Prof. Eldredge's research and teaching focus on painting, sculpture and allied arts of the United States, especially from the mid-nineteenth to the mid-twentieth centuries. His scholarship reflects his training in American Studies, with particular interest in social and literary history, as well as art history; his long association with art museums and collections makes the unique object central to his work, much of which is related to exhibitions. His current research includes an art-and-agricultural history project based on the harvest motif; a consideration of tourism's effects on modern American artists; and a study of Rex Slinkard and early modernism in Los Angeles.
EDUCATION
1971
Ph.D., Art History, University of Minnesota
1966
B.A., American Studies, Amherst College
PROFESSIONAL EXPERIENCE
1988-
Hall Distinguished Professor of American Art and Culture,
University of Kansas
1982-88
Director, National Museum of American Art, Smithsonian Institution,
1971-82
Director, Spencer Museum of Art, and Professor, Art History,
University of Kansas
1970-71
Curator, Museum of Art, and Assistant Professor, Art History,
University of Kansas
SELECTED PUBLICATIONS
Wendell Castle: About Time, Spencer Museum of Art, 2008.
John Steuart Curry's "Hoover and the Flood": Painting Modern History. University of North Carolina
Press, 2007.
Tales from the
Easel: American Narrative Paintings, University of Georgia
Press, 2004.
The Floor of the Sky: Artists and
the North American Prairie, University of Nebraska,
Lincoln, 2000.
Reflections on Nature: Small Paintings
by Arthur Dove, 1942-1943, The American Federation of
Arts, 1997
Georgia O'Keeffe: American and Modern, Yale University Press, 1993
Pacific Parallels:
Artists and the Landscape in New Zealand, 1840-1990, with Jim Barr and Mary Barr, University of Washington Press,
1991.
Georgia O'Keeffe, Harry N. Abrams
Inc., 1991 American Originals: Selections from Reynolda House, Museum
of American Art, with Barbara B. Millhouse, Abbeville
Press, 1990
Art in New Mexico, 1900-1945: Paths
to Taos & Santa Fe , with Julie Schimmel and William
H. Truettner, Abbeville Press, 1986.
Charles Walter Stetson, Color and Fantasy , Spencer
Museum of Art, 1982
American Imagination and Symbolist Painting, Grey Art
Gallery, New York University, 1979
Ward Lockwood, 1894-1963,
University of Kansas Museum of Art, 1974.
The Arcadian
Landscape: Nineteenth-Century American Painters in Italy,
with Barbara Novak, University of Kansas Museum of Art, 1974.
Marsden Hartley, Lithographs and Related Works,
University of Kansas Museum of Art, 1972.
Articles in:American Art, The American Art Journal, Antipodes, Apollo,
Archives of American Art, Art in America, Art Journal, Antiques
Monthly, The Art Gallery, Bulletin of New Zealand Art
History, Bulletin of the Rhode Island School of Design, Smithsonian
Studies in American Art.
SELECTED HONORS AND
AWARDS
2008
Balfour S. Jeffrey Award for Achievement in the Humanities and Social Sciences
2004
Phi Beta Kappa, honorary
2003
W.T. Kemper Fellowship for Teaching Excellence
(graduate teaching)
2000
KU Center for Teaching Excellence Award for Undergraduate
Instruction
1993
Foundation Fellow, University of Auckland
1990
Honorary member, Association of Art Museum Directors
1989-present
Smithsonian Research Associate
1986
Outstanding Achievement Award, University of Minnesota
1983
Fulbright Scholar (New Zealand)
1979
Smithsonian Fellowship
COURSES REGULARLY TAUGHT
American art, Colonial to Civil War
American art, 1860-1900
American art, 1900-1945
Art since 1945
Kansas Art and Popular Culture
Graduate seminars on various topics, including:
American art in the 1930s; American drawings; 19th-century American
painters in Italy; Symbolist painting; Georgia O'Keeffe; Winslow
Homer; Marsden Hartley; Comparative study: Landscape art in New
Zealand, Australia, Canada, and the U.S.; Art in New Mexico; American
still-life; Art of the American West; American folk art; John Steuart
Curry and regional art; The Gilded Age; Issues in Contemporary Art,
1990-2004.
DOCTORAL DISSERTATIONS CHAIRED
American Painting and Sculpture at the World's Columbian Exposition,
Chicago, 1893
The Army and the Arts: A Study of Patronage in 19th-century America
(American Studies)
Thomas Hart Benton: Teaching and Art Theory
The Aesthetic of the Industrial Zone and Images of the Factory in
American Art, 1916-1940
Utopian Expressions: The Arts and the Ephrata Community
American Art and Environmentalism in the 1930s
Marsden Hartley's Late Paintings: American Masculinity and American
Identity in the 1930s and '40s
Agnes Pelton (1881-1961) (American Studies)
Picturing Justice: Trial and Punishment in American Visual Culture,
1850-1880
"Why Not Revolution?": The John Reed Club and Visual Culture
Legends of Bohemia: The Monterey Penninsula and Its Early Art Colony,
1875-1907
C. Bertram Hartman: Early Modernist from Kansas
Childhood's End: Representing the American
Child, 1940-1970
Immigration in American Art and Architecture in New York City, 1880-1924
Through the Eyes of an Expressionist: Southern Culture, Places, and Memories in the Art of David Bates
Aaron Douglas (American Studies)
An Epoch of the American Farm: James Ormsbee Chapin and the Marvin
Paintings
DOCTORAL DISSERTATIONS, CHAIR (in progress):
The Visual Imagery of Buffalo Bill's Wild West
"By Popular Demand": The Hero in American Art, c. 1929-1945
Auto-America: The Automobile and American Art, c. 1900-1950
EDITORIAL ACTIVITIES
1996-2006
Editorial board, American Art
1987
Founder, Smithsonian Studies in American Art
1976-82
Editorial board, American Studies
1979-81
Museum news editor, Art Journal(College
Art Association of America)
TRUSTEE
Terra Foundation for American Art, 2007-
Amon Carter Museum, Fort Worth, TX, 2003-2006
Georgia O'Keeffe Foundation, Abiquiu, NM 1989-1995
Amherst College, Amherst, MA, 1987-1993; Trustee Emeritus
Reynolda House, Museum of American Art, Winston-Salem, NC, 1986-1988
Association of Art Museum Directors, 1981-1982, 1987-1988
Watkins Community Museum, Lawrence,
KS 1973-1976
Kress
Foundation
Department of Art History Chair: Linda Stone-Ferrier Dept. Email 1301
Mississippi Street 209
Spencer Museum of Art Lawrence,
KS 66045 Phone 785-864-4713 Fax 785-864-5091
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1301
Mississippi Street