ONLINE ART HISTORY COURSE
"Dreams of Arcadia and Victorian Fantasies: Italy in the American Imagination"

Course Description:

From the earliest days of its existence as an independent nation, Americans interested in art and culture made pilgrimages to Italy. What did they expect to find? How have these American “Italy seekers” reconciled fantasies of an “eternal Italy,” a timeless place suspended in the cultural past, with the conditions they encountered in modern Italy?

At the core of this course is the meaning of Italy to American artists, writers, cultural tourists, and art collectors across time. It will include discussion of how travel to Italy informed the development of American landscape painting and sculpture in the 19th century, and how admiration for Italian art shaped the first American art collectors and the museums they founded. The experience of Italy will be presented as an ongoing dialog about taste, nostalgia, and the perception of difference that has influenced how Americans understand themselves as citizens of an independent democratic nation.

The course will be organized around three places especially relevant to evolving notions of Italy in the American imagination: Rome, Florence, and Venice.

Virtual Classroom: Full access to an online educational platform with videos of recordings, syllabus, and reading list.

Location: LIVE INTERACTIVE ON-LINE ART HISTORY LECTURES

Optional Readings:
Information will be provided upon registration.

Complete syllabus will be provided upon registration.

• ALL LECTURES WILL BE RECORDED AND AVAILABLE FOR VIEWING AT YOUR CONVENIENCE IN OUR VIDEO LIBRARY FOR TWO WEEKS AFTER THE COURSE HAS ENDED.

LECTURE 1

- Monday, January 8, 2024

Sculptors seeking to create monuments to America’s military and political heroes relocated to Rome where they found artistic models and skilled artisans. The experience of the Italian landscape, punctuated with historical “ruins,” had a profound impact on American painters trying to capture the unique beauty of the so-called “New World” and its pristine wilderness.

LECTURE 2

- Monday, January 15, 2024

Florence became a destination somewhat later and attracted a very different kind of visitor, one strongly focused on the merits and aesthetic qualities of Italian Renaissance art and how they might elevate artistic taste in the United States. The city offered not only an extraordinary opportunity to study these historical works, but also to avail themselves of expert opinion via connoisseurs such as Bernard Berenson, an American art critic and historian who lived outside Florence and advised many collectors of the Gilded Age.

LECTURE 3

- Monday, January 22, 2024

Finally, Venice ascends at the end of the 19th century and appealed strongly to individuals with more modern sensibilities. The lure of Venice was often rooted in the perception of it as a city of decadence, mystery, and extreme aestheticism, made most evident in the works of American artist James McNeil Whistler. With the founding of the Biennale and the Peggy Guggenheim Museum, Venice became an important venue for the exhibition of emerging international modern and contemporary art.

Mary Ann Calo, Batza Professor, Emerita, joined the Colgate University faculty in 1991 as a member of the Department of Art and History. During her 25 years at Colgate, Prof. Calo taught courses on modern and contemporary art history, the arts and public policy, and American art. She also served as Chair of the Art and Art History Department, Associate Dean of the Faculty, Director of the Institute for the Creative and Performing Arts, and Director of the Division of Arts and Humanities. Calo spent many years living and working in Italy, initially as a student and then later as a professor, serving several times as a visiting professor of modern art at Syracuse University in Florence. Since retirement, Calo has led academic tours focused on modern art for the Smithsonian (France) and for Colgate alumni groups (Italy).