Books | Media

Titles preceded by an asterisk (*) may be purchased through the Museum Shop. Please call (312) 443-3533 for information or visit our shop at The Art Institute of Chicago.

Titles preceded by a plus sign (+) are available for reference in the Elizabeth Stone Robson Teacher Resource Center. Also available for reference or purchase at the center is the teacher manual American Art and Culture: Curriculum Resource Guide. Chicago: The Art Institute of Chicago, 1995.

Books for Adults

Surveys

*+Barter, Judith A., Kimberly Rhodes, and Seth A. Thayer, with contributions by Andrew Walker. American Arts at The Art Institute of Chicago. Chicago: The Art Institute of Chicago, 1998.

Craven, Wayne. American Art: History and Culture. Madison, Wis.: WCB Brown & Benchmark Publishers, 1994.

Hecksher, Morrison. American Furniture in the Metropolitan Museum of Art. The Late Colonial Period: Queen Anne and Chippendale. New York: Random House, 1985.

Novak, Barbara. American Painting of the Nineteenth Century: Realism, Idealism, and the American Experience. New York: Harper & Row, 1979.

Rebora, Carrie, and Paul Staiti et al. John Singleton Copley in America. New York: The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, 1995.

+Taylor, Joshua. America as Art. Washington, D.C.: Smithsonian Institutions Press, 1976.

Groseclose, Barbara S. Nineteenth-Century American Art. New York: Oxford University Press, 2000.

Movements and Media

Bowman, Leslie. American Arts and Crafts: Virtue in Design. Boston: Bulfinch, 1990.

Craven, Wayne. Sculpture in America. Newark: University of Delaware Press, 1984.

Kasson, Joy S. Marble Queens & Captives: Women in Nineteenth-Century American Sculpture. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1990.

Zurier, Rebecca et al. Metropolitan Lives: The Ashcan Artists and Their New York. New York and London: National Museum of American Art in association with W. W. Norton & Company, 1995.

Artists

*+Barter, Judith A. Mary Cassatt: Modern Woman. Chicago: The Art Institute of Chicago, 1998.

Cikovsky, Nicolai. Winslow Homer. New York: Rizzoli International, 1992.

Johnson, Deborah J. et al. William Sidney Mount: Painter of American Life. New York: American Federation of Arts, 1998.

Kilmurray, Elaine, and Richard Ormond, eds. John Singer Sargent. London: Tate Gallery Publishing, 1998.

Manthorne, Katherine. Creation and Renewal: Views of Cotopaxi by Frederick Edwin Church. Washington, D.C.: National Museum of American Art by the Smithsonian Institution Press, 1985.

Sherwood, Dolly. Harriet Hosmer, American Sculptor, 1830—1908. Columbia: University of Missouri Press, 1991.

+Tedeschi, Martha, and Britt Salvesen. "Songs on Stone: James McNeill Whistler and the Art of Lithography." The Art Institute of Chicago Museum Studies 24, 1 (1998).

Social and Cultural History

Garret, Elizabeth. At Home, The American Family: 1750–1870. New York: Abrams, 1990.

Grier, Katherine. Culture and Comfort: People, Parlors, and Upholstery, 1850–1930. Rochester, N.Y.: Strong Museum, 1988.

Harris, Neal. The Artist in American Society. New York: George Braziller, 1966.

Walker, Andrew, ed. "Terrain of Freedom: American Art and the Civil War." The Art Institute of Chicago Museum Studies 27, 1 (2000).

Books for Children

Fisher, Leonard Everett. Colonial Americans. The Cabinetmakers. New York: Franklin Watts, Inc., 1966.

Fisher, Leonard Everett. Colonial Americans. The Limners: America's Earliest Portrait Painters. New York: Franklin Watts, Inc., 1969.

Glubok, Shirley. The Art of America in the Gilded Age. New York: Macmillan Publishing Company, 1974.

