Art and Nationhood in the Age of Jefferson
FAIN: FB-52445-06
Paul Staiti
Mount Holyoke College (South Hadley, MA 01075-1423)
This is an historical inquiry into the ways in which the visual arts became key tools in the shaping of new national identities in the formative years of the Early Republic. Painters, sculptors, printmakers, architects, embroiderers, silversmiths and other artisans crafted objects, large and small, that spoke to the iconographic and spiritual needs of a the new nation. Though the Constitution created the political backbone of the nation, much of the cultural work of creating a sense being American was achieved by images, buildings, and rituals.