Art

Bernadine Barnes

Michelangelo in Print: The Role of Early Reproductions in the Creation of a Canonical Figure

Awarded $8,000 for the period 6/1/02 to 9/1/03

Source: National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) Summer Stipend

To complete research for a new book, Dr. Barnes will travel to England to examine the Dyce collection of prints after Michelangelo’s works in the Victoria and Albert Museum; the Royal Collection at Windsor Castle, and the British Library. In Rome, she will work at the Calcografia Nazionale, which holds the surviving engraved plates of some of the most important sixteenth-century reproductions after Michelangelo, and recheck some of the works in the Gabinetto Disegni e Stampe. In Paris, she will study the fundamental collection of prints at the Bibliothèque Nationale.

Following up on her Michelangelo’s Last Judgment: the Renaissance Response (Berkeley: California UP, 1998), the new book will examine how works by Michelangelo became public, how they were selected for publication, then edited, marketed, and received in printed media. It will be among the first comprehensive analyses of large collections of prints that have barely been studied and raise a number of interesting questions about public reaction, the concept of privacy in the Renaissance, and whose purposes the prints served. These prints also show, for the first time, that recently made works of art or architecture could be objects of historical study, since Michelangelo’s works are the first to have been recorded as historical objects, rather than as sources of motifs for artists or as a form of publicity for new works. While no one today is surprised to think of Michelangelo’s work as canonical, this study of the prints shows how social and historical forces worked to construct the canon we now take for granted. The availability of printed images of Michelangelo’s work allowed a critical discussion to take place, and it can even be said, allowed a method of art historical study to take shape.

Victor Faccinto

Planning Phase for the Exhibition of the 2000-01 Visual and Film/Video Artist Fellowship Recipients

Awarded $10,000 for the period 3/1/01 to 8/31/01

Source: North Carolina Arts Council

Funds support curatorial fees, travel expenses, and costs related to an exhibition featuring the 2000-01 North Carolina Arts Council Visual Artist and Film/Video Artist Fellowship recipients to be held at Wake Forest’s Scales Fine Arts Center in fall 2001. The exhibition will host the work of 22 artists, representing 12 North Carolina counties, who work in a variety of media, including painting, sculpture, prints, photography, installation, performance, furniture, quilts, glass, film, and digitally based work. Mr. Faccinto will design the catalog and work with an outside curator to develop the exhibition.

Producing an Exhibition, Catalogue, and Educational Programs Featuring Works of 2000-2001 Visual and Film/Video Artist Fellowship Recipients

Awarded $10,000 for the period 9/1/01 to 5/1/02

Source: North Carolina Arts Council

Implementation phase funds support artist honoraria and travel expenses, costs related to catalogue preparation, and other expenses for the 26 October to 29 January exhibition. It features the work of 19 visual artists, including one artist team, and three film/video artists, representing 12 counties across the state and working in a variety of media, including painting, sculpture, prints, photography, installation, performance, furniture, quilts, glass, film, and digital work. The accompanying catalogue will likely include an essay by curator Linda Dougherty, reproductions of the artistsâ works, biographical information and/or artistsâ statements, a checklist, and introductory statements by gallery and NC Arts Council representatives. The gallery will also develop public programming, including artist or curator talks, workshops, and panel discussions, and Arts Council staff will lead a grants workshop to help new applicants prepare for the 1 November fellowship deadline.

David Lubin

The Look of War: Visualizing American Warfare from Gettysburg to Baghdad

Awarded residential fellowship for the academic year 2006-2007

Source: Havard University’s Charles Warren Center for Studies in American History

Professor Lubin will be one of seven fellows selected to examine the annual theme, “cultural reverberations of war.” His book will trace two separate but dialectically interconnected trajectories in US culture from 1863 to 2003: visual representation, with its evolving technologies, conventions, and modes of distribution to targeted audiences, and warfare, with its own developing technologies, rules of engagement, and modes of delivery to targeted adversaries. Can war ever be represented in visual images, either mimetic or abstract, without gaining an order and rationality that belies its chaotic and extremely violent nature? How have changes in the way war is waged altered US visual culture, and how have they altered the way Americans regard their wars?