Archives of American Art Journal: Spring 2020, Volume 59, Number 1

Front cover of the Spring 2020 issue of the Archives of American Art Journal

The Spring 2020 issue of the Archives of American Art Journal (vol. 59, no. 1) explores pressing environmental and ecological questions through the collections of the Archives of American Art. New Research essays by Annika K. Johnson and Lauren Kroiz show how two Euro-American artists—George Catlin in the 1830s and Allen Tupper True in the 1930s—appropriated natural forms associated with Native Americans. 2018 Graduate Research Essay Prize winner Michaela Rife highlights the evolving politics of painter and printmaker Alexandre Hogue, whose art both denounced the ecological devastation of the Dust Bowl and promoted the Texas oil industry. Andrew Wasserman offers a close examination of artist-activist Allan Gussow's anti-nuclear environmental art installations known as LifeYards (1982-83). The issue also includes choreographer Kim Brandt's creative engagement with the Nancy Holt and Robert Smithson Papers, and art historian Amanda Boetzkes's examination of how we might mine the Archives to write a history of environmental art suited to our current ecological crisis.