A Field Pioneered by Amateurs: The Collecting and Display of Islamic Art in Early Twentieth-Century Boston

2014 ◽  
Vol 30 (1) ◽  
pp. 13-33 ◽  
Author(s):  
Benedict Cuddon
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Middle East ◽  
Fine Arts ◽  
Art Museum ◽  
Political Context ◽  
Islamic Art ◽  
Aesthetic Movement ◽  
The Social ◽  
American Hegemony ◽  
The Aesthetic

This article examines the formation and display of collections of Islamic art in Boston-area museums over the first half of the twentieth century. It focuses on the holdings of three main institutions: the Museum of Fine Arts, the Fogg Art Museum, and the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum. It explores some of the key personalities involved in the formation of collections, such as Denman Waldo Ross, Hervey Wetzel, Joseph McMullan, and Stuart Cary Welch. It also looks at early curators of the collections, in this era a largely amateur pursuit. Through these considerations it traces changing approaches to the study of Islamic art and discusses the various local and international forces (including the Aesthetic Movement, emerging nationalist discourses and ethno-racialist interpretations of art, and the growing American hegemony in the Middle East) that shaped the social and political context in which Islamic art was received and interpreted in this period.

scholarly journals Art during tough times: reflections from an art-based health promotion initiative during the COVID-19 pandemic

2021 ◽  
pp. 175797592199863
Author(s):  
Ilhan Abdullahi ◽  
Navneet Kaur Chana ◽  
Marco Zenone ◽  
Paola Ardiles
Keyword(s):  
Health Promotion ◽  
Community Engagement ◽  
Health Inequities ◽  
Well Being ◽  
Art Museum ◽  
Political Context ◽  
The Social ◽  
Promotion Strategies ◽  
Health Promotion Initiative

With the current COVID-19 pandemic impacting communities across the globe, diverse health promotion strategies are required to address the wide-ranging challenges we face. Art is a highly engaging tool that promotes positive well-being and increases community engagement and participation. The ‘Create Hope Mural’ campaign emerged as an arts-based health promotion response to inspire dialogue on why hope is so important for Canadians during these challenging times. This initiative is a partnership between a health promotion network based in Vancouver and an ‘open air’ art museum based in Toronto. Families were invited to submit artwork online that represents the concept of hope. This paper discusses the reflections of organizers of this arts-based health promotion initiative during the early months of the pandemic in Canada. Our findings reveal the importance of decolonizing practices, centring the voices of those impacted by crisis, while being attentive to the social and political context. These learnings can be adopted by prospective health promoters attempting to use arts-based methods to address social and health inequities.

Situating Tribes in History: Lessons from the Archives and the Social Sciences

2021 ◽  
Vol 53 (3) ◽  
pp. 473-476
Author(s):  
Nadav Samin
Keyword(s):  
Social Sciences ◽  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Middle East ◽  
Middle Eastern ◽  
Record Keeping ◽  
Know How ◽  
The Social ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Many ◽  
Official Records

The tribe presents a problem for the historian of the modern Middle East, particularly one interested in personalities, subtleties of culture and society, and other such “useless” things. By and large, tribes did not leave their own written records. The tribal author is a phenomenon of the present or the recent past. There are few twentieth century tribal figures comparable to the urban personalities to whose writings and influence we owe our understanding of the social, intellectual, and political history of the modern Middle East. There is next a larger problem of record keeping to contend with: the almost complete inaccessibility of official records on the postcolonial Middle East. It is no wonder that political scientists and anthropologists are among the best regarded custodians of the region's twentieth century history; they know how to make creative and often eloquent use of drastically limited tools. For many decades, suspicious governments have inhibited historians from carrying out the duties of their vocation. This is one reason why the many rich and original new monographs on Saddam Hussein's Iraq are so important. If tribes are on the margins of the records, and the records themselves are off limits, then one might imagine why modern Middle Eastern tribes are so poorly conceived in the scholarly imagination.

scholarly journals Still Afraid of Legal Pluralism? Encountering Santi Romano

2019 ◽  
Vol 45 (2) ◽  
pp. 539-558
Author(s):  
Roger Cotterrell
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
English Translation ◽  
Social Issues ◽  
Legal Pluralism ◽  
Political Context ◽  
Legal Order ◽  
Early Twentieth Century ◽  
Political Implications ◽  
The Social ◽  
Sociolegal Studies

The second edition of Santi Romano’s book, The Legal Order, now appearing in its first English translation (2017), is a pioneer text of legal pluralism. Its interest lies in its extreme radicalism and in the fact that, although it is written by a lawyer, its argument has many important political implications and addresses core conceptual issues in contemporary sociolegal studies of legal pluralism. The social and political context of Romano’s book in early twentieth-century Italy is far from being solely of historical interest. Issues that surrounded his juristic thinking in its time resonate with important political and social issues of today.

scholarly journals Forming Future Teachers’ Aesthetic Culture in Foreign Educational Practice

