ARTH749D

Many major American art museums were established originally as repositories of art deemed valuable by civic and national elites of the time. Generally of European descent, these social and financial leaders were particularly drawn to Western paintings, sculptures, works on paper and decorative arts, establishing a canon with the help of critics and art historians. This course takes a critical look at the National Gallery of Art's collections in this area to trace the values embodied by particular works and groups of works, and the ways in which those values have been reaffirmed, redefined, deconstructed and/or negated in the decades since the museum s opening in 1941.