Editors’ Welcome

This issue contains the eighth and last article in the American Art History Digitally series sponsored by the Terra Foundation for American Art: “A Measure of Success: An African American Photograph Album from Turn-of-the-Twentieth-Century Connecticut,” by Laura Coyle. It centers on a photograph album in the collection of the Smithsonian National Museum of African American History and Culture (NMAAHC), which consists of photographs primarily taken in commercial studios in New Haven and Waterbury, Connecticut. The scholarly essay, which argues that the African Americans in the album used photography to construct images of racial uplift, is accompanied by both an interactive, annotated reproduction of the album and a short text and video about its conservation. The generous grant from the Terra Foundation for American Art, which we received in 2017, made possible this article along with seven others on a wide range of topics as well as a special summer issue, all accompanied by digital components. We are grateful to the Terra Foundation for its support, and we especially thank Amy Gunderson and Francesca Rose for their advice, counsel, and patience.

Also in this issue is a Practicing Art History contribution with a video recording of an interview of Patricia Mainardi by Roberto Ferrari, originally presented as a Virtual Salon cosponsored by the Association of Historians of Nineteenth-Century Art (AHNCA) and the Dahesh Museum. As most of you know, Pat is the founder of AHNCA, the publisher of NCAW, so it seems particularly fitting to include here this interview about her contributions to AHNCA and the field of nineteenth-century art history. After serving AHNCA for thirty-plus years, first as founding president and then as program chair, Pat has recently retired from the association’s board. Her service to AHNCA cannot be overstated. She is not only its founder but also, for twenty-one years, the organizer of the Annual Graduate Student Symposium in the History of Nineteenth-Century Art (cosponsored by AHNCA and the Dahesh Museum of Art and generously funded by the Mervat Zahid Cultural Foundation), one of the major emerging-scholar events in nineteenth-century art. Since the years following the COVID-19 pandemic, she has also organized AHNCA’s monthly Virtual Salons, in cooperation with the Dahesh Museum of Art. Coincidentally, this issue of NCAW contains an article by Pat on Le Rageur, a famous old oak tree in the Forest of Fontainebleau that became a favorite motif in paintings of the Barbizon School. Though no one would call Pat a rageur (an angry one), she does have several of that oak tree’s much-vaunted characteristics: vigor, reliability, and staying power. Without those qualities, AHNCA would not be where it is today. Thank you very much, Pat!

Happy reading!