Seminar: American Design in the Atomic Age

Instructor: Dr. Monica Penick

Email: mpenick@wisc.edu

Prerequisites

The course is open to graduate students in Design Studies, Art History, History, and related fields. Completion of the design history survey sequence is recommended.

Course Description

This graduate seminar investigates the relationship between American design and culture in the two decades following World War II.  Advancing technologies, expanding economies, shifting social paradigms, and the cultural-political struggle between emerging world superpowers impacted the designed environment in a multiplicity of ways, at both the “high” and “low” levels. As modernism (broadly interpreted) became the dominant language of design (in architecture, interiors, furnishings, and decorative arts), it was simultaneously tasked with representing American capitalism, democracy, and the quest for cultural supremacy. The fear of communist domination – under the looming shadow of the atomic bomb – added yet another layer of complexity to the postwar world view, and provided a new set of challenges to which designers were compelled to respond.

We will begin the course by establishing the historical and cultural context, the “mood,” of the postwar decades. Students will absorb the moment as those who lived during the time period; we will use film, television, literature, popular magazines (for acquaintance with both print images and graphic design), advertisements, fashion, and music to develop a “period eye.” We will then examine a range of commercial, residential, institutional and leisure-themed architecture and interiors in concert with furnishings, decorative arts, and objects of popular culture. Though this, we will investigate the ways in which designers responded to a changing society and evolving tastes, and how these practitioners struggled to represent complex concepts (and ideologies) in built form. The aim of this course is to provide students with a broad context that will enable them to understand the ways in which the Atomic Age and the Cold War affected the designed environment.

Seminar: Topics on African-American Artists: African and African American Art in Museums

This course fulfill Humanities, Ethnic Studies, Afro-American Studies, Art, and related African Studies requirements.

It meets Tuesday: 5:15-7:45.

Students will not only engage exciting readings, they will interact with Chazen Museum staff and develop an understanding of how museums function, as well as an understanding of relationships between art history, museums, and education.

Though an important aim of this course is to introduce students to African and African American art in museums (especially at the Chazen Museum), it will consider art by diverse populations (including questions of gender, sexuality, and disability) with the larger aim of introducing museum best practices, collecting, diversity, museum education, museum-schools relationship, debates on cultural property and restitution, and problems related aesthetics vs. ethnographic displays. In this process, students will develop skills in art historical analysis. Assignments will include short papers, and a major paper or project.

For authorization, please email Freida High at high@wisc.edu <high@wisc.edu>.

Service Learning Update: Lauren Wojcik, McFarland Historical Society

With support from the Caxambas Foundation, the Material Culture Program is once again sponsoring three undergraduate summer service learners. Each student has partnered with a Wisconsin museum or historical society to help them digitize and share their collections online. Our third and final update comes from Art and Scandinavian Studies major Lauren Wojcik, who provides a closer look at some of the objects at the McFarland Historical Society.

Folk objects brought to the United States by immigrants from Norway have cultural significance, but so too do the works of folk art created by the first and later generations of Norwegians in American. The McFarland Historical Society museum collection contains examples of these objects, evincing the cultural regeneration of Norwegian American heritage and illustrating the link between folk arts created in Norway during the 19^th century and the uniquely Norwegian American folk arts created in Wisconsin during the 20^th and 21^st centuries. Earlier in the summer I spent two full days photographing and writing notes about some of these objects, which I've selected to add to the digital collection started by last year's Summer Service Learner, Katie Dreps.

One aspect of folk art from the McFarland collection in which we see a clear progression and transformation in style across generations of Norwegian Americans is rosemaling, a traditional form of painting with variations in style throughout the regions of Norway. Many examples of rosemaling, mostly functional objects like boxes, drinking bowls or trunks for the passage across the Atlantic, were brought to south central Wisconsin when Norwegian immigrants settled here in the 19^th and 20^th centuries.

