Challenge Grant for endowing AAS's Center for Historic American Visual Culture

FAIN: CH-50824-11

American Antiquarian Society (Worcester, MA 01609-1634)
Georgia B. Barnhill (Project Director: May 2010 to July 2012)
Nan Wolverton (Project Director: July 2012 to January 2016)

Endowment (and bridge funding) for the Center for Historic American Visual Culture, including salary for a part-time director and a part-time graphic arts cataloger, as well as expenses for conferences, workshops, and seminars.

AAS proposes to endow a Center for Historic American Visual Culture with the mission of providing educational opportunities, promoting the awareness of AAS's collections and other visual resources, and stimulating research and intellectual inquiry into American visual culture. It will accomplish its goals by offering fellowships, exhibitions, workshops, seminars, publications, and conferences and by improving access to AAS's unmatched collections of printed graphic arts materials. The Center was launched in 2008 with a foundation grant for pilot activities. It has exceeded expectations in every category of evaluative measure that we laid out, and the Council and staff of AAS are committed to making the Center a permanent feature of the Society's academic programming. The requested $500,000 grant and the $1,500,000 in matching funds will provide bridge funding to underwrite the operations of the Center as the permanent endowment is raised.

Associated Products

Center for Historic American Visual Culture website (Web Resource)
Title: Center for Historic American Visual Culture website
Author: Georgia B. Barnhill
Abstract: This is the website for AAS's Center for Historic American Visual Culture (CHAViC).
Year: 2011
Primary URL: http://www.chavic.org
Primary URL Description: Covers all activities and exhibitions of the Center.

"Fields of Vision: The Material and Visual Culture of New England, 1600-1830" (Conference/Institute/Seminar)
Title: "Fields of Vision: The Material and Visual Culture of New England, 1600-1830"
Author: Martha J. McNamara, Wellesley College
Author: Georgia B. Barnhill, AAS
Abstract: Given the explosion of scholarship in cultural history over the past twenty-five years, what now is the place of objects in the study of the past? What role do material and visual culture studies play in scholarly conversations that range over topics as diverse as race, sexuality, gender, nationalism, ethnicity, power and global interaction? In turn, in the face of increasingly trans-national scholarship in early America what can we gain from attention paid to a single region and its artifacts?
Date Range: 2007
Location: Worcester, MA
Primary URL: http://www.chavic.org/Pastconferences2007.htm
Primary URL Description: Conference schedule and participants

"Home, School, Play, Work: The Visual and Textual Worlds of Children" (Conference/Institute/Seminar)
Title: "Home, School, Play, Work: The Visual and Textual Worlds of Children"
Author: Patricia Crain, New York University, Chair
Abstract: Papers addressed aspects of eighteenth and nineteenth-century textual, visual, or material culture that related to the experience or representation of childhood.
Date Range: 2008
Location: Worcester, MA
Primary URL: http://www.chavic.org/Pastconferences2008.htm
Primary URL Description: Conference brochure

"Destined for Men: Visual Materials for Male Audiences, 1750-1880" (Conference/Institute/Seminar)
Title: "Destined for Men: Visual Materials for Male Audiences, 1750-1880"
Author: Joshua Brown, executive director of the American Social History Project, located in the Graduate Cen
Abstract: Through the emergence of women's studies programs in academic institutions in the past generation or two, many aspects of women’s lives have been documented through publications and academic courses. The third conference of the Center for Historic American Visual Culture focuses not on women but on men. Looking at examples of visual materials of and for men is a way to look at a different gendered audience. In the literature on American graphic materials, little has been written about the audience for historical images. The papers presented at this conference begin to address this need.
Date Range: 2009
Location: Worcester, MA
Primary URL: http://www.chavic.org/Pastconferences2009.htm
Primary URL Description: Conference brochure

"History Prints: Fact and Fiction” (Conference/Institute/Seminar)
Title: "History Prints: Fact and Fiction”
Author: Mark Thistlethwaite, Professor of art history, TCU, an authority on history painting
Abstract: One question that often surfaces about historical prints is the accuracy of images. Did makers of nineteenth-century city view portray cities as they actually were? Do history prints present myths or truth? How often did print publishers gloss over reality to present heroism or an optimistic view of society? The Fourth CHAViC Conference seeks to address some of these questions among others. The presentations by scholars from a variety of disciplines addressed American identity consumption of historical prints, reform prints, artistic license, the exchange of imagery between America and Europe, the distribution of urban imagery on Staffordshire pottery, and presidential portraiture.
Date Range: 2010
Primary URL: http://www.chavic.org/Pastconferences2010.htm
Primary URL Description: Conference brochure

"Interpreting Historical Images for Teaching & Research" (Conference/Institute/Seminar)
Title: "Interpreting Historical Images for Teaching & Research"
Author: David Jaffee, professor of early American history and material culture at the Bard Graduate Center f
Abstract: This seminar enabled participants to take advantage of the AAS collection of eighteenth- and nineteenth-century prints, maps, sheet music covers, and ephemera of all kinds. There were guided tutorials as well as hands-on explorations of a topic of specific interest. Topics included colonial prints, antebellum images of Native Americans, western landscape photography, chromolithography, and the etching revival. Participants were able to pursue research in the AAS collection as a part of the seminar.
Date Range: 2009
Location: Worcester, MA
Primary URL: http://www.chavic.org/Pastseminar2009.htm
Primary URL Description: Seminar description on AAS website

"Interpreting Historical Images for Teaching & Research" (Conference/Institute/Seminar)
Title: "Interpreting Historical Images for Teaching & Research"
Author: David Jaffee, professor of early American history and material culture at the Bard Graduate Center f
Abstract: Sessions at this summer seminar will focus on the history of print production in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries; interpreting portrait paintings, prints, and photographs; "reading" illustrations in popular journals; and related topics. Participants will also have access to the Society's varied collections of visual materials to pursue their own interests.
Date Range: June 20-25, 2010
Location: Worcester, MA
Primary URL: http://www.americanantiquarian.org/chavicsummer2010.htm
Primary URL Description: Seminar description on AAS website

"Picturing Reform: How Images Transformed America, 1830-1880" (Conference/Institute/Seminar)
Title: "Picturing Reform: How Images Transformed America, 1830-1880"
Author: Louis P. Masur, the William R. Kenan, Jr. Professor of American Institutions and Values at Trinity C
Abstract: Sessions at this summer seminar will focus on the history of print production in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries; interpreting portrait paintings, prints, and photographs; "reading" illustrations in popular journals; and related topics.
Date Range: June 19-24, 2011
Location: Worcester, MA
Primary URL: http://www.americanantiquarian.org/chavicsummer2011.htm
Primary URL Description: Seminar description on AAS website

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