Terra Foundation For American Art Presents Free Two-Day, Two-City Symposium 6/19-20

To many, modern art means post-1940s abstraction. Yet American modernism got its start decades earlier and took several forms. The Terra Foundation for American Art, Milwaukee Art Museum and the American Decorative Art 1900 Foundation are convening a Free two-day, two-city symposium, “What’s Modern about American Art, 1900 –1930?” on June 19 (Chicago) and June 20 (Milwaukee). The symposium explores modernism as expressed in American painting and design from 1900 to 1930. Free registration is required, and includes Free round-trip transportation between Chicago and Milwaukee for the June 20 programming. For more information and to register, visit www.terraamericanart.org/modernism-symposium or call (312) 654-2278.  

A highlight of “What’s Modern about American Art, 1900 – 1930?” will be the keynote lecture by Pulitzer Prize winning cultural historian Michael Kammen, entitled “Visual Culture in Progressive America: Anomalies and Achievements.” The lecture is hosted by the Art Institute of Chicago in Fullerton Hall (111 S. Michigan Avenue, Chicago) Friday, June 19, 6 – 7 p.m.

In additional symposium events, noted scholars will investigate the various meanings of “modern” in art and culture through brief presentations, panel discussions and exhibition gallery talks. The symposium’s innovative format is organized around provocative keywords such as “realism,” “radicalism,” “abstraction,” “authenticity,” “ornament,” and “American scene,” terms that have shaped debates over modernism for decades.

The “What’s Modern about American Art, 1900 – 1930?” symposium is held in conjunction with the exhibition “The Eight and American Modernisms” at the Milwaukee Art Museum (MAM)(700 N. Art Museum Drive, Milwaukee), organized by the Terra Foundation for American Art in collaboration with the New Britain Museum of American Art and MAM.

The artists who were part of “The Eight” were among the most progressive in America: Arthur B. Davies, William Glackens, Robert Henri, Ernest Lawson, George Luks, Maurice B. Prendergast, Everett Shinn and John Sloan. The Eight are forever linked by one collective and defining experience, a New York exhibition at Macbeth Galleries that traveled throughout the U.S. and included a stop at the Art Institute of Chicago a century ago in 1908. The Eight was a group comprised of strong individualists, a curious mixture of Greenwich Village bohemians and bourgeois professionals, who enjoyed the urbane pleasures of city life. The symposium also coincides with the exhibition “The Artistic Furniture of Charles Rohlfs” at MAM, organized by MAM, the Chipstone Foundation and American Decorative Art 1900 Foundation.

“What’s Modern about American Art, 1900 –1930?” Event Schedule

For additional details on the Free events listed below, and to register for the “What’s Modern about American Art, 1900 –1930?” symposium, visit www.terraamericanart.org/modernism-symposium or call (312) 654-2278.

“Modernism and Painting,” presented in conjunction with the Chicago Department of Cultural Affairs

Friday, June 19

8:30 a.m. – 4:30 p.m.

Free and open to the public (registration required)

Venue: Chicago Cultural Center, Claudia Cassidy Theater

78 E. Washington Street, Chicago

Speakers include:

Allan Antliff, University of Victoria

Debra Bricker Balken, Independent Curator

Robert Cozzolino, The Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts

Erika Doss, University of Notre Dame

John Fagg, The University of Nottingham

Wendy Greenhouse, Independent Art Historian

Barbara Jaffee, Northern Illinois University

Jennifer Marshall, University of Minnesota

Kimberly Orcutt, New-York Historical Society

E. Bruce Robertson, University of California, Santa Barbara

Sarah Vure, Long Beach City College

Jason Weems, University of California, Riverside

Panelists and speakers have prepared papers based on the following keywords:

Art histories, advocates & critics, dealers & collectors, museums, transatlantic, American scene, cities, studio/figure painting, pedagogy, abstraction, realism and radicalism

“Visual Culture in Progressive America: Anomalies and Achievements,” keynote lecture by Pulitzer Prize winning cultural historian Michael Kammen

Friday, June 19

6 – 7 p.m.

Free and open to the public

Venue: Art Institute of Chicago, Fullerton Hall

111 S. Michigan Avenue, Chicago

In the keynote lecture for the symposium, Pulitzer Prize winning cultural historian Michael Kammen, Newton C. Farr Professor Emeritus of American History and Culture at Cornell University, will examine the temper of the times, circa 1900 – 1925, in terms of the contending forces of progressivism and conservatism.  He will consider the varied meanings and understandings of “modernism” a century ago, noting the anomalous relationship between enthusiasm for modernity in life and widespread uneasiness about innovative modernism in art.

He will call attention to tensions within the art world involving romantic realism and non-representational art, but also between tradition-oriented art institutions and radical iconoclasts. With museum visitation figures in the U.S. the highest in the world, a crucial issue for consideration is to what extent the steadily growing enthusiasm for art museums and their exhibitions has coincided with the “art spirit” voiced by Robert Henri in 1923.

Kammen will also consider the short-term impact and the long-term legacies of The Eight, and discuss the gradual ways in which artistic modernism began to catch up with technological developments and take them into visual account by the later 1920s and 1930s.

He will call attention to the key role played by two groups of women who became strong advocates for modernism in European and American art. And finally, Kammen will speak about the history of anti-modernism in Chicago. Overall, the story of resistance to modernism in high and popular culture is as revealing as the outpouring of creative innovation that we recall and celebrate today.

“Painting and Design”

Saturday, June 20

10:30 a.m. – 5 p.m.

Free with paid admission to Milwaukee Art Museum (registration required)

$12 Adults / $10 Students, Seniors, Active Military / Free for Milwaukee Art Museum and American Association of Museums members

Venue: Milwaukee Art Museum

700 N. Art Museum Drive, Milwaukee

Free round-trip transportation between Chicago and Milwaukee will be provided for registered symposium participants (space is limited)

Speakers include:

Virginia Terry Boyd, University of Wisconsin-Madison

Peter John Brownlee, Terra Foundation for American Art

Joseph Cunningham, American Decorative Art 1900 Foundation

Sarah Fayen, Chipstone Foundation

Elizabeth Kennedy, Terra Foundation for American Art

Leo G. Mazow, Palmer Museum of Art, The Pennsylvania State University

Amy Ogata, Bard Graduate Center

Kimberly Orcutt, New-York Historical Society

Judith H. O'Toole, Westmoreland Museum of American Art

Sarah Vure, Long Beach City College

Jochen Wierich, Cheekwood Botanical Garden & Museum of Art

Panelists and speakers have prepared papers based on the following major topics and keywords:

The exhibitions “The Eight and American Modernisms” and “The Artistic Furniture of Charles Rohlfs,” ornament, authenticity, and antimodernism.

The Chicago-based Terra Foundation for American art is dedicated to promoting the exploration, understanding and enjoyment of historical visual art of the United States. With financial resources of approximately $200 million and an exceptional collection of American art from the colonial era to 1945, it is one of the world's leading foundations focused on American art.

Founded in 1978 by Daniel J. Terra, December 2008 marked the 30th anniversary of the Terra Foundation. Throughout the past three decades the foundation has initiated and supported international programs in the areas of historical American art presentation, scholarship and education.

For more information, please visit the foundation’s Web site at www.terraamericanart.org.

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