This transatlantic study analyses a missing chapter in the history of art collecting, the first art market bubble in the United States. In the decades following the Civil War, French art monopolized art collections across the United States. During this “Gilded Age picture rush,” the commercial art system-art dealers, galleries, auction houses, exhibitions, museums, art journals, press coverage, art histories, and collection catalogues-established a strong foothold it has not relinquished to this day. In addition, a pervasive concern for improving aesthetics and providing the best contemporary art to educate the masses led to the formation not only of private art collections, but also of institutions such as the Metropolitan Museum of Art and to the publication of art histories. Richly informed by collectors' and art dealers' diaries, letters, stock books, journals, and hitherto neglected art histories, The New York Market for French Art in the Gilded Age, 1867-1893 offers a fresh perspective on this trailblazing era.

In the late-nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, America and Japan were in the process of establishing their positions as powers in a world dominated by Western Europe. The two nations with unconnected histories and cultures found themselves in momentary sympathy as they embarked on their first forays into military imperialism, expanded their trade, and constructed civic institutions intended to compete with those of Europe. It was during this period that mass entertainments developed and began circulating across national borders and, drawing on tourist practices, helped create a "universal" visual culture which coexisted with local particularities. This dissertation undertakes a study of Japanese and American shared visual culture and modern entertainments with the goal of nuancing current scholarship on East/West exchanges and expanding the definition of modernity. Three modern phenomena, panoramas, World's Fairs, and film, form the core of my three main chapters and describe a process of appropriation, assimilation, and collaboration through their movements from Europe, across America to Japan, and ending with a return to America. Many scholars have observed that Americans viewed Japan as a confusing cultural other with a baffling skill at appearing modern. This dissertation begins with the premise that Japan was modern and re-examines American and Japanese cultural exchanges from this position with the aim of shifting the paradigms of modernity and modern visuality.

Nihonga is an art form which merges Japanese tradition and Western influences. This study examines the first century of the development of Nihonga, from the middle decades of the 19th century through modern masterpieces of abstraction and representation created in the 1960s.

In the Gilded Age, when most sculptors aspired to produce monuments, Bessie Potter Vonnoh (1872-1955) made significant contributions to small bronze sculpture and garden statuary designed for the embellishment of the home. Her work commanded admiration for her fluid and suggestive modeling, graceful lines, and sculptural form. In 1904 Bessie Potter Vonnoh won the gold medal for sculpture at the St. Louis World's Fair for bronzes of contemporary American women and children that delighted all who saw them. Although Vonnoh's work is represented today in museums throughout the United States, Bessie Potter Vonnoh: Sculptor of Women provides for the first time an intimate and engaging encounter with one of the most widely respected sculptors of her day. Julie Aronson explores how, by concentrating on sculpture for domestic settings that expertly combined naturalism with elegance, Vonnoh negotiated a male-dominated field to create a pathway to professional success and made high-quality sculpture accessible to a wider audience. In an essay that examines Vonnoh's relationship with her foundries and scrutinizes bronze castings, Janis Conner demystifies baffling issues of authenticity and quality in turn-of-the-century bronzes. This copiously illustrated book, indispensable for all sculpture enthusiasts, accompanies the first exhibition since 1930 dedicated to the art of Bessie Potter Vonnoh.

A sumptuously illustrated commemorative volume marks a key turning point in American art.