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...

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...