Independent Scholar: Nancy Austin is an interdisciplinary art historian with an expertise in industrial design history. Dr. Austin received her Ph.D. in the history of art and architecture from Brown University in 2009 after teaching the comparative history and theory of modern art, architecture, and industrial design at RISD, Yale, and WPI since the 1980s. She has delivered numerous papers on art, architecture, and design history at College Art Association (CAA) - where she chaired the 1994 session on “The Production of Art in Modern Consumer Societies”; at the Society of Architectural Historians (SAH); at the Industrial Designers Society of America (IDSA) – speaking in 2009 on women and American design education since 1848; and at the American Antiquarian Society – where her 1993 paper was published in The Cultivation of American Artists: Education and the Commerce of Art in 19th-century America, edited by Diana Korzenik (1997). Her Brown M.A. thesis on leisure travel and the decline of the Salon in nineteenth-century France was published in 1994 and three chapters from her Ph.D. thesis on the history of the Rhode Island School of Design (written 2000-2004) were published in 2009.
Nancy Austin’s interdisciplinary scholarship expands our understanding of the ecology of culture in nineteenth-century America. Her work is defined by meticulous archival research, a close reading of unusual or overlooked primary sources, and the use of place-based historical case studies that pioneer new ground about the possibilities and limits of modernism. Recurring concerns are: the social construction of the artist, designer, architect, and engineer as distinct or blurred cultural and economic gendered actors; the historiography of art and design as quintessentially modern practices; theories of authorship in art, architecture, and design; the history of the museum as a site; the nineteenth-century civic understanding of the library as a priority relative to the establishment of design schools and museums; coming to terms with what freedom means for women and for the woman in community; exploring the third term – the ignored history that disrupts a binary; explaining why history is a tool that matters.
Her project is a critique asking us to consider how and why our understanding of the modern practice of art and the education of the artist has been so shaped by historiographical narratives codified after 1890. This work contributes to the comparative historiography of cultural categories and notions of authorship in the modern period. It is particularly relevant today as American cultural institutions and other educational edifices respond to dramatic changes in the 21st century and work to reinvent themselves. Isn’t it time to look again at the latent possibilities of their nineteenth-century DNA?
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Current Projects for 2010-2011 are:
Book project: First Wave Feminism & The Ecology of Culture in Pre-Civil War Providence, Rhode Island.
Article: Holly Home – Rhode Island’s Unknown Transcendentalist Utopian Community. Documentation and Legacy. With Robert O. Jones
Guest Curator: The Providence Athenaeum’s rediscovered 1859 Tommaso Cuccioni Coliseum Photograph in Context.
[September 1-23, 2010]
Book project on cultural institutions founded in the 1890s: Founding the American Academy in Rome, 1894-1914.
Studio Austin Alchemy
In a changing knowledge economy, Nancy Austin established Studio Austin Alchemy in 2008 to collaborate on experimental art projects that bridge place-based historical scholarship, an expanded notion of cultural tourism as an opportunity for public discourse, site-specific installations, and the critical exploration of new location-based applications and technology.
Her first intervention was a collaboration with Brooklyn-based artist Caroline Woolard for the juried show, Cryptic Providence. Footnotes (2008) was a site-specific tea-party installation, performing the entwined and buried histories of America’s first public sculpture critic and the founder of RISD, Helen Rowe Metcalf. Austin exhibited an iteration of this project at the RISD, Museum of Art in 2009.
As Malraux came up with his idea of a museum without walls, so must scholars today continually reimagine where they can critically engage new publics. Austin’s second intervention began last winter with Off-Road (2009-present). Her installation on historic synagogues, urban renewal, and religious tolerance in America was on view December 2009 through January 2010 in New Haven, CT as part of a group exhibition organized by Cynthia Beth Rubin. Austin has applied for a grant to bring this project more fully into the public domain.
From 2010 on, all of Nancy Austin’s scholarship will be communicated across a range of knowledge platforms, exploring how and where scholarship and new media can partner. Studio Austin Alchemy is a contemporary intervention in scholarship, art, and public history activism.
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Recent Publications, 2009-2010:
American Academy in Rome - blogs on 16March2010; 24May2010; ongoing.
- Founding the American Academy Rome, 1894-1897.
- Tracing the AAR’s First Twenty Years, (Part I): The Villa Aurora.
“Locative Media and the Possibility of Place”, Monthly Design Review (February 2010).
“Since the 1990s, we have been at a turning point in how to talk about location, just as we were more than a century ago talking about time. … We need a common understanding of a sustainable future. Talking about “where” will be part of it.”
[JSAH review] Andrew Saint. Architect and Engineer: a Study in Sibling Rivalry. In Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians (December 2009): 581-582.
"Off-Road: The GPS Guide to Cultural Tourism in New Haven's Yale Hospital, Oak Street Connector and Historic Orchard Street Synagogue Area." An Art Installation by Nancy Austin in The Cultural Heritage Artists Project of the Orchard Street Shul (2009): 64-65.
Three chapters in Infinite Radius: a history of the Rhode Island School of Design (2009): 171-242.
- “‘What a beginning is worth’: The Women’s Centennial Committee of Rhode Island and the Founding of RISD, 1875-1877,” (©2002)
- “”No Honors to Divide’: Mrs. Metcalf and the Trustees of the Women’s Centennial Commission Fund,” (©2004).
- “The Jones Bequest Lawsuit and the Meaning of a Museum.” (©2000).
Publications, 1992-2006 (selected):
“Educating American Designers for Industry, 1853-1903.” In The Cultivation of American Artists: Education and the Commerce of Art in 19th-century America, ed. Diana Korzenik. (American Antiquarian Society, 1997): 187-206.
“Naming the Landscape: Leisure Travel and the Demise of the Salon.” In Transformations: The Languages of Personhood and Culture after Theory, ed. Christie McDonald. (Penn State Press, 1994): 35-60.
[review] Kristina Wilson. Livable Modernism. In Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians 65 (June 2006): 315-316.
“New Content/New Form: Project-oriented Learning in the Introduction to Art History Course.” FATE in Review - Foundations in Art: Theory and Education (1992).
Calendar:
September 1-23, 2010: Guest Curator
The Providence Athenaeum’s rediscovered 1859 Tommaso Cuccioni Coliseum Photograph in Context at the Providence Athenaeum Philbrick Rare Book Room Gallery, 251 Benefit St., Providence, RI 02903. Telephone: 401-421-6970.
“Meet the Curator”: Gallery Night September 16th from 5-7pm; and Noon-1pm on September 3 & 8 & 23.
October 1, 2010, 5-7pm: Co-speakers - Nancy Austin on Margaret Fuller in Newport; Robert O. Jones on Margaret Fuller in Providence.
The October 1, 2010 Providence Athenaeum Salon on Margaret Fuller in Rhode Island is part of the international bicentennial celebration of unique first-wave feminist, Margaret Fuller (1810-1850). The Providence Athenaeum, 251 Benefit St., Providence, RI 02903. Companion walking tour: October 2.
Contact: Please contact Nancy Austin at Nancy@AustinAlchemy.com