History of Art: Terra Foundation Lecture Series in American Art Oxford University

The 2022 Terra Lectures in American Art centre on Latinx art, with an emphasis on Chicanx (Mexican American) artists, and the theme of migration – of people, ideas, and artworks, from the seventeenth century to today. Art and activism converge as these lectures move across disciplinary, chronological, and geographical borders. We consider new approaches to “American” art, its borders, and contact zones. By posing strategic questions, these four talks demonstrate avenues of inquiry to decolonise art history.

The second lecture in the series, titled “Collapsing Time with Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz”, presented by Professor Charlene Villaseñor Black, brings contemporary art by Chicana (Mexican American) women artists into dialogue with the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, collapsing and questioning art history’s chronological and geographical frameworks and borders. I examine portrayals of Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz (1648-1695), famed writer, intellectual, and proto-feminist nun in colonial Mexico. How can recent visual imaginings by Chicana feminist artists illuminate earlier, historical portrayals of Mexico’s “Tenth Muse”? Can the tools of Chicanx studies force a reconceptualization of art history?

Terra Visiting Professor of American Art at the University of Oxford 2021-2022, Professor Villaseñor Black is a leading expert on a range of topics related to contemporary Latinx art, the early modern Iberian world and Chicanx studies. She is currently Professor of Art History and Chicana/o Studies at the University of California, Los Angeles. In 2016, she was awarded UCLA’s Gold Shield Faculty Prize for Academic Excellence for exceptional teaching, innovative research, and strong commitment to university services. Professor Villaseñor Black is also editor of Aztlán: A Journal of Chicano Studies, and founding editor-in-chief of Latin American and Latinx Visual Culture (UC Press). Her most recent books include Renaissance Futurities: Art, Science, Invention and Knowledge for Justice: An Ethnic Studies Reader (both from 2019), the new 2020 edition of The Chicano Studies Reader, and Autobiography without Apology: The Personal Essay in Latino Studies, which she co-edited.

See Download Media menu on the right for Transcript and List of artworks.

Professor Amy M. Mooney, Terra Foundation Visiting Professor in American Art Hosted by TORCH. Moderator; Alastair Wright: Alastair Wright is Head of the History of Art Department and Tutorial Fellow in Art History at St John’s College, Oxford. Regarding the Portrait: The Primers

In this four-part lecture series, Professor Amy Mooney examines the central role portraiture played in fostering social change in the United States from the 1890s through the 1950s. Drawing from her forthcoming book, Portraits of Noteworthy Character, Professor Mooney considers the strategic visual campaigns generated by individuals and social institutions that used the portrait to advance their progressive political ideologies. From the etiquette texts used at historically black colleges to the post cards produced by Hull House to the Harmon Foundation’s exhibition of “Portraits of Outstanding Americans of Negro Origin,” this series explores the ways in which the portrait was employed to build social relationships and negotiate modern subjectivity.

This lecture examines the factors that influenced the development of pedagogical strategies for reading and realizing the portrait as conceived for students at Historically Black Colleges and Universities during the post-bellum era. Through engravings illustrating etiquette books and early photography, Professor Mooney traces the precedents for the ideological situating of black subjectivity within the politics of respectability that later inform the rhetorical trope of the New Negro.

Professor Amy M. Mooney, Terra Foundation Visiting Professor in American Art Hosted by TORCH. Moderator: Melanie Chambliss, Assistant Professor in the Humanities, History, and Social Sciences Department at Columbia College Chicago. In this four-part lecture series, Professor Amy Mooney examines the central role portraiture played in fostering social change in the United States from the 1890s through the 1950s. Drawing from her forthcoming book, Portraits of Noteworthy Character, Professor Mooney considers the strategic visual campaigns generated by individuals and social institutions that used the portrait to advance their progressive political ideologies. From the etiquette texts used at historically black colleges to the post cards produced by Hull House to the Harmon Foundation’s exhibition of “Portraits of Outstanding Americans of Negro Origin,” this series explores the ways in which the portrait was employed to build social relationships and negotiate modern subjectivity.

At the turn of the twentieth century, U.S. national consciousness was challenged by both migration and immigration. White progressives, such as Jane Addams, sought to improve the conditions of newly arrived immigrants and borrowed strategies for racial, adapting them to encourage assimilation. Looking at images generated by Joseph Stella, Norah Hamilton and Lewis Hine, Professor Mooney considers how portraits from the progressive era contributed to the emerging constructs of race and ethnicity across the color line.

Professor Amy M. Mooney, Terra Foundation Visiting Professor in American Art. Hosted by TORCH. Moderator: Professor Deborah Willis, Department of Photography and Imaging at the Tisch School of the Arts at New York University. In this four-part lecture series, Professor Amy Mooney examines the central role portraiture played in fostering social change in the United States from the 1890s through the 1950s. Drawing from her forthcoming book, Portraits of Noteworthy Character, Professor Mooney considers the strategic visual campaigns generated by individuals and social institutions that used the portrait to advance their progressive political ideologies. From the etiquette texts used at historically black colleges to the post cards produced by Hull House to the Harmon Foundation’s exhibition of “Portraits of Outstanding Americans of Negro Origin,” this series explores the ways in which the portrait was employed to build social relationships and negotiate modern subjectivity.

Through the advancements in technology and printing, photography becomes the most accessible form through which individuals could determine how they wanted to be seen. The burgeoning black media ensured the publication and circulation of photographic portraits, as well as the development of a modern criticality through the act of representation. In this lecture, Professor Mooney explores how, in collaboration with their patrons, African American commercial photographers generated a body politic that fostered racial equality through portraiture.

Professor Amy M. Mooney, Terra Foundation Visiting Professor in American Art Hosted by TORCH. Regarding the Portrait: The Pragmatists

In this four-part lecture series, Professor Amy Mooney examines the central role portraiture played in fostering social change in the United States from the 1890s through the 1950s. Drawing from her forthcoming book, Portraits of Noteworthy Character, Professor Mooney considers the strategic visual campaigns generated by individuals and social institutions that used the portrait to advance their progressive political ideologies. From the etiquette texts used at historically black colleges to the post cards produced by Hull House to the Harmon Foundation’s exhibition of “Portraits of Outstanding Americans of Negro Origin,” this series explores the ways in which the portrait was employed to build social relationships and negotiate modern subjectivity.

The final lecture examines an exhibition generated by the Harmon Foundation in 1944 called “Portraits of Outstanding Americans of Negro Origin.” This group of commissioned portraits toured the US for nearly ten years with the intention of not only celebrating the contributions of successful African Americans, but also modeling social integration and the possibilities of civil rights. Considering the aesthetics and logistics of the exhibition, Professor Mooney explores the ways in which the philosophies of Alain Locke informed the unabating optimism that portraiture could generate social change.

Dr John Blakinger speaks about iconoclasm in American history and the vandalism of Confederate monuments. Iconoclasm is an enduring American value. In 1776, a mob destroyed a statue of King George III in Bowling Green, New York, establishing the new American Republic as a nation built on image destruction. More recent acts of visual violence have targeted Confederate monuments, transforming them both physically and digitally. Images of vandalism that circulate online are powerful enough to re-cast bronze and shatter stone. Creative Commons Attribution-Non-Commercial-Share Alike 2.0 UK: England & Wales; http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/2.0/uk/