Per Lysne, an artist from Sogn, Norway who immigrated to Stoughton, Wisconsin in 1907, helped popularize rosemaling in the United States. He gained special recognition when some of his pieces were featured in a 1933 issue of Vogue magazine. Lysne’s smorgasbord plate, which he produced and sold many copies of and which was intended to be hung on a wall, became his trademark piece. Lysne’s style closely mirrors the regional style from the Sogn area, but his pieces were meant to decorate the modern American home.

Per Lysne, Smorgasbord plate, 1944. 15 ¾” diameter. Stoughton, Wisconsin. McFarland Historical Society.

Thanks to artists like Per Lysne, rosemaling saw a renaissance in the mid late 1960s and 70s as a way for later generations of Norwegian-Americans to discover their identity and celebrate their ethnic pride. Successors of Lysne, like Ethel Kvalheim of Stoughton, Clarice Christensen of Oregon, and many others throughout the upper Midwest represent the revival of Norwegian folk arts in the United States. Much like the development of regional variations in style that occurred in 19^th century folk art in Norway, Norwegian American rosemaling developed a distinct flavor independent of the Norwegian s­tyle.

Clarice Christensen, Rosemaled wooden spoon. ½” high, 10” long, 2 ¾” wide (bowl). Oregon, Wisconsin. McFarland Historical Society.

We can trace the development of rosemaling to the present day with a contemporary example of this reinterpretation of a traditional folk art in the form of a 3D animation by artist Dave Beck titled Smorgasbord (after Per Lysne). Though Beck’s piece is not in the McFarland collection it is a reinterpretation of Lysne’s trademark smorgasbord plate. According to Beck, Smorgasbord (after Per Lysne)  “…represents how cultural traditions and values depend on reinvention and rebirth, so that they may survive (and perhaps even flourish) for future generations.” 

Smorgasbord (after Per Lysne) from Dave Beck on Vimeo. Used with permission of the artist.

I’m currently at the research stage for these objects, gathering information and details into short descriptions that will accompany the photos in the digital collection. Looking back on my research, I realize that rosemaling is just one example of the Norwegian heritage kept alive by the generations of Norwegian-Americans. We see this revival in other areas of artistic expression and elsewhere such as in the reinterpretation of traditions such as Syttende Mai festivals, lutefisk dinners and Norwegian heritage organizations throughout United States. Working closely with the objects in the collection at the McFarland Historical Society–both those created in Norway and those created by Norwegian Americans–and researching both the Norwegian immigrant experience in the United States and the experience of their descendants has allowed me to see the progression of culture, identity and ethnic pride in the Norwegian American heritage that is so prevalent throughout southern Wisconsin.

Sources:

Lovoll, Odd S. The Promise of America: A History of the Norwegian-American People. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1999.

Martin, Philip. Rosemaling in the Upper Midwest. Mount Horeb: Wisconsin Folk Museum, 1989.

Nelson, Marion, ed. Norwegian Folk Art: The Migration of a Tradition. New York: Abbeville Press, 1995.

www.davebeck.org

--Lauren Wojcik

Service Learning Update: Katey Smith, Middleton Area Historical Society

With support from the Caxambas Foundation, the Material Culture Program is once again sponsoring three undergraduate summer service learners. Each student has partnered with a Wisconsin museum or historical society to help them digitize and share their collections online. Our second update comes from Landscape Architecture major Katey Smith.

“How is the kid? Suppose you are having a great old time, wish Kate & kids and I were with you. Well don’t forget us will you?” This message was written on the back of this postcard (below) and was sent to Mr. Leonard Brite of Milwaukee, Wisconsin on September 10^th, 1917 . The postcard has been a way of connecting with loved ones, sharing memories, and sending many “wish you were here” messages since the early 1900s. I have had the opportunity to decipher these hand-written personal messages and am looking forward to sharing this collection.

Over the past two months I have been working with the Middleton Area Historical Society to digitize a portion of their historical photograph collection for the Wisconsin Heritage Online database. I have always had an interest in photography and I have recently completed the landscape architecture program at UW-Madison. I am interested in many topics that this broad major encompasses and this summer I wanted to gain more experience with Historic and Cultural Landscape Preservation. This internship allows me to gain hands-on experience, while blending my love of photography and historic landscapes.

