Episode 1: Five Major Moments in the History of Exhibiting American Art

Welcome to Breaking the Frame, a podcast featuring interviews that explore how museums and the people who work in them shape American history and culture — past and present. Before getting to our interviews this season, hosts Emily Casey and Ruthie Dibble set the table in this episode by discussing five major moments in the history of exhibiting American art.

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More information about the artworks and topics discussed in this episode:

• Major Moment 1: Charles Willson Peale, The Artist in His Museum, 1822.
• Major Moment 2: Thomas Cole, The Course of Empire, ca. 1834-1836: The Savage State, The Arcadian or Pastoral State, The Consummation of Empire, Destruction, Desolation. You can also learn more from a video on the series by New-York Historical Society curator Wendy Nālani E. Ikemoto here.
• Major Moment 3: The opening of the American Wing at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. The first image is of the American Wing building featuring the facade of the Second Branch Bank of the United States. The second image is a photograph of the Marmion Room from a series of images promoting the newly opened American Wing. This photograph can be seen at the top of this article from the Met, and you can learn more about the Marmion Room from their website at this link. You can also look through a new (2002) and old (1938) guide to the American Wing on the Met website via the links.
• Major Moment 4: The Two Centuries of Black American Art exhibition curated by David Driskell. Learn more here, and view the photo discussed here.
• Major Moment 5: The Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act (NAGPRA). See the photo discussed here.

Credits:

• Hosts: Emily C. Casey and R. Ruthie Dibble
• Production Assistant: Katherine White
• Additional research prepared by: The graduate students of the Spring 2024 HA 706/906 Seminar in American Art: American Museums: Race, Class, Labor at the University of Kansas
• Theme music: "Deliberate Thought" Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com), Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 4.0 License
• Artwork: Designed by Katherine White, featuring a frame (ca. 1849-1858) created by the United States Pottery Company currently in the collection of the Metropolitan Museum of Art