Media, Art and Design Electronic Theses and Dissertations (UMKC)
Permanent URI for this collection
The items in this collection are the theses and dissertations written by students of the Department of Media, Art and Design. Some items may be viewed only by members of the University of Missouri System and/or University of Missouri-Kansas City. Click on one of the browse buttons above for a complete listing of the works.
Browse
Recent Submissions
Item Picturing the American story: John Steuart Curry’s limited editions club illustrations and the Regionalist vision in American literature(2025) Bittel, Erica Sue; Dunbar, Burton L. (Burton Lewis), 1942-; Powell, Larson, 1960-This dissertation examines the late-career illustrative works of American Regionalist painter John Steuart Curry (1897–1946), focusing specifically on his commissions for the Limited Editions Club, a subscription book company, between 1940 and 1946. While Curry is most often celebrated for his painted depictions of the American Midwest, his contributions to book illustration, particularly during the final decade of his career, have received comparatively little scholarly attention. By analyzing four major Limited Editions Club commissions—The Prairie (1940), The Literary Works of Abraham Lincoln (1942), The Red Badge of Courage (1944), and John Brown’s Body (1948)—this study aims to resolve a significant void in art historical scholarship, situating these illustrations within the interwoven cultural, political, and social discourses of mid-twentieth-century America. Employing an interdisciplinary approach that integrates art historical analysis, studies in American history and literature, as well as semiotics, this research explores how Curry’s illustrations engage with the ideals of American Exceptionalism and issues of race, class, and national identity. The dissertation contends that Curry’s images, created in tandem with canonical works of American poetry and prose, function as both aesthetic objects and culturally coded artifacts reflective of the social anxieties and nationalist imperatives of the 1930s and 1940s. Semiotic theory, particularly the frameworks developed by Charles Sanders Peirce, Roland Barthes, and Mieke Bal, alongside Erwin Panofsky’s associated concepts of iconography and iconology, is employed to analyze the layered meanings embedded in Curry’s illustrations and to investigate how these images convey narrative meaning alongside the written word. Primary source materials—including correspondence between Curry and Limited Editions Club founder George Macy housed in the Smithsonian’s Archives of American Art, original editions of the aforementioned illustrated books, and preparatory works from Kansas State University’s Marianna Kistler Beach Museum of Art—are utilized to contextualize Curry’s artistic choices and the various forces shaping his commissions. In illuminating the complex interplay between image, text, and context, this dissertation not only contributes to the scholarly understanding of John Steuart Curry’s illustrative oeuvre but also expands the methodological possibilities for studying book illustration within the disciplines of art history and the humanities.Item The Steeple of Light : from Frank Lloyd Wright's architectural proposal to Dale Eldred and Roberta Lord's light sculpture(2024) Freeman, Stephanie S.; Albu, CristinaThis study offers a historiography of the Steeple of Light which rises more than a mile into the night sky, constituting one of Kansas City’s most iconic landmarks. Powerful Xenon lamps installed on the roof of the Community Christian Church create four light lines that converge in the distance to render a breathtaking spire of light. The Steeple of Light’s development from concept to final implementation took several decades and entailed significant obstacles. In 1940, Frank Lloyd Wright was commissioned to design a new church at 46th Street and Main Street, which he named a “church of the future.” His plan featured a low-lying building with light projections beaming from its rooftop. However, due to wartime shortages and insufficient technology, the steeple made of searchlights was not built at that time. It was not until fifty years later, in 1990, that sculptor Dale Eldred was hired to fulfill the vision for the Steeple of Light. A significant agent in the completion of the project was also Roberta Lord, Eldred’s wife and collaborator on many projects. This collaborative effort between Eldred and Lord did much more than fulfill Wright’s vision. I argue that although the name remained same, through Eldred and Lord’s artistic and technical expertise, the project substantially changed in both form and meaning. By changing the orientation of the lights from shining out in all directions as Wright initially designed, to shining straight up and converging in the distance, Eldred and Lord introduced a different focality to the Steeple of Light, one with far greater spatial and temporal scale. I draw on contextual evidence derived from biographical and historical information as well as concepts of space, place and time to trace diversions of meaning between the plans of the key players who contributed to the development of the Steeple of Light. Using a semiotic approach, I explore the ways in which historical narrative, church discourse, and shifting social contexts have influenced the interpretation and embodied experience of the Steeple. This thesis examines the multilayered meaning of the Steeple of Light by investigating the differences and points of intersection between these two distinct visions for the Steeple, first as Wright’s architectural concept and then as Eldred and Lord’s phenomenal light sculpture, to elucidate its affective role in the church community and in the broader Kansas City community.Item Mutterrecht to Mauerfall: Cassandra and Penthesilea in 1980s east German art(2023) Baxter, Deborah Joanne; Albu, CristinaTwo important mythological figures emerged in East German art in the 1980s: Cassandra, the Trojan prophetess, and Penthesilea, the Amazon warrior queen. Christa Wolf’s 1983 novel, Cassandra, exerted a profound influence on the pacifist movement and enhanced