2016 ◽  
Vol 6 (4) ◽  
pp. 20-26
Author(s):  
Galyna Sotska
Keyword(s):  
Environmental Science ◽  
Fine Arts ◽  
Educational Practice ◽  
The United States ◽  
Future Teachers ◽  
Cultural Challenges ◽  
Foreign Countries ◽  
The Social ◽  
The Aesthetic ◽  
Pedagogical Literature

Abstract The article deals with a theoretical analysis of foreign educational experience in solving scientific problems of forming future teachers’ aesthetic culture. Given the current socio-cultural situation, it has been noted that a teacher who developed his/her aesthetic culture can make a direct contribution to the social and cultural challenges of a changing world. Based on the study of scientific and pedagogical literature, normative and legal support and the content of practical courses, the author has revealed the peculiarities of forming future specialists’ aesthetic culture in foreign countries (Japan, Germany, Canada, the United States, England). Special attention has been paid to the aesthetic potential of fine arts in forming future teachers’ aesthetic culture, which ensures the harmony of intellectual and aesthetic development of personality, enriches the emotional and sensual sphere, develops cognitive and creative activities, aesthetic needs and tastes, stipulates for future teachers’ involving in the process of artistic and aesthetic culture of the nation. The performed analysis proves that the forming of future teachers’ aesthetic culture should be based on the intercultural approach; the ideas of interrelation between aesthetic and ecological in aesthetic education; integration relations between powerful potential of fine (visual) arts, environmental science and aesthetic creativity. The experience of foreign educational practice may be adopted by domestic universities to form individual aesthetic culture of future teachers.

Timber to Timbre

2021 ◽  
pp. 93-116
Author(s):  
José E. Martínez-Reyes
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Power Relations ◽  
Commodity Chains ◽  
Scholarly Literature ◽  
Forest Sustainability ◽  
Global Commodity Chains ◽  
The Social ◽  
Increasing Demand ◽  
Electric Guitars ◽  
The Aesthetic

The Gibson Les Paul is one of the most iconic electric guitars ever made. Although there is a vibrant scholarly literature surrounding the Les Paul’s symbolic entanglements with issues of race, gender, and class, few have considered the ecopolitical entanglements involved in producing a key material dimension of that guitar’s signature sound: Honduran mahogany (Swietenia macrophylla). Fiji is one of the main harvesting sites of Honduran mahogany, and this chapter charts the social and environmental transformations that occurred following this wood’s introduction to Fiji in the 1880s, considering especially the increasing demand for mahogany as it has been driven by the popularization of the Les Paul since the mid-twentieth century—an issue that, to this day, continues to define forestry in the region. By examining the global commodity chains and infrastructures underlying Les Paul production, this chapter focuses on the role that Honduran mahogany, or the “White Man’s timber,” as it is called by some locals, has played in reconfiguring Fijian landowners’ definitions of what constitutes a forest, sustainability, and justice. In doing so, the chapter interrogates the power relations and ontological politics in which different actors, species, and things are enmeshed. Ultimately, the chapter shows that the aesthetic investments of musicians in particular timbres are rooted in broader legacies of timber-driven colonialism and plantation capitalism.

ACO Women in the Second Half of the Twentieth Century: Transitions and Persisting Patterns

2021 ◽  
pp. 026537882110682
Author(s):  
Rima Nasrallah
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Middle East ◽  
Oral History ◽  
Women Missionaries ◽  
Local Churches ◽  
Female Agency ◽  
Missionary Work ◽  
The Social ◽  
To Come ◽  
Political Turmoil

After the independence of Syria and Lebanon Protestant missionary work in the Middle East changed dramatically. The women missionaries who worked in the service of the ACO had to come to terms with new realities such as the social and political turmoil of decolonisation, missiological shifts, and partnership agreements with the local churches. Drawing on written memoirs and oral history sources, this article explores their female agency and leadership in a changing context. It also analyses the perception of these missionaries by local agents.

scholarly journals The aesthetics of artistic expression in productions of Islamic Photography School

2020 ◽  
Vol 26 (106) ◽  
pp. 324-343
Author(s):  
م.د. اخلاص عبد القادر طاهر
Keyword(s):  
Middle Ages ◽  
Social Life ◽  
Research Community ◽  
Artistic Expression ◽  
Islamic Art ◽  
Creative Achievement ◽  
The Social ◽  
Visual Text ◽  
The Aesthetic ◽  
Intellectual Level

