Vassar College Art Library

Male Head, c. 1st millennium BCE, Neolithic period. Place of origin: Thailand, Ban Chiang culture. Medium: bronze.

Have you seen the June issue of ? Inside you'll find:

Field Note - Shift Work: The Hospital in Histories of Architecture and Medicine
ANNMARIE ADAMS

Articles -
“Protean Mechanism”: Robert Willis and the Technics of Architectural History
MARK CRINSON

Building Missionary-Philanthropic Educational Networks: A Medical School for Women in Constantinople
IPEK TÜRELI

Race, Time, and Architecture: Dilemmas of Africanization in Ghana, 1951–66
ŁUKASZ STANEK

Modernism as Liberation: J. Max Bond Jr. at Mississippi’s Mary Holmes College
BRIAN D. GOLDSTEIN

Books -
Textile in Architecture: From the Middle Ages to Modernism
REVIEWED BY SYLVIA HOUGHTELING

Lateness and Modernity in Medieval Architecture
REVIEWED BY LINDSAY S. COOK

The Architecture of Empire: France in India and Southeast Asia, 1664–1962
REVIEWED BY JOCELYN ANDERSON

The Borders of Chinese Architecture
REVIEWED BY WEI-CHENG LIN

The Accidental Palace: The Making of Yıldız in Nineteenth-Century Istanbul
REVIEWED BY PAOLO GIRARDELLI

Dividing Paris: Urban Renewal and Social Inequality, 1852–1870
REVIEWED BY SEAN WEISS

Building Schools, Making Doctors: Architecture and the Modern American Physician
REVIEWED BY MICHAEL ABRAHAMSON

Geoffrey Bawa: Drawing from the Archives
REVIEWED BY KAPILA D SILVA

Nothing Permanent: Modern Architecture in California
REVIEWED BY CHRISTOPHER LONG

Vincent Scully: Architecture, Urbanism, and a Life in Search of Community
REVIEWED BY CARTER WISEMAN

The Topography of Wellness: How Health and Disease Shaped the American Landscape
REVIEWED BY ELIZABETH L MCCORMICK

Beyond Digital: Design and Automation at the End of Modernity
REVIEWED BY DANIEL CARDOSO LLACH

Shifting Sands: Landscape, Memory, and Commodities in China’s Contemporary Borderlands
REVIEWED BY YISHI LIU

Exhibitions -
Territory as Palimpsest: The Legacy of André Corboz
VALÉRY DIDELON

Emerging Ecologies: Architecture and the Rise of Environmentalism
RAMI KANAFANI

Good News: Women in Architecture
CLAUDIA MATTOGNO

Letter to the Editor by JAMES E. BRYAN

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On the cover: Furniture designs and details for Bond Ryder Associates, Neigh Dormitory, Mary Holmes College, West Point, Mississippi, 1968-70 (courtesy Davis Brody Bond, a Page Company).

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JSAH is published in print and online quarterly by University of California Press. SAH members receive a complimentary copy with membership.

"Settling the Rock Lot: Designing a Community for Alumnae and Faculty on the Vassar Campus, 1909-1924" photographs. The exhibit will be extended through September 30, 2024.

A n s e l m - K i e f e r
The Hierarchy of the Angels

An Artist and An Author My husband, painter and printmaker Robert Kipniss, has a wonderful new website-- www.robertkipnissstudio.com--and its inauguration has inspired me to write about writers’ partners. Or at least the kind of partners we need. There is much advice these days being given about writing and how to succee...

The sculptors in Mesopotamia, especially in the Assyrian era, were distinguished by high craftsmanship and accuracy in carving and to show the smallest details.
We see in this picture, the details of a hand holding a bucket of water
Notice how the hand was carved .. where we see the chamomile flower bracelet, with amazing details and measurements!
And the nails trimmed with this great care, which indicates the interest of the Assyrians in their appearance and grooming
Interestingly, how to embody the movement of the hand muscles contraction while holding the bucket and how the fingers close on themselves!
In addition to all this creativity in the Assyrian sculpture, the sculptors engraved writings with cuneiform letters and symbols at a certain level of the mural, making that writing part of the scene and explaining it, without affecting the aesthetics of the sculpture!
You are in front of the creations of Assyrian sculpture

The mural is currently in the British Museum
Photo copyrights : The British Museum

The Philadelphia Ten were a group of ten women artists who, in 1923, rebelled against the male-dominated Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts by organizing their own exhibition in Philadelphia.

The group, consisting of painters and sculptors, including Alexandra Newman, Eleanor Abrams, Katharine Marie Barker, Katharine Hood McCormick, Lucile Howard, Margaret Ralston Gest, Marietta Wharton, Mary Smith Prize, Mildred von Holzhausen, and Sara McCulloch, sought to challenge the gender bias and limited opportunities for women in the art world. Their exhibition, which featured over 100 works, was a groundbreaking moment in the history of American art, showcasing the talent and determination of women artists and paving the way for future generations of female artists.

