Collecting, Curating, and Consuming American Popular Graphic Arts Yesterday and Today

Program

Friday, March 25, 2022

9:00-9:30AM:

Welcome

Sarah Weatherwax, Senior Curator of Graphic Arts, and Co-Curator, Imperfect History: Curating the Graphic Arts Collection at Benjamin Franklin’s Public Library, Library Company of Philadelphia

Erika Piola, Curator of Graphic Arts, Director, Visual Culture Program, and Co-Curator, Imperfect History: Curating the Graphic Arts Collection at Benjamin Franklin’s Public Library, Library Company of Philadelphia

9:30-10:30AM:

Keynote Address

Makeda Best, Harvard Art Museums

10:30-10:45AM

Break

10:45AM-12:15PM:

Session 1: Race/Gender/Class and the Complex Constructions of Collecting Mass-Produced Media

Chair: Erika Piola, Library Company of Philadelphia

Cruel Intentions: Grappling with Racial Stereotypes in Trade-Card Advertisements of Food
Shana Klein, Assistant Professor of Art History, Kent State University

Cut & Paste: Printcraft in Graphic Arts Collections
Christina Michelon, Assistant Curator of Art and Special Collections, Boston Athenaeum

Pharmaceutical Dreamworks: Rhetorics of Race, Gender, and Disability in American Drug Advertising, 1800 to Now
Phillippa Pitts, Ph.D. candidate, History of Art and Architecture, Boston University

12:15-1:30PM:

Lunch Break

1:30-3:00PM:

Session 2: Equity and Curation, Then and Now

Chair: Sarah Weatherwax, Library Company of Philadelphia

Re-presenting the Civil War and Reconstruction Eras through Popular Forms of Portraiture
Robyn Asleson, Curator of Prints and Drawings, National Portrait Gallery, Smithsonian Institution

“Illustrations of Chivalry”: Collecting and Curating Photographs of Atrocity in Philadelphia and Beyond
Anne Cross, Ph.D. candidate, Art History, University of Delaware

Challenging and Maintaining Cultural Narratives through Comics Archives
Stephanie Mannheim, MLS student, Queens College

3:00-3:30PM:

Break

3:30-5:00PM:

Session 3: The Sociopolitics of Consuming Visual Rhetorics in the 19th and 20th Centuries

Chair: Linda August, Library Company of Philadelphia

Beyond the History of Illustration: Exploring Complexity and Complicity in Yellowed Pages of American Magazines
D.B. Dowd, Professor of Art and American Culture Studies, Sam Fox School of Design & Visual Arts, Washington University in St. Louis and Faculty Director, D.B. Dowd Modern Graphic History Library, Washington University Libraries

Embodying the United States: How Thomas Nast Turned Uncle Sam into a National Symbol
Constance McPhee, Curator, Department of Drawing and Prints, Metropolitan Museum of Art

American Printmakers and the Politics of Embedding the U.S. Flag
Larissa Randall, Curatorial Associate, American Art, Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art

5:00-5:15PM:

Final Remarks