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Art history

Unite, 1971 | Courtesy National Museum of African American History and Culture, Smithsonian Institution
Spring 2020

Gallery: Works from the Black Arts Movement in Chicago

A group of artists, musicians, dancers, poets, and writers in Chicago gave birth to the rich aesthetic based on Black American experience known as the Black Arts Movement (BAM). Below are just a few examples of their work.

Read about a new documentary on BAM in Chicago from WSU Vancouver associate professors of English Thabiti Lewis and Pavithra Narayanan.

Races of Mankind
Fall 2014

Races of Mankind: The Sculptures of Malvina Hoffman

Races of Mankind

Marianne Kinkel

University of Illinois Press, 2011

 

In the struggle to find out what makes people unique, artists of the twentieth century entered the field of physical anthropology. In 1930, Chicago’s Field Museum of Natural History commissioned sculptor Malvina Hoffman to research and create sculptures of all races of mankind, of which there were believed to be more than 160.

Marianne Kinkel, an associate professor of fine arts at Washington State University, … » More …

Winter 2013

History develops, art stands still

An art historian journeys into the Renaissance

 

Maria Deprano meets me in Florence just outside of Santa Maria Novella, a church consecrated in the early Renaissance. While the green and white marble façade is spectacular, we’re here to look into the mysteries of the basilica’s interior frescoes.

A 2013 fellow with Harvard University’s Villa I Tatti, DePrano has traded her post in Pullman for a year in Italy to research and write a book featuring a family of fifteenth-century Florence who appear in one particular set of the church’s frescoes. The Tornabuoni were art patrons who commissioned and were featured in artworks from some … » More …