SUSAN RATHER
Professor of Art History Department of Art and Art History The University of Texas at Austin 1 University Station D1300 Austin, Texas 78712-1104 USA
EDUCATION
M.A., Ph.D., Art History, University of Delaware, Newark
B.A. with Highest Honors, Art History, Denison University, Granville, Ohio
PUBLICATIONS
Books:
The American School: Artists and Status in the Late Colonial and Early National Era (New Haven and London: Yale University Press for the Paul Mellon Centre for Studies in British Art, 2016), 368 pp., 100 color + 80 b/w illus.
Reviews:
Bryan Wolf, Critical Inquiry, July 2016: http://criticalinquiry.uchicago.edu/bryan_wolf_reviews_the_american_school/
Loyd Grossman, Burlington Magazine 158 (Nov. 2016): 909-10.
Archaism, Modernism, and the Art of Paul Manship American Studies Series (Austin, Tx.: University of Texas Press, 1993), xiv + 268 pp.
Journal Articles, Book Chapters, and Essays in Exhibition Catalogues:
“‘Copies or Resemblances of Nature’: The Limitations of Portrait Painting in Colonial British America,” in New England/New Spain: Portraiture in the Colonial Americas, 1492-1850, Papers from the 2015 Mayer Center Symposium at the Denver Art Museum, eds. Donna Pierce and Emily Ballew Neff (Denver: Denver Art Museum, 2017): 11-31.
“Eakins’s Socks,” Source: Notes In the History of Art 35 (fall 2015-winter 2016): 50-61.
“Painters and Status in Colony and Early Nation,” for A Companion to American Art, eds. John Davis, Jennifer Greenhill, and Jason LaFountain (London: Wiley-Blackwell, 2015), 359-77.
“‘The Limner’: Harry Croswell, Newspaper Politics, and the Portraitist as a Public Figure in the Early Republic,” in Shaping the Body Politic: Art and Political Formation in Early America, ed. Maurie D. McInnis and Louis P. Nelson (Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press, 2011): 231-67.
“Miss Cheer as Lady Rosehill: A Real-Life Drama in Late-Colonial British America,” Theatre Notebook 64: 2 (2010): 82-95.
“Contrary Stuart,” American Art 24 (Spring 2010): 66-93.
“Benjamin West, John Galt, and the Biography of 1816,” Art Bulletin 86 (June 2004): 323-45.
“Benjamin West’s Professional Endgame and The Historical Conundrum of William Williams,” William and Mary Quarterly, 3d series, 59 (October 2002): 821-64.
“Carpenter, Tailor, Shoemaker, Artist: Copley and Portrait Painting around 1770,” Art Bulletin 79 (June 1997): 269-90.
“Avant-Garde or Kitsch? Modern and Modernistic in American Sculpture between the Wars,” for the exhibition The Figure in American Sculpture: A Question of Modernity (Los Angeles: Los Angeles County Museum of Art, 1995): 158-170.
“Stuart and Reynolds: A Portrait of Challenge,” Eighteenth-Century Studies 27 (Fall 1993): 61-84.
“A Painter's Progress: Matthew Pratt and The American School,” Metropolitan Museum Journal 28 (1993): 169-83.
“Rome and the American Academy: Art Mecca or Artistic Backwater?” in The Italian Presence in American Art, 1860-1920 (New York: Fordham University Press and Istituto della Enciclopedia Italiana, 1991), 214-28.
“Paul Manship, Archaism, and the Dance,” Antiques 140 (August 1991): 218-27.
“Toward a New Language of Form: Karl Bitter and the Beginnings of Archaism in American Sculpture,” Winterthur Portfolio 25 (Spring 1990): 1-19
Introductory Essay for Southeast Texas Collects American Art, exh. cat., (Beaumont, Texas: Art Museum of Southeast Texas, 1987), n.p.
“Paul Manship and the Genesis of Archaism,” in Paul Manship: Changing Taste in America (Saint Paul: Minnesota Museum of Art, 1985), 63-77.
“The Past Made Modern: Archaism in American Sculpture,” Arts Magazine 59 (November 1984): 111-119.
“Gertrude Käsebier and the Woman's Experience,” Philadelphia Photo Review 4 (August-September 1979): 2-7.
