Awards
2009 Alfred H. Barr Jr. Award
Tim Barringer, Gillian Forrester, and Barbaro Martinez-Ruiz, eds., Art and Emancipation in Jamaica: Isaac Mendes Belisario and His Worlds
Tim Barringer, Gillian Forrester, and Barbaro Martinez-Ruiz, eds., Art and Emancipation in Jamaica: Isaac Mendes Belisario and His Worlds (2007)
While a great deal of discussion about the ascendancy of visual culture takes place within the field of art history, rarely do the curators of exhibitions and authors of their accompanying catalogues meet the challenge of employing innovative methodologies to animate extraordinary objects and their historical contexts. Through a highly successful collaboration, the consortium of academics and curators responsible for Art and Emancipation in Jamaica: Isaac Mendes Belisario and His Worlds (New Haven: Yale Center for British Art, in association with Yale University Press, 2007) has set forth a narrative of conflict, assimilation, and survival in an arena integral to, though rarely admitted into, the study of eighteenth-century British art. The set of Belisario lithographs (reproduced in the catalogue in striking facsimile) serves as the nexus for a wide-ranging group of exhibited objects, and for a series of richly nuanced essays. Remaining attentive to the material objects, the authors advance bold arguments to elucidate a complex network of colonial interchange, and in the process address subjects as seemingly disparate as English slavery, Jamaican Jewry, and hybrid traditions of performance. A model of interdisciplinary study and cross-collection exchange, Art and Emancipation in Jamaica offers a striking new perspective on a remarkable set of objects and a pivotal venue at a volatile moment in history and in the history of art.
Jury: Teresa Carbone, Brooklyn Museum, chair; Anna Chave, Queens College and Graduate Center, City University of New York; Susan Huntington, Ohio State University; David W. Penney, Detroit Institute of Arts; and Susan Sidlauskas, Rutgers University.
2009 Alfred H. Barr Jr. Award for Smaller Museums, Libraries, and Collections
Read about Phillip Earenfight’s A Kiowa’s Odyssey: A Sketchbook from Fort Marion, the winner of the 2009 Alfred H. Barr Jr. Award for Smaller Museums, Libraries, and Collections.
