Since the Middle Ages, strict regulations had divided the Venetian craft guilds according to the raw materials that they used. Because of this there were few occasions in which to compete over the production of cognate objects. Altarpieces were the major exception. The design and production of an altarpiece, whether its central image was painted or carved from stone or wood, had involved multiple competencies, providing work for different artisans, and facilitating the exchange of ideas across mediums. Over the last third of the fifteenth century, however, sculpted altarpieces flourished and their designs increasingly eschewed participation from painters as polychromy became more and more limited and new classicizing tastes prevailed. While collaboration did not disappear, the dialogical nature of altarpiece production in this period was imbued with a sense of competition. The discourse on media, however, was not restricted to the realm of aesthetics and matters of business or personal pride. Reflection upon the ontologies, merits, and symbolic efficacy of their materials was also informed by these objects' privileged locations on or in proximity to the altar. Previous studies on sculpted altarpieces have focused on morphology, iconography, and patronage. My study, in contrast, examines this object category as an intermediary, in a threefold sense: altarpieces acted as facilitators, as go-betweens engendering practical interaction between professional groups; they constituted a locus of artistic exchange between mediums, and of reflection upon the ontology of the crafts of painting and sculpture; the materiality of sculpted altarpieces engaged in a reciprocal inflection of meaning with their setting, the altar. By virtue of their unique status as a shared object category, altarpieces allow us to chart the interaction between the arts of Venice. Their privileged position at a fulcrum of holy space opens their interpretation to an array of written sources of information. An examination of these sources and of this formal and thematic dialog provides a window into understanding the artistic principles that guided artists and viewers in a city that produced almost no theoretical literature directly addressing the arts until the middle of the sixteenth century.

This dissertation was designed using a qualitative research mode of inquiry that utilized a mixed methodology approach. This dissertation was an ethnographic narrative study tracking eight young women who were “aging out” or forced to leave their orphanage in Peru, where most of them had spent a majority of their lives. The study examined the way in which a collaborative art community could support the participants as they narrated their lives over a 16-month period of time through photojournaling and social media outlets. This study relied upon interviews, on-site observations, personal journaling, and photographing, in addition to an overall thematic analysis of the output of each of the eight participants and two nuns. From these data, six key themes emerged concerning the outcomes of each young girl’s continuing life at the Hogar and their endeavors outside of the orphanage. The focal points of this study were community building via art making and building of personal aesthetic, community engagement, reflection on self-identity, cross-cultural art education, and shared experience via photo-art narratives and social media. This research also examined the role of collaborative art experiences in helping these young women structure new identities and form collaborations with their peers designed to sustain them into their future lives. This dissertation studied not only the formation of singular identities but how these functioned within a collaborative identity that supported the young participants as they moved out of their orphanage and forward into the outside world.

This dissertation offers a new interpretation of Andrea del Sarto’s art and career and is rooted in the premise that collaboration played a central role in Andrea’s artistic practice. Serving as an interpretative rebalancing act, it focuses not on Andrea’s personality, individual artistic practice, or influence on later painters, but on his collaborative undertakings in the first half of his career. Each of the four chapters centers on a large, complex, and ambitious cycle of paintings. These projects, frequently exceeding the physical and technical capabilities of a single individual, were virtually impossible for an artist to produce in isolation, thus readily lending themselves to a collaborative approach. Chapter One examines Andrea’s early years working at Santissima Annunziata and focuses on the fresco cycle depicting the life of the Blessed Phillip Benizzi that Andrea carried out in tandem with Franciabigio. The two young painters, who met while studying the battle scene cartoons of Michelangelo and Leonardo da Vinci, shared a workshop in their earliest years as independent artists and worked together on their first commissions. The Philip Benizzi fresco cycle, which fills one side of the Chiostro dei Voti, the Annunziata’s forecourt, illustrates what I call “manual collaboration,” in which the two painters co-executed several of the paintings, even as each maintained his own cartoon transfer methods and stylistic tendencies. Chapter Two also concentrates on the Annunziata, but shifts its attention to the other side of the Chiostro dei Voti. It begins by looking at The Journey of the Magi, a fresco in which Andrea includes a self-portrait alongside depictions of his friends the sculptor Jacopo Sansovino and the musician and composer Francesco d’Aiolle and considers the implications of Andrea’s move to the Sapienza complex, adjacent to the Servite church. The chapter then examines the rich musical environment in which Andrea was embedded at the Annunziata. It considers how contemporary ideas of musical harmony and figural polyphony, in what I call “conceptual collaboration,” may have influenced the Marian fresco cycle, which Andrea carried out alongside Franciabigio, Jacopo Pontormo, and Rosso Fiorentino. Chapter Three turns to the Borgherini bedchamber, a private commission for an elaborate room in the palace of Pierfrancesco Borgherini decorated with painted panels illustrating the life of the Old Testament figure of Joseph, whose production was overseen by the architect Baccio d’Agnolo. In light of unpublished archival material, the chapter considers both the overall ensemble and the individual paintings executed by Andrea, Jacopo Pontormo, Francesco Granacci, and Bacchiacca in relation to Pope Leo X’s triumphal entry into Florence, on which almost all of the artists had worked in the year prior to undertaking the bedchamber. This chapter considers both how Baccio d’Agnolo, in a form of “programmatic collaboration,” oversaw the project and how the painters worked with one another as they developed and then executed their own panel paintings. Chapter Four examines the Chiostro dello Scalzo, a space to which Andrea returned throughout his career that exemplifies several of the modes of collaboration discussed in earlier chapters. Considering a form of “intermedial collaboration,” the chapter looks at the transfer and translation of designs across surfaces and media, with special attention to Andrea’s work with the sculptor Jacopo Sansovino. The chapter concludes with a consideration of the Scalzo’s afterlife and how it served as a site that invited collaborative tendencies in subsequent generations of artists. The dissertation concludes with an Epilogue that addresses Andrea’s little-studied time in France from 1518 to 1519, a period of his career that cries out for further evaluation. This trip marks the moment when Andrea shifted from collaborating with his peers to directing his own large workshop, one that thrived during the 1520s and became the training ground for a future generation of painters. Taken together, these chapters illuminate several manifestations of collaboration in Andrea’s career, helping to reframe our understanding of artistic authorship in the sixteenth century.

