The history of the banjo is as haunting as its music. Made popular in minstrel shows of the nineteenth century, the "banjar" derives from the stringed gourd instrument African slaves brought with them to plantations in the Caribbean and American South. From minstrelsy to the folk music revival of the twentieth century, the banjo has continued to attract audiences and acquire meaning. Picturing the Banjo gives this long history an entirely new dimension by tracing the instrument's representation in American visual culture from the eighteenth century to the present. Published in...

This catalogue from the Palmer Museum of Art of The Pennsylvania State University accompanied an exhibition, also entitled An Endless Panorama of Beauty, that presented highlights from the Jean and Alvin Snowiss collection of American art. Their remarkable collection ranges from the Revolutionary period of American history through the mid-twentieth century and includes major works by such famed artists as John Singleton Copley, Thomas Eakins, Winslow Homer, Charles Demuth, and Georgia O'Keeffe, among many others. An Endless Panorama of Beauty is the first publication...

This catalogue from the Palmer Museum of Art of The Pennsylvania State University accompanied an exhibition, also entitled An Endless Panorama of Beauty, that presented highlights from the Jean and Alvin Snowiss collection of American art. Their remarkable collection ranges from the Revolutionary period of American history through the mid-twentieth century and includes major works by such famed artists as John Singleton Copley, Thomas Eakins, Winslow Homer, Charles Demuth, and Georgia O'Keeffe, among many others. An Endless Panorama of Beauty is the first publication...

Although little known today, John R. Covert (1882-1960) played a pivotal role in the development of American modernism. He was a founder of the Society of Independent Artists, an active participant in the Societe Anonyme, and produced innovative paintings and collage-constructions that reflect his experiences of the renowned art collection of his cousin, Walter Arensberg. Yet, in 1923, Covert broke off his association with key modernists like Marcel Duchamp and Charles Demuth, closed his New York studio, and went to work as a salesman for the Vesuvius Crucible Company of Pittsburgh....

"I have been working with polychrome low-fire ceramics making objects and sculpture, arts, and crafts but never tiles for my floor." --Robert Arneson, 1970

This catalogue, which accompanied an exhibition of the same name at the Palmer Museum of Art, provides new insight into the significance of the sculpture of Robert Arneson (1930-1992), an internationally acclaimed artist and influential teacher. Through much of his career, Arneson concentrated on making ceramic sculptures either of himself or of commonplace objects from bricks to toasters and telephones. Arneson's sculptures of...

Alternately praised as "an American original" and lampooned as an arbiter of kitsch, the regionalist painter Thomas Hart Benton has been the subject of myriad monographs and journal articles, remaining almost as controversial today as he was in his own time. Missing from this literature, however, is an understanding of the profound ways in which sound figures in the artist's enterprises. Prolonged attention to the sonic realm yields rich insights into long-established narratives, corroborating some but challenging and complicating at least as many. A self-taught and frequently performing...