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2 books match the query 'Holzman, Laura M.'
A Working-Class Guide to the Barnes Foundation
An Introduction to the Ideas That Inform the CollectionJay Raymond
Temple University Press, 2027
In A Working-Class Guide to the Barnes Foundation, Jay Raymond explains, for the first time in plain language, the aesthetic theory and practice native to the Barnes Foundation as developed by Albert Barnes and his colleague, Violette de Mazia. Their method relies on the observer’s intellectual and emotional responses to the object, or work of art, itself. Raymond demonstrates the practice through analysis of several paintings in the Foundation's collection.
Raymond, who passionately advocated against the collection’s move from its original home in Merion, PA to its current Philadelphia location, describes the significant differences between the experience of visiting Merion and Philadelphia. Through the application of Barnes's method, Raymond elucidates how those differences alter the aesthetic power and educational value of the collection.
A Working-Class Guide to the Barnes Foundation also provides a necessary corrective to those who see Barnes as merely a wealthy eccentric. Raymond promotes the priorities of education and democracy that shaped the Foundation. He offers a unique and clear-eyed perspective on the institution and man as well as the role of and rewards from seeing art in everyday life.
Contested Image
Defining Philadelphia for the Twenty-First CenturyLaura M. Holzman
Temple University Press, 2019
Thomas Eakins’ 1875 painting, The Gross Clinic, the Rocky Statue, andthe Barnes Foundation are all iconic in Philadelphia for different reasons. But around the year 2000, this painting, this sculpture, and this entire art collection, respectively, generated extended—and heated—controversies about the “appropriate” location for each item. Contested Image revisits the debates that surrounded these works of visual culture and how each item changed through acts of reception—through the ways that viewers looked at, talked about, and used these objects to define their city.
Laura Holzman investigates the negotiations and spirited debates that affected the city of Philadelphia’s identity and its public image. She considers how the region’s cultural resources reshaped the city’s reputation as well as delves into discussions about official efforts to boost local spirit. In tracking these “contested images,” Holzman illuminates the messy process of public envisioning of place and the ways in which public dialogue informs public meaning of both cities themselves and the objects of urban identity.