This course offers a broad survey of arts in the United States
from the Colonial period to the 1913 Armory Show, an exhibition of
contemporary European art that ushered in the era of 20th-Century
modernism.  Course goal is to introduce key figures in the history
of American art, and to equip students with a working knowledge of
essential themes and issues that influenced the development of
painting, graphic arts, sculpture, material culture, landscape and
design.  Topics include the production of a colonial elite through
the medium of portraiture; the problem of history painting in a new
nation; landscape painting and national identity; the art of
westward expansion; putting blacks, native Americans, and women in
their “place” on canvas; the art of war; the nativising if
impressionism; the crusade for beauty in the household; the
modernization of the artist; and the emergence of urban realism,
a.k.a. the “Ashcan School.”  “Big names” include John Singleton
Copley, Winslow Homer, James McNeill Whistler, Mary Cassatt, and
John Singer Sargent, along with a host of lesser-known figures
ranging from the designers of Shaker furniture to painters of happy
farmers and dancing bears.