Summer Online Bookclub: reviewing a Cengage product – “Gardner’s Art Through the Ages: a Global History,” 16th edition

May 20, 2020 This summer of Covid-19 offers opportunities to focus on one of the most used textbooks in Art History survey classes. Today, in 2020, many students enroll at Liberal Arts institutions that require them to take a certain number of credits in different areas of learning. These courses are often referred to as…

May 18th – International Museum Day 2022

According to ICOM , the International Council of Museums, International Museum Day, or IMD “was celebrated for the first time 40 years ago. All around the world, more and more museums participate in International Museum Day. Last year, more than 37,000 museums participated in the event in about 158 countries and territories.” This year’s theme…

2021 Journal

MARCH – Smithsonian Associates Certificate Program in “World Art History” March 2 “Smithsonian Associates” is affiliated with THE Smithsonian, but it is not a taxpayer supported entity. Well it’s not directly supported by taxpayer funds. It may get tax credits as an educational program. The problem with its “World Art History” certificate is that content…

Gender and Racial Biases in the “History of Modern Art” by H.H. Arnason and Elizabeth C. Mansfield, 7th edition (c) 2013

Initial Thoughts To be fair, dialog about the need for inclusive narratives were not as prevalent way back in 2013 as they are now. However, national movements including MeToo and protests surrounding the murder of George Floyd have focused attention on some of the ongoing gender and racist biases in American high school textbooks as…

When did Gardner’s Art Through the Ages get so inaccurate and biased?

Perspectives shift and historical analyses change. Individuals, play a role in that process. Here, it is important to understand that Helen Gardner, who wrote and edited the editions 1, 2, and 3 of Gardner’s Art Through The Ages, articulated a much more inclusive art history than that being produced in her name today. In the…

Beginning with Bias – “About the Cover Art”

May 28, 2020 The first art historical analysis is about the cover work, Jan Vermeer’s Allegory of the Art of Painting.  The artist painted this work between 1670-1675, long after the Dutch started to travel throughout the world, set up fortresses, and create detailed maps to help in their efforts to explore and conquer. Dominating Vermeer’s…

Problems and errors in the “Introduction” to Gardner’s 16th edition

Page 1: “The earliest known paintings and sculptures were created almost 40,000 years ago,…” Misleading and false First, why only look at paintings and sculptures? There are many more visual art forms including the Diepkloof Eggshell Engravings from the Western Cape of South Africa. These go back to 60,000 BCE. For more information about this art…

“Different Ways of Seeing” – racism

Some of the most troubling/racist content in Gardner’s appears in the “Different Ways of Seeing” section provided in the “Introduction” (p. 13).  It features two images of the Maori leader, Te Pehi Kupe. The problem is that the image on the right is identified as a Self-Portrait by Te Pehi Kupe himself. It’s not. The…

The absolutely unacceptable portrayal of Asmat culture in Gardner’s 16th Edition

The Asmat people, who live in what is now the Papua province of Indonesia, continue to face social and economic hardship. They have suffered under many governments including the Dutch and the Indonesian. The presence of Freeport McMoRan, a multinational corporation that established the Grasberg Mine, has and continues to bring environmental devastation to the…

Museums, Art History Programs, and ongoing Racism and Sexism

It is now 2019 and there are is still too many examples of professional art historians and art history programs failing to take an objective view of the information they present. A couple of examples of programming conveying inaccurate information–information that continues to marginalize cultures–comes from the University of St. Thomas. The first example shows…