Joan Stack
University of Missouri Columbia, The State Historical Society of Missouri, Curator of Art Collections
Art Historian Dr. Joan Stack serves as the Curator of Art Collections at the State Historical Society of Missouri, a position she has held since 2006. Before taking this post, she worked for five years as the Associate Curator of European and American Art at the Museum of Art and Archaeology at the University of Missouri in Columbia. She received her PhD in Art History from Washington University in St. Louis and has spent most of her post-graduate work in academic museums. Throughout her career, Dr. Stack has organized over sixty exhibitions and has taught art history classes at Washington University, the University of Missouri, the University of Missouri-St. Louis, and ARTIS International Studio in Florence, Italy. She has also published and presented her work nationally and internationally and has written, co-written, or edited numerous articles, books, and exhibition catalogs. Dr. Stack's current studies focus on George Caleb Bingham, Thomas Hart Benton, and art in popular culture. In 2011, she authored the introductory essay for the authoritative publication of the letters of George Caleb Bingham, "''But I Forget that I am an Artist, not a Politician.' The Letters of George Caleb Bingham," which was named one of the best books of 2011 by "The Kansas City Star." More recently she was featured as an on-camera expert in the 2016 Wide Awake Films Emmy-winning documentary, "The American Artist: The Life and Times George Caleb Bingham" (available on Amazon Prime video). She appeared in the second season of the BBC program "Great American Railway Journey," speaking with host Michael Portillo about Bingham in 2017. Her recent work on Thomas Hart Benton includes editing and writing an introductory essay for the 2014 two-part article "The Work of Art," which publishes an important 1962 interview with Thomas Hart Benton in "The Missouri Historical Review." In the field of popular culture, she edited and co-wrote the 2015 book, "Four Turbulent Decades: A Cartoon History of America, 1962-2001, from the Pen of Tom Engelhardt," a retrospective of editorial cartoons from the St. Louis Post-Dispatch. Between 2020 and 2024, she wrote numerous articles for Missouri Life Magazine on art history, Missouri art galleries, and Missouri artists. Stack has also published in Italian and Northern Renaissance art, Civil War art and memory, Nineteenth-century Native American imagery, and the history of book illustration. She enjoys teaching and lecturing around the United States and sharing her enthusiasm for art and history.
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Papers by Joan Stack
This paper explores how the illustrators’ allusions to earlier heroic and religious images encouraged audiences to see General Nathaniel Lyon (the first Union general to die in the Civil War) as a martyr to the federal cause. Four of the five aforementioned images portray Lyon’s fatal charge, his fall, or his battlefield death. Elements such as Lyon’s hat and his horse became powerful signifiers that reinforced the heroic narrative that was constructed for the general in the Union press. When one learns to “read” these images, it becomes clear that they are subjective inventions that advance an emphatically Northern viewpoint. Without an illustrated paper in 1861, the South had no organ to advance a pro-Southern vision of the Wilson’s Creek battle. Subsequently, the visual traditions begun by the Northern papers continued throughout the nineteenth century.
In the 1990s, the public notoriety of both Benton and Blair had waned. Several Missouri politicians advocated replacing one of the statues with an effigy of President Harry S. Truman. This article explores the story of the original commission as well as the eventual decision to remove the Benton sculpture from the Capitol and bring it to Columbia, Missouri.
collection of artists’ biographies, "Le vite dei piu eccellenti pittori, scultori, et architetti," his significant oeuvre of visual work commemorating painters, sculptors, and architects has received little notice. This study focuses fresh attention on these visual memorials.
The first chapter is devoted to an analysis of Vasari’s early life and the factors that may have encouraged him to become interested in commemoration. Vasari’s visual propaganda celebrating political leaders is discussed in Chapter 2; and images produced for Duke Alessandro de ’ Medici, Cardinal Alessandro Farnese, and Duke Cosimo de ’ Medici are offered as precedents for Vasari’s later projects commemorating artists.
In the final three chapters, six commemorative projects honoring artists are analyzed. Chapter 3 focuses on the portrait woodcuts illustrating the second edition of the Vite and on Vasari’s scrapbook collection of artists’ drawings, the "Libro de’ disegni." Chapter 4 presents a discussion of Vasari’s involvement in designing the funeral decorations and tomb of Michelangelo Buonarroti. Finally, Chapter 5 is devoted to an analysis of the commemorative murals and ceiling decorations Vasari painted for his homes in Arezzo and Florence.
Aside from the works themselves, the study focuses on the motives
behind Vasari’s interest in commemoration. Consideration is given to the
events, patrons and acquaintances that familiarized the artist with the power of celebratory images. The messages promoted in Vasari’s commemorative projects are analyzed in detail, and attention is given to the historical contexts that led to the production of each image. Ultimately, I contend that Vasari’s images memorializing artists should be recognized as important cultural icons. Like the Vite, they helped create a new heritage for artists, fashioning a heroic identity for the profession with far-reaching effects.
Books by Joan Stack
Book Reviews by Joan Stack
This paper explores how the illustrators’ allusions to earlier heroic and religious images encouraged audiences to see General Nathaniel Lyon (the first Union general to die in the Civil War) as a martyr to the federal cause. Four of the five aforementioned images portray Lyon’s fatal charge, his fall, or his battlefield death. Elements such as Lyon’s hat and his horse became powerful signifiers that reinforced the heroic narrative that was constructed for the general in the Union press. When one learns to “read” these images, it becomes clear that they are subjective inventions that advance an emphatically Northern viewpoint. Without an illustrated paper in 1861, the South had no organ to advance a pro-Southern vision of the Wilson’s Creek battle. Subsequently, the visual traditions begun by the Northern papers continued throughout the nineteenth century.
In the 1990s, the public notoriety of both Benton and Blair had waned. Several Missouri politicians advocated replacing one of the statues with an effigy of President Harry S. Truman. This article explores the story of the original commission as well as the eventual decision to remove the Benton sculpture from the Capitol and bring it to Columbia, Missouri.
collection of artists’ biographies, "Le vite dei piu eccellenti pittori, scultori, et architetti," his significant oeuvre of visual work commemorating painters, sculptors, and architects has received little notice. This study focuses fresh attention on these visual memorials.
The first chapter is devoted to an analysis of Vasari’s early life and the factors that may have encouraged him to become interested in commemoration. Vasari’s visual propaganda celebrating political leaders is discussed in Chapter 2; and images produced for Duke Alessandro de ’ Medici, Cardinal Alessandro Farnese, and Duke Cosimo de ’ Medici are offered as precedents for Vasari’s later projects commemorating artists.
In the final three chapters, six commemorative projects honoring artists are analyzed. Chapter 3 focuses on the portrait woodcuts illustrating the second edition of the Vite and on Vasari’s scrapbook collection of artists’ drawings, the "Libro de’ disegni." Chapter 4 presents a discussion of Vasari’s involvement in designing the funeral decorations and tomb of Michelangelo Buonarroti. Finally, Chapter 5 is devoted to an analysis of the commemorative murals and ceiling decorations Vasari painted for his homes in Arezzo and Florence.
Aside from the works themselves, the study focuses on the motives
behind Vasari’s interest in commemoration. Consideration is given to the
events, patrons and acquaintances that familiarized the artist with the power of celebratory images. The messages promoted in Vasari’s commemorative projects are analyzed in detail, and attention is given to the historical contexts that led to the production of each image. Ultimately, I contend that Vasari’s images memorializing artists should be recognized as important cultural icons. Like the Vite, they helped create a new heritage for artists, fashioning a heroic identity for the profession with far-reaching effects.
The review summarizes and critiques Kroiz's study of the social instrumentalist aspects of artwork produced by the Regionalist painters Thomas Hart Benton, Grant Wood, and John Steuart Curry. Kroiz is particularly interested the ways in which the work of these artists related to their careers as educators.