Browsing by Subject "Professionalism"
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Item Henri Rousseau, 1908 and after : the corpus, criticism, and history of a painter without a problem(2012-05) Haskell, Caitlin Welsh; Shiff, Richard; Charlesworth, Michael; Childs, Elizabeth C.; Clarke, John R.; Henderson, Linda; Peers, GlennThis dissertation considers Henri Rousseau (1844-1910) as a painter and as a figure of discourse. It addresses the longstanding concern of Rousseau’s resistance to interpretation and proposes that this derives from Rousseau’s incomplete fulfillment of the professional obligations of the artist, specifically, from his failure to motivate his work through the pursuit of what modern art critics commonly called “a problem.” Rousseau did not practice painting as artists of his day did, and because of this difference—first articulated by Guillaume Apollinaire in 1908 as an absence of artistic inquiétude—he entered the discourse of art with unprecedented susceptibility to reinvention. The Rousseau we know today, the Rousseau who was a miraculous modernist in the interwar period, and the Rousseau who emerged in the context of the avant-garde in the earliest years of the twentieth century share little besides a name, and this frustrates any effort to write a coherent history of the painter and his pictures. Rather than propose once again Rousseau’s recuperation into a traditional art-historical narrative, this dissertation tells the history of a maker who produced admirable images but fulfilled few other author-functions, and it tells the history of writers who, compensating for Rousseau’s authorial deficits, produced a new artist, a new body of work, and widespread puzzlement about the place of each in the history of modern art.Item Preservation professionals : architects and the origins of architectural preservation in the United States, 1876-1926(2020-05-06) Nau, Anna Christine; Holleran, Michael; Cleary, Richard; Hall, Melanie; Long, Christopher; Ibarra-Sevilla, BenjaminThis dissertation re-examines the role of the architecture profession in the early development of historic preservation in the United States. Existing scholarship has defined the emergence of preservation in the US in the second half of the nineteenth century as an amateur, grass roots movement. Unlike their European counterparts, American architects have been understood as peripheral figures until the restoration of Colonial Williamsburg, beginning in 1926. While “amateur” preservationists inarguably led the early movement, this dissertation reveals that architects played a more significant role in defining, documenting, and treating historic buildings between the 1870s and 1920s than previously known. The rise of preservation as a field of inquiry and practice occurred alongside the modern professionalization of architecture. In the last quarter of the nineteenth century, a new popular and scholarly interest in Colonial and Federal era architecture emerged at the same time that American architects were debating the future of their profession. Beginning in the 1870s, they engaged with European preservation ideas and projects through professional architectural journals, which provided a framework to evaluate the value of preservation of their own country’s historic buildings. Three projects for significant civic buildings illustrate the ways in which the profession engaged in preservation leadership between the 1890s and early 1920s. First, the Boston Society of Architects’ mid-1890s campaign to save the “Bulfinch Front” of the Massachusetts State House in Boston. Second, McKim, Mead & White’s 1903 restoration of the White House in Washington, D.C. Third, the Philadelphia AIA’s work at the Independence Hall complex between 1898 and 1924. In each case, prominent architects, including Charles A. Cummings, Charles F. McKim, and Frank Miles Day, treated preservation as a way to distinguish their knowledge of historic buildings from non-professionals. Preservation became a tool for consolidating professional status. As buildings considered of national architectural significance, these projects provided an opportunity for architects to confidently assert expertise and authority. They were also part of a conscious attempt to place the country’s early architectural heritage within the established canon of Western architectural history. This dissertation provides a new perspective on the relationship between preservation and the professionalization of architecture in the late-nineteenth and early-twentieth centuries.Item Scripted behavior : Michelangelo's evolving calligraphy and artistic self-representation(2017-05-04) Hooker, Katie Alexandra; Waldman, Louis Alexander; Johns, AnnIn the age of digitization, archivists, scholars, and art historians have questioned the role of documents once they have been transcribed, published, and stored away in digital repositories. If the information is recorded and saved, how else can a manuscript speak to the art historian? Archival materials such as personal correspondence and manuscripts are traditionally divorced from an individual’s larger corpus of artistic output. The texts themselves are mined solely for information that can inform a work of art, and are typically not regarded for their own formal qualities. This thesis challenges such a practice, asserting that personal letters, particularly those of Michelangelo Buonarroti and his contemporaries, should be approached as artistic artifacts whose formal qualities alone offer a wealth of information regarding the artist and his social context. Focusing on the social implications of Michelangelo’s shift from using the mercantesca script to the cancelleresca script used by humanists and papal dignitaries, this paper proposes that developments in Michelangelo’s writing style mirror other efforts the artist made to construct a distinct identity. Ultimately, this thesis argues that by the dawn of the Cinquecento, script was an integral aspect of personal identity creation and professional reception for a Renaissance artist.Item Telling secondhand stories : news aggregation and the production of journalistic knowledge(2015-08) Coddington, Mark Allen; Reese, Stephen D.; Anderson, C W; Bock, Mary A; Lawrence, Regina G; Strover, Sharon LNews aggregation has become one of the most widely practiced forms of newswork, as more news is characterized by information taken from other published sources and displayed in a single abbreviated space. This form of newsgathering has deep roots in journalism history, but creates significant tension with modern journalism's primary newsgathering practice, reporting. Aggregation's reliance on secondhand information challenges journalism's valorization of firsthand evidence-gathering through the reporter's use of observation, interviews, and documents. This dissertation examines the epistemological practices and professional values of news aggregation, exploring how aggregators gather and verify evidence and present it as factual to audiences. It looks at aggregation in relationship to the dominant values and practices of modern professional journalism, particularly those of reporting. The study employs participant observation at three news aggregation operations as well as in-depth interviews with aggregators to understand the practices of news aggregation as well as the epistemological and professional values behind them. I found that aggregation proceeds by gathering textual evidence of the forms of evidence gathered through reporting work, positioning it as a form of second-order newswork built atop the epistemological practices and values of modern journalistic reporting. Aggregators' distance from the evidence on which they base their reports lends them a profound sense of uncertainty, which they attempt to mitigate by using textual means to communicate their epistemological ambivalence to their audiences and by seeking out technologically afforded means to get closer to news evidence. Aggregators' uncertainty extends to their professional identity, where they attempt to improve their marginal professional status by articulating their own ethical values but also by emphasizing their connections to traditional reporting. Narratively speaking, however, their work does not break down traditional journalistic forms, but instead broadens the narrative horizon to conceive of individual news accounts primarily as part of larger story arcs. The study illuminates the fraught relationship between aggregation and reporting, finding that while aggregation is heavily dependent on reporting, it can be developed as a valid, professionally valued form of newswork. Ultimately, both forms of work have a crucial role to play in providing vital, engaging news to the public.