From April 29 to May 23, 1859, well before phrases such as “exclusive pop-up” or “immersive exhibition” became part of the cultural vocabulary, more than 12,000 people waited outside New York City’s Tenth Street Studio Building for a chance to see a single painting: Frederic Edwin Church’s “Heart of the Andes.” What was it about Church’s paintings, and about the Hudson River artist himself, that so captivated 19th-century audiences?
Benjamin Moser takes up that question in a new biography of the painter, situating Church’s legacy within the larger story of a nation struggling to define and secure its identity. The book places the artist’s work in a broader historical frame, showing how his rise intersected with America’s search for cultural meaning.
In a fitting transition, Poppy DeltaDawn turns to another cornerstone of the national story: the Longaberger Company, whose baskets once filled homes across the United States. She argues that the company’s now-collapsed empire depended on flattening the history of weaving and craft, substituting in its place a “mythologized material culture of settlement.”
DeltaDawn frames that legacy as a familiar American story of commodification, and one that continues to echo through the culture. “Good craft is antithetical to capitalism. Good craft cannot survive in a system that alienates labor,” she writes.
— Valentina Di Liscia, senior editor
