Heartland

by Charles Esche (Editor), Kerstin Niemann (Editor), Stephanie Smith (Editor)

Overview

Throughout the vast interior of the United States, contemporary artists are responding to the world around them and reshaping it in unexpected ways. Published to coincide with an exhibition of the same name that first appeared last year in the Netherlands and will open in fall 2009 at the University of Chicago’s Smart Museum of Art, Heartland offers an idiosyncratic look at innovative forms of cultural production taking place across the region.

This engaging book is part critical reader, part catalogue. Contributors—including novelist Dave Eggers, scholar Hasan Kwame Jeffries, and journalist Rebecca Solnit—explore the region through topics ranging from art to music to urban farming to political history. An illustrated section introduces over twenty artists featured in Heartland, including both established figures like Kerry James Marshall and exuberant newcomers like the group Whoop Dee Doo. An appendix surveys the lively state of independent and artist-run cultural initiatives from New Orleans to Detroit.

Produced by the Van Abbemuseum and the Smart Museum of Art, Heartland challenges expectations of place and illuminates a diverse assembly of artists who are redefining the cultural terrain of the American heartland.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780935573473
Publisher:	Smart Museum of Art, University of C
Publication date:	11/01/2009
Pages:	176
Product dimensions:	8.00(w) x 10.50(h) x 0.60(d)

About the Author

Charles Esche is the director of the Van Abbemuseum, Eindhoven and co-editorial director and co-founder of Afterall.

Charles Esche is director of the Van Abbemuseum in Eindhoven, Netherlands. Kerstin Neimann works as a guest researcher at the Van Abbemuseum. Stephanie Smith is the director of collections and exhibitions and the curator of contemporary art at the Smart Museum of Art at the University of Chicago.  

Stephanie Smith is deputy director and chief curator at the Smart Museum of Art, an affiliate faculty member of the Department of Visual Art at the University of Chicago, and a founding member of its Open Practice Committee. She is an editor of Afterall Journal, to which she is also a regular contributor. She is the author of Feast: Radical Hospitality in Contemporary Art and Beyond Green: Toward a Sustainable Art.

Table of Contents

Foreword

Charles Esche and Anthony Hirschel

Introduction

Charles Esche, Kerstin Neimann, Stephanie Smith

 

Research Travels

Kerstin Neimann: Encounters in the Heartland: Notes from the Road Trip

with blog entries, travel notes, and photographs from the curatorial team

 

Project Map

Essays

John Corbett and Frank Veenstra: Deep in the Heart of American Music

 

Joshua Decter:Art, Urban Rebuilding, Social Justice, and Sustainability: Toward a Case Study of New Orleans

 

Dave Eggers: Illinois

Charles Esche: A Grounded America

Hasan Kwame Jeffries: From the Black Panthers to Barack Obama: Democratic Politics in the Heartland of America

Andria Lisle: Heart of Darkness

Hesse McGraw: Mega-Life in the Midwest

 

Stephanie Smith: Making the World You Want to Live In

Rebecca Solnit: Detroit Arcadia: Exploring the Post-Industrial American Landscape

Matthew Strauss: Your TASTE is our PROBLEM, our TASTE is your PROBLEM:

Seventeen Days in the Provincial Gallery Simulator

Dan Wang: Translocal Movement Energy from the Upper Midwest: Michigan and

Minnesota

Matt Weiland: The Great Body of the Republic 

Artists

 Independent Cultural Infrastructure

Checklist of the Exhibition

Editorial Reviews

"[The catalog] is as rich and expansive as a Midwestern breakfast buffet. Profiles of almost 30 artists and collectives . . . accompany essays about the region by Dave Eggers, Rebecca Solnit and other writers and historians."

TimeOut Chicago