American Studies 2005

35th Annual American Studies Seminar:
Arts in America

Michael Kammen

Michael Kammen is the Newton C. Farr Professor of American history and Culture at Cornell University, where he has taught since 1965. A past president of the Organization of American Historians, he is the author or editor of numerous works, including People of Paradox, which won the Pulitzer Prize in History in 1973. He has lectured throughout the world. His research interests focus on U.S. cultural history, primarily 19th and 20th century. Recent publications include A Time to Every Purpose: The Four Seasons in American Culture (2004), Robert Gwathmey: The Life and Art of Passionate Observer (1999), American Culture, American Tastes: Social Change and the Twentieth Century (1999), and In the Past Lane: Historical Perspectives on American Culture (1997).

Lectures:

Teaching American History through the Arts: The Mall in Washington as "Sacred Space"

This talk will focus on the history of the Mall in Washington as "sacred space" and how that notion came about a century ago. It involves discussions of the Washington Monument, the Lincoln and Jefferson Memorials (also one to Franklin Roosevelt), the statue of Freedom on the dome of the U.S. Capitol, the disdain for equestrian monuments (too European), the Vietnam Veterans Memorial (1982) and the Korean War Memorial (1995), the Hirshhorn Museum, and the rejection of Saarinen’s very modern museum design for contemporary art on the Mall (late 1930s). The role of the Smithsonian Institution in all of this will be important. Time permitting, I will also discuss the very first American art controversy: Horatio Greenough’s statue of George Washington, commissioned for the U.S. Capitol in 1841. The issues range from how best to represent civic society to aesthetics to tourism. The tension between neo-classicism and building things that are more American and utilitarian.

Art-related Controversies in the U.S

List of Slides

My lecture will concern the peculiar and symptomatic history of art-related controversies in the U.S. Perhaps the single most important focus will be an issue that Americans have so often asked themselves: what kind of art is appropriate for a democracy? Other major themes will involve the question of payment for art: the government or the private sector (an interesting point of contrast with Europe), and the very American tendency toward "gigantism." Why must everything be so extra large? Most broadly, how has art become politicized in the U.S., and why?

The actual issues will revolve around five categories.
1. The reluctant American response to modernism, and especially abstract art.
2. Issues prompted by art that seemed obscene, or sexually explicit, or gave religious offense.
3. Controversies arising from the advent of government programs to support public sculpture, beginning in 1969. The GSA and NEA programs.
4. The transformation of the American museum from a "warehouse" for preservation to an "emporium" where art gets commodified (1960s- ).
5. Issues involving race and gender in art: inclusion and exclusion.