Book Reviews:
Kevin D. Murphy, Jonathan Fisher of Blue Hill, Maine: Commerce, Culture, and Community on the Eastern Frontier (Amherst and Boston: University of Massachusetts Press, 2010); Journal of the Early Republic 32 (Fall 2012): 515-18.
Margaretta M. Lovell, Art in a Season of Revolution: Painters, Artisans, and Patrons in Early America (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2005); Eighteenth-Century Studies 39 (Summer 2006): 564-68.
Linda Baumgarten, What Clothes Reveal: The Language of Clothing in Colonial and Federal America (Williamsburg, Va.: The Colonial Williamsburg Foundation in association with Yale University Press, 2002); CAA.Reviews [2003]
Dorinda Evans, Gilbert Stuart (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1998); CAA.Reviews [1999]
Ellen G. Miles, ed., The Portrait in Eighteenth-Century America (Newark: University of Delaware Press; London and Toronto: Associated University Presses, 1993); Pennsylvania Magazine of History and Biography 119 (January/April 1995): 172-73.
Elizabeth Johns, American Genre Painting: The Politics of Everyday Life (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1991); Pennsylvania Magazine of History and Biography 117 (October 1993): 346- 48.
John Manship, Paul Manship (New York: Abbeville Press, 1989); Archives of American Art Journal 31 (1992): 32-33.
Harry Rand, Paul Manship (Washington and London: Smithsonian Institution Press, 1989); Art Journal 48 (Winter 1989): 359-61.
Dictionary and Catalogue Entries:
Paul Manship, Diana, 1921, for 50 Years of Collecting at the Colby College Museum of Art (Waterville, Maine: Colby College Museum of Art, 2009).
American National Biography, ed. John A. Garraty and Mark C. Carnes, 24 vols. (New York: Oxford University Press, 1999), s.v. “Paul Manship,” “Matthew Pratt.”
The New-York Historical Society, Encyclopedia of New York City, ed. Kenneth T. Jackson (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1995), s.v. “Karl Bitter,” “Frederick William MacMonnies,” “Paul Manship.”
Other:
“Cover Story: Design, Content, and The American School,” Yale@RTbooks (blog), http://artbooks.yupnet.org/2016/04/06/cover-story-design-content-and-the-american-school/
FELLOWSHIPS AND ACADEMIC AWARDS
2017 (spring) Faculty Fellow, Humanities Institute, University of Texas: “Health, Well-Being, and Healing”
2013-14 NEH Fellowship
2012 (fall) Tyson Scholar of American Art (inaugural Senior Fellow), Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art
2012 (spring) Ducloux Family Fellowship, University of Texas
1997-98 John D. Murchison Faculty Fellow in Art, University of Texas
1997 NEH Summer Stipend
1992 Andrew Oliver Fellow, Massachusetts Historical Society (summer)
1990-91 Visiting Fellow, Yale Center for British Art (September) NEH Research Fellow, Winterthur Museum (October-August) ACLS Grant-in-Aid Virginia Steele Scott Foundation Fellow, The Huntington Library (declined)
1982-84 Smithsonian Fellow, National Museum of American Art
1982 Zorach Traveling Fellowship Wilford Cole Memorial Fund Fellowship, University of Delaware
1981-82 Teaching Fellow, University of Delaware
1978-81 Unidel Fellow, University of Delaware
1979 President's Award for Research on Women, University of Delaware (for "Gertrude Käsebier and the Woman's Experience")
1978 Phi Beta Kappa
Competitive Grants from the University of Texas:
Big XII Faculty Fellowship, November 2014, University of Oklahoma (not used)
Book Subvention Grant awarded by the Office of the President, 2014
Faculty Development Program: Faculty Research Assignment, spring 1996, spring 2001, fall 2005, fall 2010 Summer Research Award, 1987, 1990; 1997 (supplement to NEH award) Special Research Grant, 1990, 1995, 1996, 2008
College of Fine Arts: Summer Faculty Fellowship, 1989, 1993, 1996, 1997, 1998, 2005
SCHOLARLY PAPERS, LECTURES AT UNIVERSITIES AND MUSEUMS
“The Business and Politics of Painting in New York around 1800,” Albany Institute of History and Art, 225th Anniversary Year Lecture Series, October 2016
Anchor talk for session on “American Art” in symposium celebrating the 50th Anniversary of the Department of Art History at the University of Delaware, Newark, October 2016
“Copies or Resemblances of Nature”: The Limitations of Portrait Painting in Colonial British America, for “New England/New Spain: Portraiture in the Colonial Americas, 1492-1850” sponsored by the Frederick and Jan Mayer Center for PreColumbian and Spanish Colonial Art at the Denver Art Museum, January 2015.
