Through the example of Central Pacific Railroad executives, Manufacturing the Modern Patron in Victorian California redirects attention from the usual art historical protagonists - artistic producers - and rewrites narratives of American art from the unfamiliar vantage of patrons and collectors. Neither denouncing, nor lionizing, nor dismissing its subjects, it demonstrates the benefits of taking art consumers seriously as active contributors to the cultural meanings of artwork. It explores the critical role of art patronage in the articulation of a new and distinctly modern elite class identity for newly ascendant corporate executives and financiers. These economic elites also sought to legitimate trends in industrial capitalism, such as mechanization, incorporation, and proletarianization, through their consumption of a diverse array of elite culture, including regional landscapes, panoramic and stop-motion photography, history paintings of the California Gold Rush, the architecture of Stanford University, and the design of domestic galleries. This book addresses not only readers in the art history and visual and material cultures of the United States, but also scholars of patronage studies, American Studies, and the sociology of culture.
It tells a story still relevant to this new Gilded Age of the early 21st century, in which wealthy collectors dramatically shape contemporary art markets and institutions.
Contents: Introduction; Section I Towards a Topography of Art Patronage and Class Identity: The manufactured patron: competing conceptions of cultural philanthropy; Sacred precincts: staging class identity through art consumption. Section II Industrialism, Science, and Managerial Over-Sight: Iron horses: Leland Stanford, Eadweard Muybridge, and the industrialized eye; Supervision: landscapes of systems and management in the gilded age. Section III Industrialism and the Manufacture of Regional History: White gold: Edwin Crocker and Charles Nahl's Sunday Morning in the Mines; Missionary work: Jane Stanford, educational philanthropy, and the mission revival; Conclusion: the man with the dough, or Westward hoe!; Bibliography; Index.
John Ott is Associate Professor of Art History, James Madison University, USA.
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Prize: Winner of a College Art Association Wyeth Foundation for American Art Publication Grant
