On the Beginning of Contemporary Tibetan Art: The Exhibitions, Dealers, and Artists.

Contemporary Tibetan art has been internationally exhibited since the year 2000, and it continues to receive increasing recognition among international galleries and collectors. This thesis focuses on three major contributing factors that have affected the rising success of the contemporary Tibetan artists. The factors include ways in which popular stereotypes have influenced Western museum exhibitions of Tibetan art; dealers have marketed the artworks; and artists have created works that are both conceptually and aesthetically appealing to an international audience. Drawing from exhibition catalogs, interviews and art historical scholarship, this thesis looks at how the history of these factors has affected the beginning of the contemporary Tibetan art movement

Art+Politics

For the exhibition Art + Politics, students worked closely with the holdings of Gettysburg College\u27s Special Collections and College Archives to curate an exhibition in Schmucker Art Gallery that engages with issues of public policy, activism, war, propaganda, and other critical socio-political themes. Each of the students worked diligently to contextualize the objects historically, politically, and art-historically. The art and artifacts presented in this exhibition reveal how various political events and social issues have been interpreted through various visual and printed materials, including posters, pins, illustrations, song sheets, as well as a Chinese shoe for bound feet. The students\u27 essays that follow demonstrate careful research and thoughtful reflection on the American Civil War, nineteenth-century politics, the First and Second World Wars, World\u27s Fairs, Dwight D. Eisenhower\u27s campaign, Vietnam-War era protests, and the Cultural Revolution in China. [excerpt]https://cupola.gettysburg.edu/artcatalogs/1009/thumbnail.jp

Irish Travelling Artists: Ireland, Southern Asia and the British Empire 1760-1850

The aim of this thesis is to show that Irish art made in the period under discussion, the late-eighteenth to the mid-nineteenth century, should not be considered solely in terms of Ireland’s relationship with England as heretofore, but rather, within the framework of the wider British Empire. As will be demonstrated, this approach both enhances Irish art-historical scholarship and contributes to more general studies concerning art and the British Empire. During this time of accelerating imperial expansion, Ireland’s experience of empire became increasingly ambivalent: Irish people moved through the empire as traders, soldiers and settlers, yet Ireland itself remained a colonised land. Thus, the analysis of art made by Irish travelling artists brings a new perspective to the question of art’s role in the imperial project, since intra-imperial comparisons and contrasts may be made which would not otherwise be possible. The thesis focuses on the work of two Irish artists who travelled to Southern Asia. Active initially in the commercial centre of Calcutta and then in the more militarised town of Madras, Thomas Hickey worked in India during a period of transition as British interests in the subcontinent shifted from those of trade to conquest and territorial expansion; consequently, his paintings offer illuminating insights into art’s changing functions at a pivotal moment in Anglo-Indian relations. By contrast, Andrew Nicholl, travelled somewhat later to Ceylon, serving its colonial institutions as the British Empire reached the height of its power. Ceylon has rarely been discussed in the context of art and empire, the thesis, therefore, opens up a new area of scholarship informed by Nicholl’s experience

Private Lives and Interior Spaces: Raja Ravi Varma\u27s Scholar Paintings

Between 1900 and 1904, the celebrated Indian academic painter Raja Ravi Varma painted two depictions of men reading (plate 1 and plate 2). The works are unusual, so much so, as to be quite unrecognizable from the mythological paintings and princely portraits that earned Ravi Varma his reputation with patrons and clients. Ravi Varma was best known for his paintings of lovelorn women gazing comely at the viewer and although men had featured in several commissioned portraits they were rarely presented as idealised figures. His sketchbooks feature several examples of men in everyday scenes, so it is evident that he experimented with the idea but very few seem to have made the transition to a final painting. The two small paintings are not strictly portraits in the sense that there is no information on them being commissioned, nor do they present particular, distinctive individuals but rather represent characters within environments. They are, more properly, genre paintings that portray the subjects within scenes of contemporary life. At least two other paintings of men exist from the same period, The Retired Soldier (1902) and The Miser (1901) both of which are largely anthropological in nature. In the scholar paintings however, Ravi Varma attempts to go beyond the dominant paradigms of anthropological portraiture or studio portraits of the period in exploring the subjective potential of the Indian man in his private universe, a characterization that is explored with much empathy and sensitivity and throws light on the idealised male self in turn of the century Kerala

EXHIBITION Louisiana\u27s Natural Treasure: Margaret Stones, Botanical Artist

In 2020, LSU Libraries Special Collections presented the exhibition “Louisiana’s Natural Treasure: Margaret Stones, Botanical Artist” at Hill Memorial Library, featuring selected original watercolor paintings and archival materials related to the Native Flora of Louisiana project. A native of Australia, Margaret Stones (1920-2018) achieved an acclaimed international career that spanned three continents. Commissioned by LSU and funded by private donations, more than 200 watercolor drawings of Louisiana plants produced by Stones during the 1970s and 1980s are among the most treasured holdings of LSU Libraries Special Collections. The Native Flora of Louisiana project was grounded in a long historical tradition of botanical illustration. Stones only worked from live specimens, requiring the collection of the plant through all of its stages and seasons to include flower, fruit, and seed. Many intrepid collectors navigated swamp and forest to secure representative species, their endeavors documented by the artist on the finished drawings. All of the works have been made available online in the Louisiana Digital Library. In the centennial year of her birth, we celebrate the story of Margaret Stones and the Flora of Louisiana both in tribute to her legacy, and with the hope of introducing her work to new audiences