Mark D. Mitchell

An exploration of the human figure and artistic imagination in public art of the American Renaissance, from the nation’s centennial to World War I In an era of sweeping change following the devastation of the Civil War, an ambitious generation of American artists focused on the human figure in civic art. This richly illustrated publication showcases more than one hundred studies related to major commissions for the Boston Public Library, Library of Congress, Pennsylvania State Capitol, and other key civic institutions of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. From intimate pencil sketches and clay maquettes to half-scale oil paintings for massive murals, these compelling expressions of ideas in formation reveal how artists such as Edwin Austin Abbey, Violet Oakley, John Singer Sargent, Augustus Saint-Gaudens, and others shaped their vision, recorded their influences, and developed a visual language that captivated a divided nation. Thematic sections offer discussions of related works, and essays address wider creative and cultural contexts, from the laboring body in an age of expanding industrialization to the relationship between the natural environment, art, and technology. This timely volume reassesses a neglected chapter in American art and shows how artists engaged with the struggles and forces of their time. Distributed for the Yale University Art Gallery Exhibition Schedule: Yale University Art Gallery (September 6, 2024–January 5, 2025)

An illuminating look at how the Pre-Raphaelite movement was embraced by a group of vanguard American artists Bringing together insights from a distinguished group of scholars, this beautiful book analyzes the history and historiography of the American Pre-Raphaelites, and how the movement made its way from England to America. Led by Thomas Charles Farrer—an English expatriate and acolyte of the hugely influential English critic John Ruskin—the American Pre-Raphaelite artists followed Ruskin’s dictum to depict nature close up and with great fidelity. Many members of the group (including Farrer, who served in the Union army during the American Civil War) were also abolitionists, and several created works with a rich political subtext. Featuring the work of artists such as Fidelia Bridges, Henry and Thomas Charles Farrer, Charles Herbert Moore, Henry Roderick Newman, and William Trost Richards, this generously illustrated volume is filled with insightful essays that explore the influence of Ruskin on the American artists, the role of watercolor and photography in their work, symbolism and veiled references to the Civil War, and much more. Published in association with the National Gallery of Art, WashingtonExhibition Schedule:National Gallery of Art, Washington (04/14/19–07/21/19)

The histories of post-1500 American Indian and First Nations societies reflect a dynamic interplay of forces. Europeans introduced new technologies, new economic systems, and new social forms, but those novelties were appropriated, resisted, modified, or ignored according to indigenous meanings, relationships, and practices that originated long before Europeans came to the Americas. A comprehensive understanding of the changes colonialism wrought must therefore be rooted in trans-Columbian native histories that span the centuries before and after the advent of the colonists. In Crafting History in the Northern Plains Mark D. Mitchell illustrates the crucial role archaeological methods and archaeological data can play in producing trans-Columbian histories. Combining an in-depth analysis of the organization of stone tool and pottery production with ethnographic and historical data, Mitchell synthesizes the social and economic histories of the native communities located at the confluence of the Heart and Missouri rivers, home for more than five centuries to the Mandan people. Mitchell is the first researcher to examine the impact of Mandan history on the developing colonial economy of the Northern Plains. In Crafting History in the Northern Plains, he demonstrates the special importance of native history in the 1400s and 1500s to the course of European colonization.