Set in New Orleans, Louisiana, this qualitative dissertation study integrated case study, participatory, and ethnographic methods to examine how young Black girls curate joy, resist everyday violences, and promote well-being in their daily lives through the use of photography, Black girl literacies, and collective art making. Given that this country sits on a national inheritance of anti-Blackness and misogyny—both amplified during a global pandemic, Black girls have been implicated in these oppressive structures during precarious times. Contemporary and historical events have demonstrated the precarity of the lives of Black people, especially Black girls. As Kimberlé Crenshaw (2020) shared, “If we are ever truly to protect young Black women like Toying Salau or Breonna Taylor, we must first tell their stories.” This 6-month study inquired how young Black girls (ages 7-9 years old) become/are researchers of their own lives within the exacerbated social conditions of the pandemics of racism, sexism, COVID-19, and natural disasters. The participating Black girls generated content, art, and conversations from their lived experiences, much as Black people have been doing for their counter-narrative and truth telling. Scholars (Fontaine & Luttrell, 2015; Ghiso, 2016; Templeton, 2020) have documented the need for young children to find their voice to share their perspectives within the classroom space as well as examined the generative role of photography to foster inquiry among young children. This participatory study documented how three Black girls in early childhood education engaged with their artistic research through the use of disposable cameras and community art spaces during a time of multilayered and intersectional pandemics in their racial and gendered identities. The intent was for this study to be about and for the girls and their families and their city, with a potential consequence of adding/initiating conversations about the creative journeys needed/possible of remaking (early childhood) spaces for Black girls with Black girls and their families who are living and thriving in complex and unique ways in a society that makes it hard for them to live fully (or with ease) and thrive effortlessly. There were so many hard questions about identity posed to the girls during this study, and their articulations of themselves through words and art show how they are living the answers willfully and courageously.

Much has been said about what artists experience when they make visual art individually, but less has been said about what artists experience when they make art together. The study is based on the author’s perception, elaborated below, that artistic co-creation in the visual arts seems to be regarded as less valuable than individual artistic creation. To explore and richly describe the experience of artistic co-creation from the perspective of artists themselves, I initially invited three duos of artists to create visual art together in an experimental, time-bound co creation. After the onset of COVID-19, however, I amended the study by inviting participants to co-create art by virtually passing pieces of art to one another. I then interviewed them about their experience. Guided by a phenomenological approach, I conducted semi-structured interviews using questions sourced from the study purpose and related research questions. These interviews, held periodically through the co-creative project, sought to uncover the emergent themes of the experience of artistic co-creation. After reviewing the transcripts from these interviews, I created a representative written likeness of each duo experience, called a portrait, using the qualitative modes of portraiture. Six themes emerged from these portraits in the ways the artists reflected on their experiences of creating art together, including: moments of relationship and connection in the process of co-creation, the context and structure of the experiment, seeing experiences differently in the process of co-creation, finding agreements between the perspectives of the co-creators, developing creative rhythms based on temporal parameters, and learning in the partnership of the project. I did not begin this study with a formally-articulated conceptual framework, but I was influenced in my thinking by Basquiat and Warhol’s relationship and subsequent collaborative artworks. This research contributes to the literature in key areas by examining existing assumptions about the value of artistic co-creation in the visual arts.

Accompanist is the old term. Collaborative pianist is the new one. Accompanist implies a mostly subservient role, whereas collaborative pianist gestures toward a more equitable relationship between the soloist and pianist, no longer a mere follower. Degree programs that prepare collaborative piano skills are growing rapidly in higher education since their inception five decades ago, encouraging a wider range of pianists to pursue an intentional career path. Becoming a seasoned collaborative pianist takes time, however. Little empirical research has investigated the preparation process. What is it like for collaborative piano majors to accumulate collaborative skills and practical knowledge? How is collaboration defined and experienced, and how helpful do students find their programs? Without understanding student experiences, the artistic well-being of collaborative pianists is at stake, and so is the field’s own ability to do its work. This qualitative study examines lived experiences of collaborative piano students in conservatory and university degree programs. As researcher, I conducted in-depth semi-structured interviews exploring topics including, but not limited to, professional identity, attitudes and dispositions, competencies and skills, struggles and challenges, power dynamics as well as teamwork with four recent graduates in the United States. It seems that issues of professionalization, an unclear definition of “collaboration,” and a lack of student agency are central to all lived experiences. An examination of these phenomena would contribute to the growth of the field, empowering its ability to do its job more efficiently and sustainably.