Art: 'Redressing American Modernism'

The BYU Museum of Art has put together what looks to be a very interesting exhibit Thoroughly Modern: New Exhibition of Early 20th Century Women Artists (hat tip to Meridian Magazine). The exhibit opens Feb. 25 and features the work "of the women art students of Robert Henri —- widely regarded as the most important American art teacher of the era." And it includes "paintings, prints, drawings, sculpture, textiles and furniture by 31 women artists who studied under Henri from the 1890s through the 1920s."

The major drive behind this exhibit, no doubt, is that Mormon artist Minerva Teichert was one of Henri's students.

What's even more interesteing for me is the accompanying symposium -- Redressing American Modernism: An Interdisciplinary Symposium -- which will be held March 4-5 at BYU.

From the symposium's press release:

"The symposium will be held in conjunction with a new exhibition Thoroughly Modern: The "New Women" Art Students of Robert Henri. The exhibition seeks to challenge the dominant narrative about modern art by examining the work of an unstudied group of modernist artists —- the women students of the American artist and teacher Robert Henri (1865-1929). The exhibited work has hitherto been marginalized by the modernist canon with its emphasis on the purely formalist elements of abstract art. Indeed, many artists have been excluded from the historical account, as this exhibition affirms.

"The symposium will address key issues raised by the "Thoroughly Modern" exhibition and its accompanying publication American Women Modernists: The Legacy of Robert Henri, 1910 – 1945 (Rutgers 2005), an anthology of essays by 7 prominent scholars concerned with the re-contextualizing of American modernism. It is anticipated that these proceedings will contribute significantly to an expanded definition of American modernism and will help to restore a less biased appraisal of the artists, poets, musicians, composers, and writers of this period."

The keynote speaker is Lois Rudnick , professor of English and American Studies, and director of the American Studies program at U. Mass. Boston. I'm not so interested in the papers being presented -- although "Deflowering Flora: Banjos and Modernity in Late Nineteenth-Century American Women's Culture" by Leo Mazow, curator of American Art at the Palmer Museum of Art, sounds intriguing -- but rather the idea of BYU hosting the exhibit and symposium, and the whole project of casting it as an attempt to broaden the definition of American modernism and especially to include more women.

This seems to be part of the phenomenon I discuss in my post The Mormon angle to the Buster brouhaha. Perhaps there's more hope for Mormons-as-ethnic-Americans than I thought.