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<p> This study examines the South Side Community Art Center in Chicago, its history, educational mission, and the ways in which its collection of primarily African American art can be used as an art education resource. The data collection for this qualitative case study included questionnaires focusing on the collection and the Center&rsquo;s history and mission, in-depth interviews with three Center administrators and one visual artist, informal personal communication, and observational notes. All data was examined using content analysis. Respondents indications concluded that the mission and goals of the Center grew out of its WPA beginnings and was primarily to support the artists and to educate the community about the value of African American art; that the Center&rsquo;s education mission revolved around its educational programming; that the art collection had been used in the past to teach about the Black Power Movement and makes references to important events in history; and that the Center&rsquo;s relationship to the community was multi-faceted and included outreach to local schools in after-school art programs. </p><p> The center&rsquo;s art collection, because of the themes inherent in many of the works, make important connections to key events in American history such as the WPA, WWII, the Great Depression and the Black migration that facilitates meaning making across the life span. The study&rsquo;s results provided evidence of the South Side Community Art Center&rsquo;s role as not only a repository for regional and national African American art and artists, but also as an educational hub for visual culture, art study and relevance for contemporary life themes.</p>

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<p> This thesis provides a revisionist history of Dutch artist Jan Dibbets's early practice. Jan Dibbets has not yet, been credited in art historical scholarship for his contributions in foregrounding visual experience within Conceptual practice. This thesis offers an additional narrative by suggesting a comparison between his early practice and the work being produced by European artists working in a tradition of visual perception. By studying the contemporary reception of Dibbets's work and Perceptual Abstraction, I argue how traditional art historical boundaries have obstructed a possible reading of this artist's practice.</p>

<p> This thesis analyzes the reception of the work of contemporary artist Kara Walker and the critical debates it has engendered. Walker's work has received a mixed reception over the past twenty years: while she has won prestigious awards and received international acclaim, her work also enrages many African American artists and scholars who accuse her of perpetuating racist ideologies and insensitively mocking the history of suffering endured by slaves. I trace three major points within the critical reception of the artist's work: a letter writing campaign in 1997 initiated by the artist Betye Saar; the 2009 publication of the book, <i>Kara Walker&mdash;No/Kara Walker&mdash;Yes/Kara Walker&mdash;?</i>; and the veiling of Walker's work in 2012 in a New Jersey public library. I argue how Walker's strategy of employing "negative imagery" challenges the viewer to critically engage racist stereotypes on complex multifaceted levels.</p>

This creative project explored the visual characteristics of the transitions found in the decay of the pear. The project consisted of oil paintings, watercolors and prints. I found that what is normally viewed as ugly can be visually stimulating or actually beautiful. These images were produced to communicate the visual changes which occure with the characteristics of the fruit through the passage of time. / Department of Art

This study was composed of several large detailed drawings of forms from nature. The drawings were total abstractions of organic forms that had been photographed. The basic composition was structures-of ovals, rectangles and circles with various combinations of the three. With in the basic structures the writer subdivided the areas manipulating organic free forms with reliefs of white special areas.

Conceptual Art emerged as an international, avant-garde art movement in the mid-60s. Attacking the prevailing aesthetics of modern art, Conceptual artists claim that art lies not in the object itself but in the artist's idea or intention. Their asserted goals have been to combine theory with art and to eliminate the need for form in artworks. The purpose of this study was to examine and critique the key theoretical writings of three artists whose works have been recognized by the critics as significant and seminal for the Conceptual Art Movement: Joseph Kosuth, Sol LeWitt, and Terry Atkinson.Historical aspects relevant to this study included the following: (i) early twentieth-century antecedents of Conceptual Art; (ii) recent avant-garde movements of the 60s and 70s; (iii) the history and nature of the concept theories of Kosuth, LeWitt, and Atkinson; (ii) a critiqueof t ese theories in terms of their consistency and viabi ity for generating art; (iii) a comparison of Conceptual Art theories with both commonly accepted theories of art and more radical aesthetic theories of contemporary philosophers.Upon completion of this study, it was concluded that despite many ideological differences, Kosuth, LeWitt, and Atkinson agree on two key notions: (i) the locus of the "work of art" is not a physical object; and (ii) it is the artist's idea which alone accounts for the significance of an artwork. Their arguments in support of these notions are unsatisfactory. Longstanding issues in aesthetics, viz., the problems of defining art and evaluating its significance, are not resolved. The critics' acclaim of the writings critiqued in this study must therefore rest on extrinsic features such as the prestige of the artists, the relevance of the content of the writings to dominant trends in contemporary art, and the potential historical significance of their challenges to established views about art and aesthetics.