Rebecca Zorach traces the little-told story of the Black Arts Movement in Chicago, showing how its artistic innovations, institution building, and community engagement helped the residents of Chicago's South and West Sides respond to social, political, and economic marginalization.
"Gleaming and perfect, gold has beguiled humankind for many millennia, attracting treasure hunters, adorning the living and the dead, and sybolizing wealth, power, divinity and eternity. This book offers a lively, critical look at the cultural history of this most regal metal, from its use in religious ceremonies to colonial expeditions to modern science, examining its importance across many cultures and time perids and the many places where it has played a central role"--Book flap.
"There is no question that art has played a key role in constructing the public understanding of "America." Probing the intersection of art, nature, race, and place, Temporary Monuments examines how art and artists have responded to this legacy by imagining new ways of constructing notions of land, culture, and public space. Zorach demonstrates how art historical tropes play out through and against the construction of race in a series of real and conceptual spaces that are key to how we imagine this country. Ranging from the museum, the wild, and the monument to the garden, the home, and the border, Temporary Monuments incorporates memoir, historical narrative, literary analysis, and close looking at objects that date from significant moments in American history. Works by artists such as Rebecca Belmore, Dawoud Bey, George Catlin, Theaster Gates, Kerry James Marshall, Dylan Miner, Barnett Newman, Postcommodity, Cauleen Smith, and Amanda Williams help to pry open knotty questions about the relationship between the environment, social justice, history, and identity"--