Dr John R. Blakinger has been appointed as the third Terra Foundation for American Art Visiting Professor at the University of Oxford. Dr Blakinger will be in Oxford during the 2018-19 academic year. The Visiting Professorship has been made possible by a generous gift from the Terra Foundation for American Art.
The aim of the Visiting Professorship is to embed the study of American art from a global perspective at Oxford. This is achieved through a combination of advanced research in American art from the colonial period onwards, public-facing lectures and symposia aimed at forging international research collaboration, and courses offered to undergraduate and graduate students.
Dr Blakinger's research focuses on the relationship between aesthetics and politics in American art. He is particularly interested in the intersection of the visual arts with science and technology. He comes to Oxford from the University of Southern California, where he has been in the Society of Fellows in the Humanities since 2016.
Professor Geraldine A. Johnson, Head of the Department of History of Art at the University of Oxford, stated: 'We are delighted that Dr Blakinger will be joining us in Oxford. His interest in exploring the fascinating intersection of historical and more recent American art with history, politics, and science and technology will allow him to forge exciting new links with a wide range of scholars and students in Oxford and beyond. We are enormously grateful to the Terra Foundation for American Art for its on-going generosity in funding the Visiting Professorship programme at Oxford and for its vision in promoting the study of American art from a truly global perspective.'
Dr Blakinger is completing a monograph for the MIT Press on the Hungarian-American artist, designer, and visual theorist Gyorgy Kepes. The book explores the fraught relationship between art, science, and military power during the Cold War through Kepes's unusual interdisciplinary collaborations. While at Oxford, Dr Blakinger will work on two new projects, one on visual representation as an arena for symbolic struggle through recent protest imagery, the other on the transnational globalisation of American art through a project developed by Robert Rauschenberg, known as the Rauschenberg Overseas Culture Exchange (ROCI).
We are enormously grateful to the Terra Foundation for American Art for its on-going generosity.Professor Geraldine Johnson
'We join our colleagues in welcoming Dr Blakinger to the University of Oxford, arguably one of the most important centres for the study of US history, politics, and culture outside North America,' stated Terra Foundation for American Art Executive Vice President Amy Zinck. 'He will assuredly become an integral part of the University’s world-class American studies and art history programs, and his contributions to a robust cross-cultural discourse rooted in the visual arts of the United States will enrich not only the Oxford community but also scholarly communities throughout Europe.'
The Terra Foundation for American Art is dedicated to fostering exploration, understanding and enjoyment of the visual arts of the United States for national and international audiences. Recognising the importance of experiencing original works of art, the foundation provides opportunities for interaction and study, beginning with the presentation and growth of its own art collection in Chicago. To further cross-cultural dialogue on American art, the foundation supports and collaborates on innovative exhibitions, research, and educational programmes. Implicit in such activities is the belief that art has the potential both to distinguish cultures and to unite them.