Transporting Visions follows pictures as they traveled through and over the swamps, forests, towns, oceans, and rivers of British America and the United States between 1760 and 1860. Taking seriously the complications involved in moving pictures through the physical world--the sheer bulk and weight of canvases, the delays inherent in long-distance reception, the perpetual threat to the stability and mnemonic capacity of images, the uneasy mingling of artworks with other kinds of things in transit--Jennifer L. Roberts forges a model for a material history of visual communication in early America. Focusing on paintings and prints by John Singleton Copley, John James Audubon, and Asher B. Durand--which were designed with mobility in mind--Roberts shows how an analysis of such imagery opens new perspectives on the most fundamental problems of early American commodity circulation, geographic expansion, and social cohesion.

About the Author
Jennifer L. Roberts is Elizabeth Cary Agassiz Professor of the Humanities at Harvard University. She teaches American art from the colonial period to the present, with particular focus on issues of landscape, expedition, material culture theory, and the history of science, and is the author of Mirror-Travels: Robert Smithson and History.

Reviews
"Seamlessly written, well illustrated, and a model for scholarly inquiry in other periods of art history." CHOICE "A rich text ... fascinating analysis." -- Austin Porter Panorama



Book Information
ISBN 9780520251847
Author Jennifer L. Roberts
Format Hardback
Page Count 240
Imprint University of California Press
Publisher University of California Press
Weight(grams) 816g
Dimensions(mm) 254mm * 178mm * 20mm