HAA 1512 American Sculpture

(offered infrequently)

Sculpture has long been a uniquely public medium: it fills our common spaces, commemorates national and local heroes, explains and adorns government buildings. In addition to being integral to the history of American art, it also reflects some of the most important issues in the history of American society. This course will survey American sculpture from the colonial era to the present, from carved tombstones and idealized marble portraits to large-scale programs for public spaces and vast reshaping of the natural environment. We will study its relationships to other arts – especially architecture, with which it is often associated – and to major trends in Western art as a whole.