The 20th-century United States was the emblem of all things modern, but how would Americans make a modern art? This lecture/discussion class surveys art and the visual and material environment from the emergence of the United States as a world power in the 1890s to the questioning of the "American Way of Life" by Pop and activist artists during the era of the Civil Rights movement and the Vietnam War. In lectures, discussion, and original hands-on-research, we will examine the work of such celebrated figures as Frank Lloyd Wright, Jacob Lawrence, Georgia O'Keeffe, Isamu Noguchi, Edward Hopper, Walker Evans, and Diego Rivera, but also the culture of consumerism and emergent racial and ethnic identities – from cartoons to furniture – in which they worked. This class will include work with original art in the University of Michigan Museum of Art and a mandatory field trip to the Detroit Institute of Arts.

Estimated Cost of Materials: $100 or more, but less than $150.

HISTART Categories for concentration distributions: D. Europe and the United States, 4. Modern.

This course satisfies the LSA Humanities (HU) requirement.