Browsing by Subject "Collecting"
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Item The architect as collector: Karl Kamrath’s collection of Frank Lloyd Wright(2009-08) Pierce, Kathryn Alisa; Cleary, Richard Louis; Long, ChristopherHouston modern architect, Karl Kamrath (1911-1988), collected books, periodicals, and archival material that document the career and legacy of Frank Lloyd Wright. Kamrath identified himself as a collector of Wright and a devotee to the principles set forth by the master architect. In this thesis, I present Kamrath’s collection by organizing the materials by subject, considering how Kamrath marked books and journals, and drawing connections between his collecting interests and his architectural work. Kamrath collected and consumed information on Wright and organic architecture and then presented his own articulations of the principles in built form. His interest in organic architecture was evident in his projects that blended into the landscape and satisfied the individual needs of each client. The purpose of this thesis is to contribute to the story on Karl Kamrath, adding the details of the collection he donated to The University of Texas at Austin.Item Bric-á-brac : a memoir(2016-05) Sauvola, Teena; Isackes, Richard M.; Bloodgood, WilliamBric-Á-Brac: A Memoir is a performative installation focusing on how visual narratives contribute to or expand the meaning of written texts. It seeks to place designers in authorial roles and outlines the notion that objects and visual cues can influence existing or original texts.Item Disorder : rethinking hoarding inside and outside the museum(2011-08) Chen, Hsiao-Jane Anna; Galloway, Patricia Kay; Doty, PhilipHoarding tends to appear in museum studies scholarship primarily as a foil for “proper” museological collecting. Yet hoarding has attracted a constellation of assumptions and meanings. In popular discourse, hoarding is often perceived as a behavior learned from a life of deprivation, while clinical discourse about hoarding seeks to determine how it should be classified in the American Psychiatric Association’s Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders. These multiple perspectives inform the ways in which hoarding, and by extension collecting and museum practices, can be defined and understood. This report, then, examines how the idea of the museum is incorporated, reworked, or even rejected in three case studies of hoarding: art-historical approaches to Andy Warhol’s hoarding habits; "Clean House," a television show that cleans and redecorates families’ cluttered homes; and "Hoarders," a television show that pairs hoarders with psychiatrists and professional organizers. In each case study, the discourse surrounding the hoarder attempts to bring hoarding in line with “acceptable” collecting practices. At the same time, this particular discourse competes with other messages about the cultural role of collecting, generating a dialogue with important implications for collecting institutions about acquisition and appraisal, curatorial and archival bias, and institutional identity.Item The illusionistic pergola in Italian Renaissance architecture : painting and garden culture in early modern Rome, 1500-1620(2012-05) Nonaka, Natsumi; Taylor, Rabun M.; Beneš, Miroslava; Alofsin, Anthony; Cleary, Richard; Bober, Jonathan; Waldman, LouisThe present dissertation is intended to be the first systematic investigation of the illusionistic pergola considered within the framework of the intellectual culture and the garden culture of early modern Rome. The subject is the fresco or mosaic decoration featuring a pergola – a depicted trelliswork covered with plants and peopled with birds – in the loggias, porticoes, and garden pavilions of villas and palaces in Rome and its environs. These pictorial fictions have survived in sufficient numbers to constitute a decorative trend, and moreover, appear in clusters at specific periods, which can be partly explained by means of the cultural factors predominant at the time. The dissertation discusses these pergolas in relation to antiquarian culture, the collecting of plants and birds, the study of natural history, garden furnishings and the art of treillage, thereby contextualizing them within the culture of early modern Rome. The dissertation assembles the first corpus of illusionistic pergolas in the period 1500-1620, updating a much earlier general corpus of 1967 by Börsch-Supan, and distinguishes three distinct periods of the proliferation of these pictorial fictions in Rome and its environs: the first period (1517-1520), the second period (1550-1580), and the third period (1600-1620). Important cultural issues relevant to each period are identified,and proposed as the frameworks for study. These include the reference to the antique and to the vernacular, mediation between indoors and outdoors, the tension between art and craft and the ambiguity of the pseudo-architectural, semantic and aesthetic cross reference between architecture and garden, and the reflection of the intellectual culture. On examination, the illusionistic pergolas are revealed to be a nexus of interrelationships between built structure, ornamented surface, garden and landscape, as well as multivalent embodiments of emerging ideas and sensibilities concerning the experience of architectural space and nature. By taking into account the middle ground of architecture and garden, the study explores the multivalence of ephemeral garden furnishings and their fictive counterparts, opening up a new perspective on the sites examined, and attempts to see a resonance of the tradition in modern times.