___. The Art of Colonial America. New York: Macmillan Publishing Company, 1970.

___. The Art of the New American Nation. New York: Macmillan Publishing Company, 1972.

King, Edith Morgan. Harriet Hosmer: Yankee Sculptor. Stamford, Conn.: Overbrook Press, 1968.

Tunis, Edwin. Colonial Craftsmen and the Beginning of American Industry. Cleveland and New York: World Publishing Company, 1965.

Media

Videos

+Awareness Series: American Art. John Singleton Copley, George Catlin, and Mary Cassatt: A National of Painters. Produced by the National Gallery of Art, Washington, in cooperation with WETA-TV. 24 min. Board of Trustees, National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C., 1973. Available through the loan program of the National Gallery of Art, Department of Education Resources, extprog@nga.gov

Hughes, Robert. American Visions. Produced by Planet 24 in association with BBC Television; a Time Inc.-BBC co-production; produced in association with Thirteen/WNET. 8 videocassettes. 60 min. each. PBS Video, 1996. Distributed by PBS.

+John Singer Sargent: Outside the Frame. Produced by WETA-TV, Washington, D.C., 1999. 57 min. Distributed by Home Vision.

+The Landscape of Frederic Edwin Church. Produced by the National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C. 29 min. Board of Trustees, National Gallery of Art, 1989. Distributed by Home Vision.

*Winslow Homer: An American Original. Produced by Devine Entertainment in association with Alef Jo Filmstudio and Cinémaginaire. 59 min. Devine Entertainment Corporation, 1999. Distributed by Family Entertainment.

+Winslow Homer: The Nature of the Artist. Produced by the National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C. in association with York Productions, Inc. Board of Trustees, National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C., 1986. Distributed by Home Vision.

Web Sites

Teachers' Guide to American Art
http://www.thinker.org/fam/education/publications/guide-american/
Fine Art Museums of San Francisco site with texts, images, and lesson plans related to American art until 1900, including "Learning to Look at American Paintings," "The Civil War, 1850s to 1860s," and "The Industrial Revolution, 1870s to 1880s."

Winterthur Museum, Garden and Library
http://www.winterthur.org/index.html
Site for the Delaware country estate of the du Pont family with educational pages on colonial furniture, including a period-room tour and the Web exhibition "Can Furniture Keep Secrets?"

Art Tales: Telling Stories with Wildlife Art
www.wildlifeart.org/ArtTales/index.html
Educational Web Adventures site that allows you to adopt a role, such as frontier explorer, field guide writer, or museum curator, and write an original text using selected artworks from the collection of the National Museum of Wildlife Art in Jackson Hole, Wyoming. Create a soundtrack for your journal by drawing from a library of musical clips and sound effects.

William Harnett: Trompe L'Oeil Master http://www.nga.gov/feature/artnation/harnett/index.htm
National Gallery of Art Web site exploring Harnett's The Old Violin of 1886 and his "fool the eye" methods. Includes a biography of the artist and comparative works by his contemporaries.

Winslow Homer
http://www.boston.com/mfa/homer/mfahomer.htm
Online portion of the 1996 retrospective organized by the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, illustrating all aspects of the painter's career, from his early views of the Civil War to his seascapes.

Watson and the Shark by John Singleton Copley
http://www.nga.gov/feature/watson/watsonhome.html
Interactive exploration of Copley's 1778 painting documenting the real-life efforts of a trading ship's crew, who attempted to rescue an orphan boy from a shark in 1749 in the waters off Havana, Cuba. Created for the Web site of the National Gallery of Art, Washington.

John Singer Sargent
http://www.boston.com/mfa/sargent/
Online exhibition of the 1999 Sargent retrospective organized by the Tate Gallery in conjuction with the National Gallery of Art, Washington, and the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, with reproductions of over 150 of the artist's works.

U.S. History.org
www.ushistory.org
A clearinghouse for numerous American history Web sites.

American Memory: Historical Collections for the National Digital Library
http://rs6.loc.gov
Archives of historic pictures, documents, maps, and sound recordings from the Library of Congress, with lesson plans and activities for families