The Philadelphia Ten continued to exhibit together for over 30 years, leaving a lasting legacy in the art world.

RIP Sara Facio

Sara Facio, exponente de la fotografía argentina Nacida el 18 de abril de 1932, con su cámara contribuyó a la creación de uno de los acervos patrimoniales fotográficos más destacados del país.

https://www.nytimes.com/2024/06/20/arts/design/architecture-ukraine-war-rebuild-review.html

How Architecture Became One of Ukraine’s Essential Defenses An exhibition in downtown Manhattan showcases more than a dozen grass-roots efforts to rebuild war-stricken cities.

Black Mountain College: Art, Poetry, and the Counterculture (In-Person) Often dubbed the “American Bauhaus,” Black Mountain College was a radical, and radically unique, experiment in arts education, modernist pedagogy, and democratic self-governance in mid-century rural Appalachia. Founded by John Andrews Rice in 1933 as a refuge for academic freedom in the fundamen...

"In Open Air". Josef Albers. 1936.

“Leaving is not enough; you must
stay gone. Train your heart
like a dog. Change the locks
even on the house he’s never
visited. You lucky, lucky girl.
You have an apartment
just your size. A bathtub
full of tea. A heart the size
of Arizona, but not nearly
so arid. Don’t wish away
your cracked past, your crooked
toes; your problems
are papier mache puppets
you made or bought
because the vendor was so
compelling you just
had to have them. You had
to have him. And you did.
And now you pull down
the bridge between your houses.
You make him call before
he visits. You take a lover
for granted, you take
a lover who looks at you
like maybe you are magic. Make
the first bottle you consume
in this place a relic. Place it
on whatever altar you fashion
with a knife and five cranberries.
Don’t lose too much weight.
Stupid girls are always trying
to disappear as revenge. And you
are not stupid. You loved a man
with more hands than a parade
of beggars, and here you stand. Heart
like a four-poster bed. Heart like a canvas.
Heart leaking something so strong
they can smell it in the street."
Marty McConnell - Frida Kahlo to Marty McConnell.

Frida Kahlo by her father Carl Wilhelm Kahlo Kauffmann, 1926.

The Unspoken Truths in Jenny Holzer’s Truisms Gaza is everywhere across the artist’s Guggenheim show, but you wouldn’t know it.

The offspring of Carl Koch, architect of the Watson Apartments, and "Grandfather of Prefabricated Housing."

How an American Dream of Housing Became a Reality in Sweden The U.S. once looked to modular construction as an efficient way to build lots of housing at scale, but Sweden picked up the idea and put it into practice

Who was Ukrainian-born artist Sonia Delaunay-Terk?

An innovator. Picture this: it's the early 1900s, and Sonia is an abstract painter dedicated to transforming the world through color. She was born into a Jewish Ukrainian family, and moved to Paris at a young age. And it was there, in the vibrant art scene of Paris, that she and her partner, Robert Delaunay, invented their very own form of painting: "simultaneism."

Now, simultaneism is based on this fascinating theory that the use of bright, contrasting colors can completely change the way we experience art. It's not just about what you see, but how you feel when you see it. This approach was groundbreaking and became central to the development of modern-day abstract art.

Sonia Delaunay-Terk didn't just paint; she revolutionized the way we think about color and its impact on our perception.
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🖼 Sonia Delaunay-Terk, “Solar Prism,” 1914, collage with additions in brush and ink, watercolor, and crayon, 19 x 13 in., Gift of The Judith Rothschild Foundation

The photograph "Weavers on the Bauhaus Staircase, 1927" by T. Lux Feininger is a significant portrayal of leading women at the Bauhaus, a pivotal modernist institution. The image captures the weavers, key figures in the Bauhaus textile workshop, positioned dynamically on the iconic staircase. This scene not only highlights their individual roles within the school but also reflects the Bauhaus ethos of integrating art, craft, and design in education. The presence of these women emphasizes their contribution to the Bauhaus’s legacy in textile design, marked by innovation and interdisciplinarity.

Weavers on the Bauhaus staircase, 1927. From top to bottom: Gunta Stölzl (left), Ljuba Monastirskaja (right), Grete Reichardt (left), Otti Berger, (right), Elisabeth Müller (light patterned sweater), Rosa Berger (dark sweater), Lis Beyer-Volger (center, white collar), Lena Meyer-Bergner (left), Ruth Hollós (far right) and Elisabeth Oestreicher. Photograph by T. Lux Feininger; collection of the Bauhaus-Archiv Berlin