Nov 20th Session 5A

Presentation 1: Women’s Work: Art Education for Women in Late 19th Century America, Michelle Voss

This paper examines opportunities in art education for women in the United States in the 19th century.  As the nation rapidly industrialized, the cult of True Womanhood confined women to the domestic sphere and prevented women from seeking professional employment outside the home.  During this period, art education was considered a ladylike accomplishment that prepared women for marriage.  Teaching was one of the sole professions available to women, and teaching art was considered a noble choice, as women were designated guardians of culture who were capable of instilling morality into the masses through the arts.  During the middle of the century, schools of design began opening for women in Pennsylvania, Boston and New York, with curriculum that trained women for careers in commercial design.  Free from gender hierarchies, students flourished under the leadership of influential women, such as the artist and art educator Emily Sartain.  In the late 19th century, women began to have coeducational opportunities to study fine arts at traditional institutions, including the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Art and the Yale School of Fine Arts, but often met resistance from conservative notions about gender and education.  The aim of this paper is to illuminate the professionalization of art education for women, and the work of art educators who valued the artistic talent of women.

Presentation 2: Ellen Gates Starr and Cora C. Vawter at the the Hull House Book-bindery, Annie V. F. Storr

Part of a long-term research project concerning Ellen Gates Starr (1859-1940), co-founder of Hull House and chief architect of its multi-faceted educational programs in studio art and art history, an opportunity for a case study of her educational impact one a long-term student has come to light. Correspondence in major library collections led to discovery of extensive materials, dating from 1900 until after Starr’s death.  Cora C. Vawter (1882-1972) appears briefly in the archives of Starr and Hull House.  Daughter of a wealthy Chicago businessman, Vawter lived a private life.  However, her years of study with Starr, in the Hull House Book Bindery, changed that life. Her carefully preserved artifacts, photographs, books and papers, document a relationship with Starr over nearly 40 years, based in reflective learning and common cultural interests for social betterment.

Starr combined aesthetic idealism and social activism throughout her long career as an innovative art educator, aesthetic commentator, and social worker. The story of Hull House as an experimental exemplar of progressive urban engagement is well known. To trace the impact of Hull House on American urban life requires a grasp of a dozen disciplines, the lives of thousands of participants, and the influential careers of dozens of social scientists, educators, philosophers and artists. Even a study of  the art school, which Starr established, is a huge

project.  Of all the leaders of Hull House, Starr was outstanding in one crucial respect. She was an experienced and highly innovative teacher, notably at Chicago’s famed Miss Kirkland School for Girls, before she opened Hull House with co-founder, Jane Addams.  Starr’s public actions as a labor organizer for working women comprise much of her appearance in the historical record.  Her continual religious searching appears in biographical essays mainly as an explanation of why she fades from the historical narrative around mid-life.  

Between the high-profile protest organizer and the private spiritual seeker was a teacher. This presentation will start with Starr’s writings, and others’,  about her goals and practice as a formal and informal educator. Then, it will focus on Starr’s most direct, and personal, teaching experience, introducing her private students to the techniques and philosophy of Arts and Crafts book-binding, between 1900 and 1920. By her own account, she felt called to convey to them the teachings of her own master, T. J. Cobden-Sanderson, Doves Bindery, London.

Formal analysis of Vawter’s extant volumes, provides a complete sequence of training books according to the stages of Arts and Crafts instruction. Surviving tools, studio notes, practice leathers, gilding equipment and original designs cast light on Starr’s instruction and Vawter’s application.  Starr and Vawter exhibited together, with other Hull House students, at the Art Institute of Chicago. Most remarkable, at least once Vawter bound a volume, using a cover design contributed by Starr. Their artistic and intellectual comradery developed over thirty years. Vawter tended to defer to Starr, her teacher, even when both were elderly.  But their letters explore current issues of art with a full exchange of ideas. Sometimes, Starr consults Vawter, requesting her suggestions on draft essays for publication.  Starr frequently “set” Vawter a recommended reading from contemporary criticism, and each would respond. Starr and Vawter traveled together to Ireland, in 1924, after which Starr wrote about ancient Iona (1930).  Long believed to have ceased binding fine books around 1920, after closing the Hull House Bindery, Starr continued privately. Her last known project, a boxed leather-bond edition of Keats, was bound and signed in 1928, a gift to Vawter.  All late volumes from Starr’s hand are in the Vawter family collection.  Working materials kept by Vawter suggest both women continued their practice, if intermittently, together, up to the year before Starr underwent disabling spinal surgery.  Beyond friendship’s affection, Starr and Vawter maintained a lively intellectual and aesthetic rapport, begun in the Bindery classes, sustaining them both to the end of their lives.    

Between now and November 2015, I will continue to study the recently gathered Starr/Vawter materials, to develop further comparisons, tested against the evidence of the archives in the four major Starr/Hull House repositories.

Presentation 3: Life and Work of Helen Gardner: Examining Art Through the Ages, Kirstie Parkinson

This presentation examines the life of Helen Gardner and two editions of her book Art Through the Ages (1926, 1936). Gardner’s textbook is arguably still the most popular English art history text used today, yet most of its readers have no information about the author of this book.  There is little published biographical material on Helen Gardner. This paper provides information about this influential art historical writer, shedding new light on this noted author. This paper also suggests that her textbook not only reveals information on the history of art, but unveils insight into the life of the author as well. Helen Gardner was listed as the primary author for the first four editions of Art Through the Ages, but only lived to see the first two editions published.  This paper argues that the A Century of Progress exhibition, held in Chicago in 1933 and 1934, was a catalyst for change in the 1936 edition of Gardner’s book. Specifically, it is argued here that Gardner’s chapter on colonial art was significantly changed by the A Century of Progress exhibition of the early 1930s. Literary analysis and comparison of the 1926 and 1936 editions of Art Through the Ages provides a case for recognizing the importance of the A Century of Progress exhibition in directing these changes in subsequent volumes of Art Through the Ages. Moreover, an analysis of the image selections for the American art chapters by Gardner in the 1926 and 1936 editions also serves to reveal how Helen Gardner’s contact with A Century of Progress altered work on this author’s second edition of her most noted text.