The research highlights on the aesthetics of artistic expression in the products of the Islamic photography schools to highlight the most important aesthetic and aesthetic values ​​by analyzing selected models of those products that the Islamic photographer was able to employ the various life data and its multiple vocabulary to create visual spaces that are characterized by balanced symmetry. He distributes his vocabulary and characters and the contents of his photographic art through a visual text that gave special attention to these productions. These products came as a clear, articulated and expressive view of themselves, inspired by their ideas and implications from the social life of Islamic society. The current research aims to reveal the aesthetics of artistic expression in the productions of Islamic photography schools. Therefore, the researcher adopted the analytical descriptive approach in building the research procedures as it is the most scientific method suitable to achieve the objective of the current research. The current research community consists products of Islamic art photography schools in (Iraqi - Mughal in Iran - Timorese school - Ottoman Turkish photography) dating back to middle Ages. Since the research community is very broad, the researcher resorted to selecting an objective sample consisting of (4) models: 1- Baghdad School  (Al-Barqa'a Center- The Hajj procession) 2- (zal under Roodbe's balcony) Shahnama Ferdosi 3- Elephant's Hour. The main conclusions are: pictures expressed a symbolic message, reflected the customs and traditions of those times. 2 - Misrepresentation was present by drawing shapes and exaggerating disposing of proportions contrary to the truth. 3 - coordinating the constituent components of the pictures and creating balanced and unified relationships with each other to achieve aesthetic expression. The most important conclusions are: 1- The value of the creative achievement, the aesthetic and artistic inventory, and the power of expression in Islamic art through their expressions of the soul of society, showing the intellectual level of the Muslim artist. 2- The Islamic decoration was used in the products of Islamic schools to exalt the material existence based on the aesthetic shape which represented by the centrality of man.

scholarly journals VIRTUAL ART MUSEUM AS EDUCATIONAL CONTENT ICT IN TEACHING FINE ARTS (THEORETICAL ASPECT)

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Aleksandar Mitrović ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Information And Communication Technologies ◽  
Aesthetic Experience ◽  
Fine Arts ◽  
Theoretical Aspect ◽  
Art Museum ◽  
Educational Goals ◽  
Educational Content ◽  
Virtual Museums ◽  
The Aesthetic ◽  
Almost All

The educational goal of teaching fine arts is to adopt visual literacy and visual expressiveness. Learning by means of information and communication technologies (ICT) involves the use of digital devices for the effective and creative extension of knowledge. The production of electronic educational materials is increasing daily, and thanks to the Internet, it is available on almost all ICT devices. In this paper virtual museums are presented as educational contents of ICT in the teaching of fine arts, as well as their method of application in teaching. The contents presented by virtual museums provide an interactive and non- interactive method of learning and exploration. The interactive educational content of virtual museums is often in the form of educational applications or websites that can be found on ICT and have well-intended educational goals. The contemporary approach and use of ICT in the teaching of fine arts provides new learning opportunities that focus on the aesthetic experience and theoretical aspect of visual content. Given that it takes less time to adopt pictorial content than to adopt verbal content, today’s approach to fine arts education involves the use of ICT.

scholarly journals Education in Motion: The Virginia Museum of Fine Arts Artmobile, 1953 – 1994

2019 ◽  
Vol 17 (1) ◽  
pp. 19-36
Author(s):  
Maureen Sarah O'Connor
Keyword(s):  
Fine Arts ◽  
The United States ◽  
Art Museum ◽  
Art Appreciation ◽  
Educational Objective ◽  
Educational Philosophies ◽  
The Social ◽  
Personal Connections ◽  
Museum Of Fine Arts ◽  
The Impact

This essay explores five exhibitions created for the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts Artmobile, the first mobile art museum in the United States. The mission of the Artmobile was to bring works of art directly to citizens throughout the state of Virginia from 1953 to 1994. In analyzing educational and exhibition materials, such as exhibition booklets, audio guide recordings, press releases, and speeches, this research examines the educational philosophies of each exhibition in relation to contemporaneous museum education literature. Applying Tony Bennett’s analysis of the impact of culture on the social to the creation of educational philosophies, this essay argues that while the mission of the Artmobile remained constant, there was a shift in the educational objective from the development of cultured citizens through art appreciation and the improvement of public taste to fostering individual visual literacy and encouraging visitors to make art historical and personal connections. 

The technological era of ‘sound’: a challenge for musicology and a new range of social practices

2007 ◽  
Vol 12 (3) ◽  
pp. 251-258 ◽  
Author(s):  
François Delalande
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Contemporary Music ◽  
Social Practices ◽  
Social Organisation ◽  
Musical Form ◽  
Technological Revolution ◽  
The Social ◽  
Key Factor ◽  
Analysis Society ◽  
The Aesthetic

AbstractThe ‘technological revolution’ that took place in music during the twentieth century is equivalent to the revolution that took place between the twelfth and fourteenth century, which transformed musical notation into applications of technology related to creation. This second revolution, as well as the first one, concerns not only musical form, but also the social organisation related to music. The aesthetic of sound is the key factor (in all the genres of contemporary music), which is a major challenge for musical analysis. Society is reorganising itself, favouring the appropriation and amateur practices within musical creation. Musical research institutions – and particularly the GRM – develop new forms of collaboration with their audience and contribute to the constitution of a ‘horizontal’ society, based on exchange, in frank opposition with the ‘vertical’ society, based on a reduced number of producers and a large amount of consumers.

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