Patti Junker Receives Frost Essay Award
We are very excited to congratulate Patti Junker, the Ann M. Barwick Curator of American Art at SAM, on receiving the prestigious Frost Essay Award from the Smithsonian American Art Museum. Click here to read her essay.
Here is the Smithsonian’s offical announcement about the award:
The Smithsonian American Art Museum has awarded the 2010 Patricia and Phillip Frost Essay Award to Patricia Junker, the Ann M. Barwick Curator of American Art at the Seattle Art Museum. Her article, “Childe Hassam, Marsden Hartley, and the Spirit of 1916,” appeared in the fall 2010 issue (vol. 24, no. 3). The article presents a close contextual study and comparative analysis of Hassam’s production of impressionist paintings of American flags with an exhibition of Hartley’s abstractions of German military motifs at Alfred Stieglitz’s gallery 291 in the spring of 1916 when American sentiment about World War I had reached a fever pitch.
Junker is the seventh annual winner of the $1,000 award, which recognizes excellent scholarship in the field of American art history by honoring an essay that advances the understanding of the history of the arts in America and demonstrates original research and fresh ideas. The annual award, established in 2004, is presented to the author of the most distinguished contribution to the journal. Funding for this award is made possible by the Patricia and Phillip Frost Endowment.
“The Smithsonian American Art Museum has a long history of encouraging new research and fresh ideas through awards, our robust fellowship program and publications such as the American Art journal,” said Elizabeth Broun, The Margaret and Terry Stent Director of the Smithsonian American Art Museum. “I am pleased that the 2010 Frost Essay Award goes to Patricia Junker for her excellent essay on two important American painters, Marsden Hartley and Childe Hassam.”
Each year, three members of the journal’s editorial board select the winner from articles, interviews and commentaries published in the journal during the previous calendar year. The 2010 jurors were Wendy Bellion, associate professor in the department of art history at the University of Delaware; Michael Leja, professor of art history at the University of Pennsylvania; and Sylvia Yount, the Louise B. and J. Harwood Cochrane Curator of American Art at the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts.
“Thoroughly researched and carefully constructed, Junker’s argument is fresh, surprising and relevant in its connection to contemporary political culture,” said the panel. “Junker brings the spring of 1916 to life in a vivid and engrossing way. Her significant and memorable essay presents a model of crisp expression and persuasive argumentation that adds a new dimension to our understanding of American art production at a particular time and place.”
Junker is the author most recently of Edward Hopper: Women (2008), and she has contributed to the exhibition catalogs George de Forest Brush: The Indian Paintings (2009) and Casting a Spell: Winslow Homer, Artist and Angler (2004).
The journal American Art is part of the museum’s active publications program, which includes books and exhibition catalogs. It is produced by the museum’s Research and Scholars Center, which also administers fellowships for pre- and postdoctoral scholars and offers unparalleled research databases and extensive photographic collections documenting American art and artists.
Information about subscribing, purchasing single issues or submitting articles to the journal, which is published for the museum by the University of Chicago Press, is available at journals.uchicago.edu/AmArt. A complete list of past Frost Essay Award winners and additional information about the award is available at americanart.si.edu/research/awards/frost.