“Undressing the Portrait: Aspiration, Attainment, and Fantasy in American Colonial Painting,” Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art, December 2012
Arkansas Seminar in Early American History, University of Arkansas, November 2012 (faculty/grad student group in discussion of circulated draft introduction for my book-in-progress)
“Artisan, Gentleman, Genius: The Status of the American Artist from the Seventeenth to the Early Nineteenth Centuries,” Texas A & M University, February 2011
“American Artists Abroad: Colors of European Experience from Sargent to Prendergast,” in connection with traveling exhibitions “Sargent and the Sea” and “Prendergast in Venice,” Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, February 2010
Seminar on American Colonial Painting, Allbritton Art Institute, Baylor University, January 2010
“Fabrication of Identity: The Language of Clothing in Eighteenth-Century Anglo-American Portraiture,” Carol and Les Ballard Endowed Lecture Series, Bayou Bend, Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, November 2009
“‘The Limner’: Harry Croswell, Newspaper Politics, and the Portraitist as a Public Figure in the Early Republic," invited lecture at symposium “Brushes with History: Painting Materials, Methods and Artists, 1700-1850,” Historic Deerfield, Mass., March 2009
“Copley’s Englishness,” Allbritton Art Institute, Baylor University, September 2007
“Making a Living: Gilbert Stuart’s Independence,” Thomas Jefferson Distinguished Lecture Series: “Envisioning America: Arts in the Jeffersonian Republic,” University of Virginia, April 2006
“Stuart’s Wit,” Edgar P. Richardson Symposium: “Gilbert Stuart and the Cultural Politics of Federal America, 1790-1820,” National Gallery of Art/Smithsonian National Portrait Gallery, April 2005
“West as American: The Galt Biography, 1816,” session on “The Witness: Writing the Life of the Nineteenth-Century Artist,” College Art Association Annual Conference, February 2003
“The Sign of the Painter: Art and Trade in Eighteenth-Century America,” session on "Art as Work/Work as Art: The Construction of Artistic Labor in American Visual Culture," American Studies Association Annual Meeting, November 2002
“Reflections on a Silver Teapot: Copley’s Portrait of Paul Revere,” Provost’s Alumni Scholar Series, Denison University, April 2000
“Mirrored Lives: West, Williams, and the Historical Fashioning of the American Artist,” Biennial Symposium on American Art, University of Delaware, March 1999
“‘The Smile of Athena’: Archaic Sculpture and Modernism,” lecture series “New Approaches to Twentieth-Century Art” by University of Texas art historians, Dallas Museum of Art, February 1998
“‘Face-Painting’: Portraiture, Cosmetics, and Gender,” symposium “Shifting Perspectives: Issues of Gender and Representation,” University of Texas at Austin, September 1997
“Carpenter, Tailor, Shoemaker, Artist: Portrait Painting and Status around 1770,” symposium “John Singleton Copley: Provincial Star and London Impresario,” Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, February 1996 (expanded for delivery at Dallas Museum of Art, in conjunction with focus exhibition on Copley, December 1997)
“An Artisan and a Gentleman: Revere and Copley,” Bayou Bend (Museum of Fine Arts, Houston), February 1996
“An Artisan and a Gentleman: Copley's Politics of Representation,” symposium “John Singleton Copley in America,” Metropolitan Museum of Art, October 1995
“Carpenter, Tailor, Shoemaker, Artist: John Singleton Copley and the Status of the Artist in Late Colonial British America,” Southwestern University, April 1995
“In Their Own Image: Colonial Painters Portrayed,” session on “Representing the American Artist,” American Studies Association Annual Meeting, November 1991
“Gilbert Stuart: Portraits of the Artist,” symposium “New Perspectives on America's Old Masters,” National Portrait Gallery, April 1991
“Stuart and Reynolds: Speculations on a Portrait in the National Gallery,” Winterthur Museum Colloquium, April 1991
“A Painter's Progress: Matthew Pratt and The American School,” session on “British Portraiture, 1740-1780,” College Art Association Annual Conference, February 1991
“Paul Manship and Art Deco,” Memphis Brooks Museum of Art, December 1990
“‘The Smile of Athena’: Archaic Sculpture and Modernism,” Smith College, October 1990
“Picturing an Artist's Education,” Yale Center for British Art, September 1990
