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cover of episode Maggie M. Cao, "Painting US Empire: Nineteenth-Century Art and Its Legacies" (U Chicago Press, 2025)

Maggie M. Cao, "Painting US Empire: Nineteenth-Century Art and Its Legacies" (U Chicago Press, 2025)

2025/3/16
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Maggie Chow
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Miranda Melcher
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Miranda Melcher: 本书探讨了19世纪美国艺术作品中普遍存在的美国帝国主义，并从不同角度解读了一些名画，例如极地探险和热带旅游的景观画、进口商品的静物画、风俗画和人种志肖像画，展现了美国帝国主义在19世纪的广泛影响，以及艺术家们对帝国主义的顺从和抵抗。 Maggie Chow: 我研究的是18和19世纪的美国艺术，对艺术作品在日益全球化的世界中如何与不同文化和地区互动很感兴趣。这本书源于我对美国帝国主义的兴趣，以及对美国帝国主义历史缺乏研究的担忧。本书从美国内战时期开始，到1898年结束，探讨了美国帝国主义在更广泛的意义上的表现形式，包括经济、科学、技术等方面的扩张，以及对种族、时间等议题的探讨。书中还穿插了当代艺术家的作品，探讨美国帝国主义的当代遗产。

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Chapters
This chapter explores how seemingly innocuous landscape paintings, such as Frederic Church's "The Veil of St. Thomas," reveal the hidden presence of US imperialism. By focusing on the depiction of plants and their role in botanical imperialism, the chapter connects the art to broader themes of colonial expansion and economic exploitation.
  • Analysis of Frederic Church's "The Veil of St. Thomas" reveals the role of plants in representing US imperialism.
  • The chapter explores botanical imperialism and the movement of plants as economic resources and scientific specimens.
  • Maria Teresa Alves's "Seeds of Change" project is presented as an example of using plants as an archive of the past and witnesses to historical events like the triangle trade.

Shownotes Transcript

Painting US Empire: Nineteenth-Century Art and Its Legacies) (University of Chicago Press, 2025) by Dr. Maggie Cao is the first book to offer a synthetic account of art and US imperialism around the globe in the nineteenth century. In this work, art historian Dr. Cao crafts a nuanced portrait of nineteenth-century US painters’ complicity with and resistance to ascendant US imperialism, offering eye-opening readings of canonical works, landscapes of polar expeditions and tropical tourism, still lifes of imported goods, genre paintings, and ethnographic portraiture.

Revealing how the US empire was “hidden in plain sight” in the art of this period, Dr. Cao examines artists including Frederic Edwin Church and Winslow Homer who championed and expressed ambivalence toward the colonial project. She also tackles the legacy of US imperialism, examining Euro-American painters of the past alongside global artists of the present. Pairing each chapter with reflections on works by contemporary anticolonial artists including Tavares Strachan, Nicholas Galanin, and Yuki Kihara, Dr. Cao addresses important contemporary questions around representation, colonialism, and indigeneity. This book foregrounds an underacknowledged topic in the study of nineteenth-century US art and illuminates the ongoing ecological and economic effects of the US empire.

This interview was conducted by Dr. Miranda Melcher whose* new book*)* focuses on post-conflict military integration, understanding treaty negotiation and implementation in civil war contexts, with qualitative analysis of the Angolan and Mozambican civil wars.*

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