Emily Braun, Art History, The Graduate Center, CUNY.
This lecture considers the exhibition “American Realists and Magic Realists”, organized in 1943 by Dorothy Miller and Alfred H. Barr Jr. during the ideologically fraught years of the early 1940s. The exhibition presented a particular type of modern realism and an alternative narrative of 20th century art that was sidelined after WWII with the polarization of figurative and abstract styles and the rise of high formalist modernism. Emily Braun has written on Magic Realism and Giorgio de Chirico and most recently curated the exhibition The Power of Conversation: Jewish Women and their Salons (with Emily Bilski).
This event was held in conjuction with the James Gallery exhibition “The Making of Americans.” For more information, click here.