MTU Library Catalogue

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Young America : childhood in 19th-century art and culture / Claire Perry.

By: Perry, Claire.
Contributor(s): Iris & B. Gerald Cantor Center for Visual Arts at Stanford University | Smithsonian American Art Museum | Portland Museum of Art.
Material type: materialTypeLabelBookPublisher: New Haven [Conn.] : Yale University Press in association with the Iris & B. Gerald Cantor Center for Visual Arts, Stanford University, c2006Description: x, 236 p. : ill. (some col.) ; 29 cm. + pbk.ISBN: 0300106203; 0937031275.Subject(s): Children in art -- Exhibitions | Childhood in art -- Exhibitions | Art, American -- 19th century -- Exhibitions | Children -- United States -- Social conditions -- 19th century -- ExhibitionsDDC classification: 704.94250747468
Contents:
Director's foreword -- Acknowledgments -- Introduction -- The country boy -- Daughters of liberty -- Children of bondage -- Ragamuffin -- The papoose -- The new scholar -- Notes -- Bibliography -- Exhibition checklist -- Index.
Holdings
Item type Current library Call number Copy number Status Barcode
General lending MTU Crawford College of Art and Design Library Lending 704.94250747468 (Browse shelf(Opens below)) 1 Available 00193591
Total holds: 0

Enhanced descriptions from Syndetics:

A delightful look at how nineteenth-century American artists portrayed children and childhood



In an era of both optimism and anxiety about the nation's future, Americans in the nineteenth century focused attention on the cultivation and education of children as future citizens. Contemporary portrayals of children--in fine paintings, popular prints, illustrated primers, and advertisements--helped to shape cultural expectations: pictures of hardy country boys, intent schoolchildren, and little girls practicing embroidery were examples of the ways model Americans should look and behave. At the same time, images showing street urchins, young slaves, or children at work in factories reflected troubling conflicts in society.



This appealing book explores representations of children in relation to the currents of American culture, including urbanization, immigration, separate spheres of the genders, and the nation's professed devotion to egalitarianism. A generous selection of illustrations includes well-loved works by such artists as Winslow Homer and Eastman Johnson, as well as fascinating archival images. With engaging depictions of children from varied economic, racial, and geographic backgrounds, Young America opens a new window on the life and culture of the United States during a century of vast change and growth.





Published in association with the Iris and B. Gerald Cantor Center for Visual Arts, Stanford University

Published on the occasion of the exhibition American ABC, held at Iris and B. Gerald Cantor Center for Visual Arts, Stanford University, Feb. 1-May 7, 2006; Smithsonian American Art Museum, Washington, D.C., July 4-Sept. 17, 2006; Portland Museum of Art, Portland, Maine, Nov. 1, 2006-Jan. 7, 2007.

Includes bibliographical references (p. [207]-226) and index.

Director's foreword -- Acknowledgments -- Introduction -- The country boy -- Daughters of liberty -- Children of bondage -- Ragamuffin -- The papoose -- The new scholar -- Notes -- Bibliography -- Exhibition checklist -- Index.

Table of contents provided by Syndetics

  • Director's Foreword (p. viii)
  • Acknowledgments (p. xi)
  • Introduction (p. 1)
  • 1 The Country Boy (p. 11)
  • 2 Daughters of Liberty (p. 35)
  • 3 Children of Bondage (p. 73)
  • 4 Ragamuffin (p. 111)
  • 5 The Papoose (p. 147)
  • 6 The New Scholar (p. 179)
  • Notes (p. 207)
  • Bibliography (p. 219)
  • Exhibition Checklist (p. 227)
  • Index (p. 232)

Reviews provided by Syndetics

CHOICE Review

For this catalog of a traveling exhibition, curator Perry (Cantor Center) has assembled a diverse array of images, beautifully illustrated in 104 color and 64 black-and-white photographs. Six "childhood types" are investigated: rural boys, girls, African Americans, urban waifs, Native Americans, and schoolchildren. For the student of 19th-century culture, the illustrations are a rich mine, ranging from Winslow Homer paintings to Eclectic First Reader wood engravings to Jacob Riis photographs. The book is advertised as "remarkably original" but in fact epitomizes today's popular approach--material culture studies. The sweeping range of the inquiry, the dissolving of old art-historical hierarchies, the minute examination of even the humblest types of art, are positives. But Perry's confident readings, rooted in the latest academic approaches, often seem too subtle--maybe possible, but not really plausible, considering the long-ago context. The heavy race/gender interpretations beloved of academics are hard to sustain with such genially humorous and escapist art as is shown here. Did the artists actually intend pretty flowers on a girl's hat to grimly "evoke the boundaries of the female sphere"? Or a black child happily dancing to be taken as a "bitter" image, an "indictment" steeped in Reconstruction politics? Doubtful. ^BSumming Up: Recommended. Graduate students; faculty and researchers. W. B. Maynard Johns Hopkins University

Author notes provided by Syndetics

Claire Perry is curator of American art at the Cantor Center for Visual Arts, Stanford University.