“Paul Manship and the Taste of the Twenties,” symposium “The Art Deco Era,” Columbus Museum of Art, January 1990
“Archaism as Modernism: Subject, Technique, Style,” Denison University, January 1990
“Rome and the American Academy: Art Mecca or Artistic Backwater?”; symposium “Insight and Inspiration II: The Italian Presence in American Art, 1860-1920,” Fordham University and the Istituto della Enciclopedia Italiana, November 1989
“Paul Manship: Archaism and Modernism,” for the lecture series “The Art of Paul Manship,” National Museum of American Art, March 1989
“American Artists Abroad, 1870-1900,” Art Museum of Southeast Texas, September 1987
“The Centaur and Dryad in Context: Archaism in 1913,” symposium “Paul Manship in Context,” The Hudson River Museum, November 1985
“Archaism in American Sculpture, 1900-1930,” symposium “Twentieth-Century American Sculpture,” University of Delaware, April 1983
“Post-Impressionism and the Poster,” National Gallery of Art, August 1980
PROFESSIONAL ACTIVITIES
2016 Invited participant, The Art of Examination, forum between art museum and medical schools, Museum of Modern Art
2011 - Editorial Board, Source
2013, 2014 Grant selection committee, Tyson Scholars of American Art, Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art
2012 Recorded interview concerning Paul Manship’s Duck Girl (in Rittenhouse Square) for Museum Without Walls (audio tour), Philadelphia Association of Public Art http://museumwithoutwallsaudio.org/interactive-map/duck-girl#audio http://museumwithoutwallsaudio.org/interactive-map/duck-girl#video
2012 Consultative visit, Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art, Bentonville, Arkansas, regarding establishment of endowed fellowship program
2010 Re-review of Art History Curriculum (20 individual courses) for Austin Community College
2009 NEH Project Consultant, “West, Copley, Trumbull: American Revolutionary Paintings in a Transatlantic World,” Museum of Fine Arts, Houston
2009 Review of Art History Curriculum (20 individual courses) for Austin Community College
2004 Panel Chair, National Endowment for the Humanities/Winterthur Museum Fellowship
2002 Grant review, Preservation and Access Program, National Endowment for the Humanities
1998 Panelist, Preservation and Access Program, National Endowment for the Humanities
1995 Session chair, “The Meaning of American: American Artists and Their Historians, 1750-1850,” College Art Association Annual Conference, San Antonio, Texas
1993 Invited Participant, National Gallery of Art/Center for Advanced Study in the Visual Arts seminar on John Singleton Copley's Watson and the Shark
1990 Grant review, Preservation and Access Program, National Endowment for the Humanities
1987-1989 Panelist, Travel to Collections Program, National Endowment for the Humanities
1987 Curatorial Consultant for “Southeast Texas Collects American Art,” Art Museum of Southeast Texas, Beaumont
1984 Consultant, “Paul Manship: Changing Taste in America,” exhibition and educational videotape, Minnesota Museum of Art
1980 Summer Intern, National Gallery of Art
EDITORIAL CONSULTING American Art, American Historical Review, Art Bulletin, Eighteenth-Century Studies, Panorama, Penn State University Press, Prentice-Hall, Source, Texas A & M University Press, University of Delaware Press, University of Pennsylvania Press, University of Texas Press, William and Mary Quarterly, Winterthur Portfolio
UNIVERSITY SERVICE
2016-2017 Associate Chair, Department of Art and Art History Working Group on Latin American Art and Visual Culture
2015-2016 Associate Chair, Department of Art and Art History Undergraduate Mentoring/Advising, Art History
2014-2015 Task Force for Undergraduate Opportunities Art History Graduate Professional Development Workshops: Grant Writing
2013-2014 On leave
2012-2013 Executive Committee, Art and Art History (on leave fall) Course Schedule Coordinator, Art History
2011-2012 Executive Committee, Art and Art History (on leave spring) Art History Lecture Committee Art History Graduate Professional Development Workshops: Grant Writing
2010-2011 (no service assigned as leave originally planned for entire year) (on leave fall)
2009-2010 Assistant Chair for Art History, Department of Art and Art History Executive Committee, Art and Art History Course Schedule Coordinator, Art History Student Grievances, Art History Undergraduate Curriculum Committee, Art and Art History
