A New World Imagined ─ Art of the Americas

A New World Imagined proposes a bold new look at the art of the Americas by viewing it through its intersections with the world at large. Taking the vast geography and cultural diversity of the North and South American continents as its starting point, the book introduces the ways in which American art, broadly defined, has been shaped both by its encounters with cultures around the globe and by its own past---from the ancient and Native populations who first inhabited these territories to the European, Asian, Scandinavian, and Latino emigres who settled here. But beyond actual immigration, foreign cultures---especially those of Asia and the Islamic world---have also impacted our own in purely imaginary ways, as American artists projected their fantasies and preconceptions on these far-off lands and imported their motifs, inventing a hybridized, and very American, vision of the "other". Discussing over two hundred artworks, from incense burners and drinking vessels to some of this nation's most celebrated paintings and sculptures, A New World Imagined offers an alternate history of the Americas through the diversity of sources with which its art has been fashioned.

Elliot Bostwick Davis is John Moors Cabot Chair in the Department of Art of the Americas. Her many publications include essays on Mary Cassatt, Winslow Homer, Edward Hopper, and nineteenth-century America.
Dennis Carr is Assistant Curator of Decorative Arts and Sculpture, Art of the Americas.
Nonie Gadsden, Carolyn and Peter Lynch Curator of American Decorative Arts and Sculpture, is the author of Art and Reform: Sara Galner, the Saturday Evening Girls, and the Paul Revere Pottery.
Cody Hartley is Assistant Curator of Paintings, Art of the Americas.
Erica E. Hirshler is Croll Senior Curator of American Paintings, Art of the Americas. Her books include a Studio of Her Own: Women Artists in Boston 1870-1940 and Sargent's Daughters: The Biography of a Painting.
Heather Hole is Assistant Curator of Paintings, Art of the Americas.
Kelly H. L'Ecuyer is Ellyn McColgan Curator of Decorative Arts and Sculpture, Art of the Americas. Her most recent book is Jewelry by Artists: In the Studio 1940-2000.
Karen E. Quinn is Kristin and Roger Servision Curator of Paintings, Art of the Americas.
Dorie Reents-Budet, author of numerous publications, is Curator, Art of the Ancient Americas, and a Senior Research Fellow for the Smithsonian Institution.
Gerald W. R. Ward, Katharine Lane Weems Senior Curator of American Decorative Arts and Sculpture, Art of the Americas, has contributed to, among others, Silver of the Americas 1600-2000: American Silver in the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, and MFA Highlights volumes on American Decorative Arts and Native American Art.