically visiting and distantly experiencing an exhibition. Ultimately, this study seeks to reminisce in the memory of Savage Beauty while imagining future possibilities of exhibition documentation and experience.