A Companion to American Art

A Companion to American Art presents a comprehensive exploration of the methodology, historiography, and current state of the field of American art history. Featuring 35 newly–commissioned essays by leading scholars, readings address both canonical and lesser–known artists, trends, and themes while showcasing a diversity of critical approaches to American art history interpretation.

Topics covered range from scholarly overviews of specific chronological periods, movements, and media to in–depth explorations of theoretical concepts; from patronage to popular visual expression; from artistic facture and form to the history of art reception; and from issues of identity and community to reflections on ecology and the environment. Other writings shift focus to the geographical, conceptual, and chronological boundaries of America and the field of American art history, and cover pressing contemporary concerns and suggest future directions of scholarship in research and interpretation. Various art history perspectives are highlighted through several dialogues, in which scholars exchange ideas about important contemporary issues in the field. Essays also feature personal reflections of individual contributors on the development of the field. Combining innovative scholarship with thought–provoking debates, A Companion to American Art is an indispensable reference to the study of American art and artists from colonial times to the current day.

John Davis is Alice Pratt Brown Professor of Art at Smith College. His most recent book (co–authored with Sarah Burns) is American Art to 1900: A Documentary History (2009). 

Jennifer A. Greenhill is Associate Professor of Art History, Criticism and Interpretive Theory at the University of Illinois, Urbana–Champaign. She is the author of Playing It Straight: Art and Humor in the Gilded Age (2012).

Jason D. LaFountain is an Instructor in the Department of Art History, Theory, and Criticism at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago.