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Click the Donate Button to make a donation to NJ-026 American Art Fund Supporting ISAAC American Art History and Book Project.

  

Donation by Check or Bank Transfer:

Please fill the donation form specifying NJ-026 American Art Fund and make your check payable to "American NJUEF".

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American NJUEF                                                                          

1521 Concord Pike, Suite 301
Wilmington, DE 19803
U.S.A.

 

The project is currently funded with donations and grants from Nanjing University Education Foundation (American NJUEF), the U.S. embassy in Beijing, Amon Carter Museum of American Art, and other supporters. The project will continue to identify and procure books and other artifacts to support studies in American art history at ISAAC. Your generous support is greatly appreciated.

 

 

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About ISAAC American Art History and Book Project

   

The Institute for the Study of American Art in China (ISAAC) began as a three-year partnership program between the School of Arts at the University of Nanjing, the Edith O’Donnell Institute of Art History at the University of Texas at Dallas and the Amon Carter Museum of American Art. It was founded in 2017 by the late Dr. Richard R. Brettell, Founding Director of the Edith O’Donnell Institute of Art History at the University of Texas at Dallas.

 

The late Dr. Richard R. Brettell, guided by Milan R. Hughston, Art Information Specialist and former Chief of Library and Museum Archives at the Museum of Modern Art, have identified a very important library, that of William Henry Gerdts Jr. - an American art scholar, curator, collector and former Professor of Art History at CUNY Graduate Center. William H. Gerdts was the author of over twenty-five books on American art. An expert in American Impressionism, he was also well known for his work on nineteenth-century American still-life painting, of which he was a distinguished collector as well. He was also a bibliophile. An expert recently looked over his personal library of illustrative books on painting, sculpture, and graphic art, and called it the greatest American art library in the world. The Gerdts library would instantly be one of the most important resources for the study of American art anywhere and ISAAC would make an ideal home for it. It counts 10,510 titles in circa 10,800 volumes.  

 

One of the tasks of the Book Project is the acquisition of this important American Art Library to reside in ISAAC headquarters in Nanjing University, making it available to students and scholars in Nanjing University and other academic institutions throughout the nation via a national library network.

 

“The two most powerful economies of the early 21^st century, the United States of America and China, have long histories of cooperation and cultural/intellectual exchange. Yet, although there are many collections of Chinese art and scholars who study Chinese Art History in the United States, there is a paucity of museum collecting—and academic studying—of American Art in China.” wrote Brettell.

 

The Institute for the Study of American Art in China (ISAAC) at the University of Nanjing aims to remedy that situation so that, within a generation, there will be a balance of reciprocal collecting and study. Created to increase understanding of American art from the colonial through contemporary periods in China, ISAAC has focused initially on the Art of the United States of America. The University of Nanjing is one of the most distinguished universities in China and, with the former home of Pearl Buck on the campus, has an important history of support for American culture. Along with the Hopkins-Nanjing Center (HNC) founded in 1986 as a multicultural, bilingual educational collaboration between the Johns Hopkins University and Nanjing University, ISAAC is ideally positioned to foster the advanced study of American Art History in China.