Analyzing Art and Aesthetics (Artefacts: Studies in the History of Science and Technology #9)

Analyzing Art and Aesthetics (Artefacts: Studies in the History of Science and Technology #9)

Anne Collins Goodyear (Editor), Margaret A. Weitekamp (Editor)
$49.95
Publication Date: April 16th, 2013
Publisher:
Smithsonian Institution Scholarly Press
ISBN:
9781935623137
Pages:
309

Description

This ninth volume of the Artefacts series explores how artists have responded to developments in science and technology, past and present. Rather than limiting the discussion to art alone, editors Anne Collins Goodyear and Margaret Weitekamp also asked contributors to consider aesthetics: the scholarly consideration of sensory responses to cultural objects. When considered as aesthetic objects, how do scientific instruments or technological innovations reflect and embody culturally grounded assessments about appearance, feel, and use? And when these objects become museum artifacts, what aesthetic factors affect their exhibition? Contributors found answers in the material objects themselves. This volume reconsiders how science, technology, art, and aesthetics impact one another.

About the Author

Anne Collins Goodyear is Co-Director of the Bowdoin College Museum of Art. Previously, she was Curator of Prints and Drawings at the National Portrait Gallery, Smithsonian Institution, and Professorial Lecturer in Art and Art History at The George Washington University. She is coeditor, with James W. McManus, of Inventing Marcel Duchamp: The Dynamics of Portraiture (Washington, DC: National Portrait Gallery, 2009) and has published numerous essays exploring intersections between modern and contemporary art and portraiture with science and technology.

Margaret A. Weitekamp, PhD, is a curator in the Space History Division at the Smithsonian’s National Air and Space Museum, where she oversees over 4,000 pieces of space memorabilia and space science fiction objects. She wrote Right Stuff, Wrong Sex: America’s First Women in Space Program (2004), winner of the Eugene M. Emme Award for Astronautical Literature from the American Astronautical Society. She earned her BA at the University of Pittsburgh and her PhD at Cornell University.

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