Starting out I had absolutely no idea what type of historical photographs I would be digitizing and researching for the digitization project. Wisconsin Heritage Online Outreach Specialist Emily Pfotenhauer advised me with a few logical ways to start:  1. Find a topic that interested me or related to landscape architecture 2. Narrow down the photograph search to a street or area within Middleton or 3. Focus on a topic important to Middleton’s history.

All of these approaches proved to be difficult for me and I was really starting to envy the Material Culture interns who already had a project started or designed for them. I felt pretty lost and for a few weeks I just focused on helping the other volunteers scan photographs and enter information into a data storage system. Luckily, this helped me become familiar with the Middleton Area Historical Society’s collection and what type of information was important to the citizens who visited the museum. By listening to visitor’s conversations with the museum docents, and constantly hearing “Oh I remember my grandfather having…” and trying to help them when they asked for yearbooks, family photographs, etc. made me realize that people were searching for that special way that they could connect with Middleton’s vivid history.

When I came across the large collection of postcards I was totally captivated by them. I liked deciphering the personal messages on the back and felt like I was peering into a small slice of life in the early 1900’s. Often times, the messages on the postcards are very similar to things that I would write on a postcard to a family member or friend today. I felt very connected to history at that point in this experience which made me realize – I too was searching for that unique connection!

As I kept searching through the postcard collection, I discovered some really high quality images. I personally love the image above of the Weinberg Building (currently housing the restaurant Villa Dolce) because it shows an active street life, thriving businesses, and a great social atmosphere. I also especially like images that have old automobiles or signs in them like the two below. (Parmenter Street and High School).

So far, my time with the Middleton Area Historical Society has been very fun! I enjoy finding something new each day, whether it’s a really old photograph or an interesting piece of information. The knowledge and hands on experience I have been gaining is very beneficial. I want to thank Mike Davis (City Administrator), Brekk Feely, Carol and Dave (Lead Volunteers at the Society), as well as all the other Society volunteers who have been extremely trusting and accommodating throughout this entire experience. 

--Katey Smith

Service Learning Update: Maddie Hagerman, UW-Madison Anthropology Collections

With support from the Caxambas Foundation, the Material Culture Program is once again sponsoring three undergraduate summer service learners. Each student has partnered with a Wisconsin museum or historical society to help them digitize and share their collections online. Our first update comes from Anthropology major Maddie Hagerman.

For my Summer Service Learning internship, I’m continuing my student job in the Anthropology Collections at UW-Madison. I work with Senior Curator Danielle Benden as a collections assistant with the ethnographic artifacts. The first part of my project entails making mounts for the nearly six hundred ethnographic artifacts in the collection. In the second phase I began the process of publishing the ethnographic artifacts to UW Digital Collections to better attract potential researchers.

The ethnographic collection contains artifacts from around the world amassed in the field by UW graduate students and professors. Because many of them are composed of organic materials, the artifacts ideally should be stored in closed archival boxes. When I began, most of the artifacts were kept in open shelving, simply protected by tissue paper. To provide the artifacts with the optimal protection, I mounted them on either “blue board,” an archival cardboard, or carved individual ethafoam supports. I designed this basket mount to stabilize both the bottom and sides of the basket. The archival linen “twill tape” only applies pressure on the foam rather than the fragile basket.

The digitization process is more involved than I could have imagined. Right now I’m photographing each object with a Nikon D300 camera and a professional lighting system. Before I could start to photograph, I created a unique nomenclature for our collection. A nomenclature consists of a standardized set of terms to describe objects. This helps to make the artifacts more easily searchable within the digital collections database. In August I will continue to photograph artifacts. I also have to check over the metadata (information such as time, place, and materials) for each artifact to make sure it is correct.  

I'm thoroughly enjoying my summer internship. My favorite part is designing mounts. It really pushes me to think critically about protecting objects while still conserving paper and other supplies. The digitization process has challenged me to work with data entry rather than physical objects. I hope to be a collections manager some day so building off my coursework in material culture, anthropology, and history to learn digital aspects of collections management will be very useful in the future!

--Maddie Hagerman