women’s gender consciousness during this period. The 1986 Dresden production of Heinrich von Kleist’s Penthesilea (1808) was another significant influence, extensively impacting the countercultural scene. This thesis will establish connections between literary productions and visual artworks focused on the figures of Cassandra and Penthesilea in the context of the Cold War. It offers iconological and feminist analyses of the illustrations, paintings, lithographs, and sculptures of East German artists Heidrun Hegewald, Angela Hampel, Nuria Quevedo, Annemirl Bauer, Regine Richter, Christine Schlegel, and Gabriele Koerbl, among others. Tracing a longer iconographic history of Penthesilea and Cassandra in Ancient Greek, Neoclassical, and modern art, it addresses how GDR artists of the 1980s subverted conventional modes of depicting women in art. Relying on symbolism, figure duplication, and visual ambiguity, they created densely layered artworks which underscore women’s differences, subjectivity, and autonomy, condemn war and sexual violence, and encourage a persistent search for alternative modes of identity and community construction in the midst of the polarizing system of the Cold War period. GDR artists’ works reinterpreting ancient myths also engage with the concept of das Mutterrecht, a primitive form of matriarchy which informed foundational socialist ideology on women. This ideology bears interesting connections with the myths in which Cassandra and Penthesilea originate. In addition to advancing the understanding of gender representation in the GDR art of the 1980s, this thesis aims to amend the exclusion of female artists, particularly figurative painters, from English scholarship on the art of the GDR.Item From Pan to Plate: Cased Images of the California Gold Rush, 1849-1865(University of Missouri -- Kansas City, 2019) Aspinwall, Jane Lee, 1967-; Dunbar, Burton L. (Burton Lewis)After President Polk’s announcement in December 1848 of the gold discovery in California, thousands flocked to the region. Lured by the ready market of potential customers, daguerreotypists also made their way. The daguerreotype quickly became an important component of the gold rush experience. Using a personal research database comprised of over 500 daguerreotypes and ambrotypes made in California from 1849 to 1865, this dissertation reveals previously unrecognized patterns in overall production. Informed by this wealth of data, the following chapters incorporate primary and secondary source materials that seek to identify or support patterns uncovered through the database analysis. The first chapter provides an overview of the earliest daguerreian projects completed in California by Robert H. Vance and J. Wesley Jones. The second chapter surveys the notable California daguerreotypist working outside the studio in the gold fields. The evolution of mining technology from individuals with a pickaxe, shovel, and pan; to groups of men with rockers, long toms, and sluices; to large companies engaged in river diversion and hydraulic mining is the subject of the third chapter. The fourth chapter explores the mining contributions of American Indian, Chinese, and black (enslaved and free) miners and considers reasons for the lack of pictorial representation. California gold towns, the subject of the fifth chapter, examines images of street views, housing, cemeteries, and distant views, and investigates the population of those towns, including women. Miner studio portraits with men in mining attire often holding a pickaxe, shovel, knife, or gold nugget are the topic of the final chapter. California gold rush daguerreotypes offer more than a simple documentation of a major cultural and historical event. These images provide an extraordinary glimpse into the transformation of the American West: a mass migration led to a complex mix of peoples and culture, gold towns arose almost overnight, and mining technology altered the landscape. While daguerreotypists found many ways to explore the reality of the gold rush, existing images do not fully convey the experience. This dissertation focuses on what is visually represented in California gold rush daguerreotypes, while addressing what tended to be ignoredItem Frank Overton Colbert: A Study in Trans-Customary Indigenous Modern Art(2021) Hearn, Brian L.; Albu, CristinaAs the art historical canon makes a turn toward decolonization in the 21st century, art historians have an opportunity to rediscover and recognize long marginalized artists whose contributions expand, complicate, and enhance the conventional narrative that has most often privileged the work of white male artists. When we look at the development of American modernism in fine art, particularly at the period between the Armory Show of 1913 and the onset of the Great Depression in 1929, artists fervently desired to create a distinctively American visual culture which moved beyond European academic or avant-garde influences. In the midst of this tumultuous period of American experimentation, a cosmopolitan, Chickasaw artist named Frank Overton Colbert emerged on the New York art scene. He produced an innovative body of work which has largely been forgotten since its initial display. Colbert’s artistic production, consisting of more than seventy paintings produced between 1920 and 1923, was emblematic of the modernist zeitgeist while being concomitantly rooted in Native American tribal cultures. Colbert’s small paintings of pan-indigenous “gods” and “folklore,” accompanied by narrative texts and performative actions, became an art world sensation, albeit brief, when Colbert began exhibiting in New York. In this study of Frank Overton Colbert’s few surviving works, I describe the aesthetic qualities and influences on his artistic practice and contextualize the diverse indigenous subject matter he painted. I also review the exhibition history and critical reception of his practice. Through these means, I aim to cast light on Colbert’s larger project as a trans-customary artist, a trans-cultural interpreter, and a significant indigenous presence within the evolving canons of both Native North American modernism and American modernist painting.