AHST 206 American Art to 1945

Division of Liberal Arts

3 credits 45.0 hours
200 level undergraduate course

American artists today are the inheritors of a great art-historical legacy that we, ourselves, were surprisingly slow to fully recognize. This course surveys the paintings, prints, sculpture, and architecture made here, from the colonial era through the Second World War. (Native American art is covered in another course.) Because Philadelphia played an enormously important role in the development of early American art, whenever possible we will visit local venues where such art was made, and is displayed. Artists to be considered include: the colonial sculptor/spy Patience Lovell Wright, distinguished painters J.S. Copley and Benjamin West, architects Thomas Jefferson and Julia Morgan, Philadelphia natives Mary Cassatt and Thomas Eakins, Regionalist painter Grant Wood, the popularizer of mobiles Alexander Calder, and Frank Lloyd Wright, the controversial designer of the western Pennsylvania tourist attraction: “Fallingwater.”

Prerequisites COMP*102, COMP*102E, COMP*112, or COMP*112H

This course is not repeatable for credit.
This course can fulfill an art history elective, liberal arts elective, or free elective requirement.