2008-2009 Assistant Chair for Art History, Department of Art and Art History Executive Committee, Art and Art History Course Schedule Coordinator, Art History Student Grievances, Art History Undergraduate Curriculum Committee, Art and Art History Faculty Development Program, FRA and SRA Review Committee, Office of the Vice-Provost and Dean of Graduate Studies
2007-2008 Assistant Chair for Art History, Department of Art and Art History Executive Committee, Art and Art History Course Schedule Coordinator, Art History Student Grievances, Art History College of Fine Arts Distinguished Teaching Award Selection Committee Faculty Development Program, FRA and SRA Review Committee, Office of the Vice-Provost and Dean of Graduate Studies
2006-2007 Executive Committee, Art and Art History Art History Graduate Admissions Chair Lecture and gallery commentary at MFA, Houston, for Texas Exes event organized by UT Provost's Office, Humanities Coordinator, on occasion of exhibition "Masterpieces of French Painting from the Metropolitan Museum of Art, 1800-1920"
2005-2006 Executive Committee, Art and Art History (on leave fall) Art History Graduate Admissions Chair
2004-2005 Art History Graduate Admissions Co-Chair
2003-2004 Undergraduate Adviser, Department of Art and Art History Art History Graduate Admissions Co-Chair College of Fine Arts Curriculum Committee Blanton Museum Accessions Committee Special Research Grant Selection Committee, Office of Graduate Studies
2002-2003 Undergraduate Adviser, Department of Art and Art History Undergraduate Art History Honors Adviser Undergraduate Registration Advising (fall) (cont.) Art History Graduate Professional Development Workshops: Abstract and Conference Paper Writing, Job Interview Preparation Blanton Museum Accessions Committee Forum Seminar Lecturer, Connexus (interdisciplinary undergrad. honors seminar) Research Internship Selection Committee, Office of Graduate Studies
2001-2002 Undergraduate Art History Honors Adviser Art History Graduate Admissions Co-Chair Art History Course Schedule Coordinator (spring) Research Internship Selection Committee, Office of Graduate Studies
2000-2001 Executive Committee, Art and Art History (on leave spring) Undergraduate Art History Honors Adviser Art History Visiting Lecture Series Coordinator International Education Fee Scholarship Committee (study abroad scholarships)
1999-2000 Executive Committee, Art and Art History Undergraduate Art History Honors Adviser Art History Visiting Lecture Series Coordinator NEH Summer Stipends Review Panel
1998-1999 Graduate Adviser for Art History NASAD Accreditation Committee Administrative Council, Art and Art History Departmental Scholarship Committee Baroque Position Search Committee NEH Summer Stipends Review Panel
1997-1998 Graduate Adviser for Art History Executive Committee, Art and Art History Administrative Council, Art and Art History Departmental Scholarship Committee
1996-1997 Graduate Adviser for Art History Executive Committee, Art and Art History Departmental Scholarship Committee University Cooperative Society Subvention Awards Committee, Office of the Vice President for Research
1995-1996 Graduate Adviser for Art History (on leave spring) Juror, Art Auction for KLRU (public television station)
1994-1995 Undergraduate Art History Honors Adviser Undergraduate advising (spring and fall registration) Departmental Scholarship Committee
1993-1994 Faculty Lecture Series Coordinator Undergraduate Art History Honors Adviser Advisory committee, Undergraduate Art History Association Undergraduate advising (spring and fall registration) College of Fine Arts Committee on Undergraduate Policy and Curriculum
1992-1993 Chair, Art History Graduate Admissions Art History member, Departmental Committee on Undergraduate Honors College of Fine Arts Committee on Undergraduate Policy and Curriculum
1991-1992 Chair, Art History Graduate Admissions
1990-1991 On leave
1989-1990 Graduate Student Symposium Co-Chair Undergraduate Art History Honors Adviser Undergraduate Art History Association Adviser College of Fine Arts Summer Research and Creativity Awards (grant review)
1988-1989 Undergraduate Adviser for Art History
1987-1988 Undergraduate Adviser for Art History College of Fine Arts Budget Advisory Committee
1986-1987 Fine Arts Library Committee